newsalarmonline.com

It’s not fun to be a Democrat who voted for Obamacare these days:

CBS Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes said the Democrats are distancing themselves from President Obama.

“Not only are they running away from President Obama, they’re running away from being Democrats in some cases. In some races you actually see the Democratic candidates not really mentioning that they’re a Democrat in their campaign ads,” Cordes said.

Smith asked his guests to try to identify the source of the discontent: “From your experience on the Hill, have you heard any Democrats in private conversations say, ‘You know what? We went down the wrong road. We went after health care. We went after so many other things on the Obama agenda as opposed to, in the end of the day, it’s all about creating jobs?’”

“Not only have we heard that, but we’ve been hearing it for months,” said Cordes. “We heard it during the health care debate that dragged on for a year when the economy was so bad; they focused on health care and they focused on financial regulation.

“Americans don’t feel the impact of those pieces of legislation yet,” she said. “There’s a lot of frustration on Capitol Hill among Democrats who feel like the President led them down this path. They didn’t all necessarily want to deal with health care. This was on the president’s agenda, and then they felt like he kind of hung them out to dry.”

“Not a single Democrat has run an ad in support of the health care bill since April,” VandeHei noted.

Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass the bill so we could find out what’s in it. Well, it passed and we found out what’s in it…and we don’t like it.

The Minnesota Governor and president wannabe is putting his foot down:

Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty Tuesday ordered all state agencies to not to submit applications to any health care funding from the federal government related to the health care overhaul.

Any applications must be either required by law or approved by the governor’s office. …

“Obamacare is an intrusion by the federal government into personal health care matters and it’s an explosion of federal spending that does nothing to make health care more affordable,” Pawlenty said in a news release.

I guess Eric Holder will have to sue him and complain about him to the UN like he did Arizona.

Just as video killed the radio star, Obamacare killed the Democrats.  Jay Cost has a lengthy analysis.  Some media are advancing a meme that the decline of Democrat chances in November is a recent event and could be quickly turned around, but Jay traces their troubles back to the Obamacare debate and thinks they have a long-term problem:

The meme is wrong.  The Democrats’ control of the House did not become tenuous recently. At best, some of the more immediate warning signs – e.g. individual incumbents like Betty Sutton now appear to be in jeopardy – have manifested themselves recently. But there has been a real danger of losing the House for some time, a danger that predates “Recovery Summer” and goes back to the health care debate.

First of all, the fact that the health care bill is no longer the topic du jore does not mean it is no longer an issue. The real questions are whether the health care bill moved voters away from the Democrats, and whether those voters have since moved back now that the debate is over. The answers are yes – the debate moved voters away from the Democrats; and no – the voters have not come back.

Read it all here.

Because another Lincoln is going to have a bad day.  From Instapundit:

GOOD GRIEF: Rasmussen: Arkansas Senate: Boozman (R) 65%, Lincoln (D) 27%. “Lincoln was reelected to a second Senate term in 2004 with 56% of the vote, but her political fortunes in the state have plummeted since she cast a procedural vote late last year to keep President Obama’s national health care bill alive. Opposition to that bill in Arkansas has been even higher than it is nationally.”

Those Arkansas voters REALLY don’t like Obamacare.

As it becomes increasingly obvious that few if any of the promises of Obamacare will actually come to pass, the White House is scrambling to figure out how to save it before a new congress tries to repeal it:

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”

The messaging shift was circulated this afternoon on a conference call and PowerPoint presentation organized by FamiliesUSA — one of the central groups in the push for the initial legislation…The confidential presentation, available in full here and provided to POLITICO by a source on the call, suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal.

It’s falling apart faster every day.

Nancy Pelosi told us that once we knew what was in the Obamacare bill we’d learn to love it.  Apparently Americans are slow learners:

Despite lofty predictions that a broad-based Democratic constituency would be activated by the health care reform bill, recent polling shows that the bill has been a disaster for the party — with near 60 percent of voters saying that they oppose the measure.

In recent months, as voters express anger across-the-board with Washington, there may well be no single initiative as unpopular as the administration’s health care reform bill.

Weekly Rasmussen Reports polling shows that more than half the electorate has consistently supported repeal of the measure since passage. And the latest Rasmussen health care poll from Monday shows 55 percent of Americans supporting repeal, and just 38 percent supporting the bill.

Despite the many good predictions, this bill has created big problems for both President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.

The party’s favorability has dropped 20 points in the past year, as reflected in two Pew Research Center and CBS News polls. A swing of this proportion is usually considered monumental — and the implications in November are likely to be substantial.

Lots of stories like this coming out these days. The mood in the electorate is pretty ugly if you’re a Democrat, and even voting against Obamacare probably won’t save some of them. The “D” after their names will be all the voters need to know.

Insurers are waking up to the reality of the new mandates in Obamacare and they’re not willing to let them put them out of business:

Some major health insurance companies will no longer issue certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday.

Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said several big insurers in his state will stop issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state are doing likewise.

In Florida, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Aetna, and Golden Rule — a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare — notified the insurance commissioner that they will stop issuing individual policies for children, said Jack McDermott, a spokesman for McCarty.

The major types of coverage for children — employer plans and government programs — are not be affected by the disruption. But a subset of policies — those that cover children as individuals — may run into problems. Even so, insurers are not canceling children’s coverage already issued, but refusing to write new policies.

The administration reacted sharply to the pullback. “We’re disappointed that a small number of insurance companies are taking this unwarranted and unnecessary step,” said Jessica Santillo, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services department.

Starting later this year, the health care overhaul law requires insurers to accept children regardless of medical problems — a major early benefit of the complex legislation. Insurers are worried that parents will wait until kids get sick to sign them up, saddling the companies with unpredictable costs.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida issues about 9,000 to 10,000 new policies a year that only cover children. Vice president Randy Kammer said the company’s experts calculated that guaranteeing coverage for children could raise premiums for other individual policy holders by as much as 20 percent.

“We believe that the majority of people who would buy this policy were going to use it immediately, probably for high cost claims,” said Kammer. “Guaranteed issue means you could technically buy it on the way to the hospital.”

The administration may sound surprised and disappointed in this, but it’s just another step on the way to the public option.

I’ll bet this was a real moneymaker:

The head of an eastern Pennsylvania amusement company has yanked a carnival game in which players shot foam darts at an image resembling President Barack Obama.

Irvin Good Jr. pulled the target-shooting game after receiving a complaint from a Massachusetts woman attending a fair in Roseto, about 65 miles north of Philadelphia. Good said Wednesday his company, Hellertown-based Goodtime Amusements, won’t offer the game again.

“It was just a big, big mistake in judgment, and I feel sorry about it,” he told The Associated Press. “I can’t take it back, but I can try to make it better.”

The game, dubbed “Alien Attack,” featured a large painted image of a black man wearing a belt buckle with the presidential seal and holding a scroll labeled “Health Bill.” Players could win prizes such as stuffed animals by hitting targets on the image’s head and heart.

The game was featured in late July at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Big Time Celebration, an annual fair that raises money for the Roman Catholic parish in Roseto.

Based on Tuesday’s vote, he ought to rush this game to Missouri where 71% voted against Obamacare.

Missouri has long been considered a “bellweather” state, a state which seems to reflect the thinking of voters nationwide.  If it’s still true, Obama and the Dems are in trouble:

Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.


“The citizens of the Show-Me State don’t want Washington involved in their health care decisions,” said Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, one of the sponsors of the legislation that put Proposition C on the August ballot. She credited a grass-roots campaign involving Tea Party and patriot groups with building support for the anti-Washington proposition.


With most of the vote counted, Proposition C was winning by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1. The measure, which seeks to exempt Missouri from the insurance mandate in the new health care law, includes a provision that would change how insurance companies that go out of business in Missouri liquidate their assets.


“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cunningham said at a campaign gathering at a private home in Town and Country. “Citizens wanted their voices to be heard.”


About 30 Proposition C supporters whooped it up loudly at 9 p.m. when the returns flashed on the television showing the measure passing with more than 70 percent of the vote.


“It’s the vote heard ’round the world,” said Dwight Janson, 53, from Glendale, clad in an American flag-patterned shirt. Janson said he went to one of the first Tea Party gatherings last year and hopped on the Proposition C bandwagon because he wanted to make a difference.


“I was tired of sitting on the sidelines bouncing my gums,” he said.


Missouri was the first of four states to seek to opt out of the insurance purchase mandate portion of the health care law that had been pushed by Obama. And while many legal scholars question whether the vote will be binding, the overwhelming approval gives the national GOP momentum as Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma hold similar votes during midterm elections in November.


“It’s a big number,” state Sen. Jim Lembke, R-Lemay, said of the vote. “I expected a victory, but not of this magnitude. This is going to propel the issue and several other issues about the proper role of the federal government.”

Looking at the map which shows how each county voted it’s clear that the only places that supported Obamacare were the urban areas of Kansas City and St. Louis, both of them with large black populations.  A lot of government dollars go to die in those areas and the people there clearly expect that to continue.

We are quite possibly on our way to a 10th amendment showdown between the federal government and the states over who really has the right to control local healthcare and many other issues which have been usurped by the Feds.  It’s about time.

From Big Government:

MISSOURI VOTERS REJECT OBAMACARE!
Prop C passes in Missouri!
Over 70% of voters reject the democrat’s nationalized health care plan.

There’s some video at the link.

This map is pretty informative too.  The only areas that were in favor of Obamacare were the urban ghettos of Kansas City and St. Louis.  Imagine that.