Health-care law has changed game for Democrats looking to 2014 election

From The Washington Post:

Few places may better explain how the bungled launch of President Obama’s health-care law has scrambled the political landscape for Democrats than this hamlet north of Philadelphia.

Democrats have been hoping to capitalize on the political fallout for the GOP from the recent government shutdown. If they can do so anywhere, it should be in the suburbs north and west of the city where three adjoining congressional districts represent a confluence of Democratic Party ambitions for the 2014 midterm elections.

The 13th District is represented by Allyson Y. Schwartz, a popular five-term Democrat who is the leading candidate for governor against a Republican incumbent widely regarded as the most vulnerable in the country.

The two other districts are held by moderate Republicans: Rep. Patrick Meehan in the 7th and Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick in the 8th. Obama won both in 2008 and lost both by less than one percentage point in 2012. If Democrats are going to get anywhere near the 18 seats they need to take control of the House in 2014, these two are must-wins, and a few weeks ago, with the GOP suffering in public opinion polls, everything seemed possible for Democrats.

The Affordable Care Act may have changed that.

The recent debacle over HealthCare.gov’s rollout may have narrowed whatever perceived advantages Democratic candidates may have had over Republican opponents. In some minds, the health-care law’s flubs have merged with the government shutdown to render an unfavorable verdict on all of Washington.

Schwartz knows that her votes on the health-care legislation will be part of her campaign. On Friday, she voted with her party against a GOP effort to delay a portion of the new law, while ­Meehan and Fitzpatrick voted yes, with their party.

[A] big part of the problem Democrats must now solve has to do with the Affordable Care Act.

Among the 39 Democrats who defected on Friday and voted with the GOP to delay a key health-care provision was Rep. Bruce Braley (Iowa), a reliably liberal vote for much of Obama’s agenda in his first term. Braley is the consensus Democratic nominee for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) — a seat that Democrats have held for 33 of the past 39 years. Braley represents a district that the president won by 14 percentage points in 2012 and he wants to represent a state Obama won twice but, as evidenced by his vote Friday, Braley has begun to put some political distance between himself and the president.

The reaction among some ­Iowans shows the peril ahead. Jerry Crawford, a longtime Democratic activist, defended Braley’s vote as one that fit with what Iowans want in politicians: problem-solvers who keep their word.

But his vote upset Sue Dvorsky, a former special-education teacher and state Democratic Party chairman. She thinks that bills like the one Braley supported give Republicans more momentum to criticize the health-care law. “Democrats — elected officials and activists — need to buckle down and take a breath,” she said Saturday.

In Iowa, the disappointment in Obama and the health-care law’s rollout is deeper and more personally felt than in much of the rest of the country. That’s because, nearly six years ago, Iowans propelled Obama’s national career with his upset victory in the January 2008 presidential primary caucuses, setting the stage for beating Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

“It’s terrible, it’s painful to watch. We really do know him,” Dvorsky said. “Watching this is gut-wrenchingly painful.”

She said she thinks HealthCare.gov will be functioning well by the Nov. 30 deadline because that’s what the president said. “If I’m wrong, there’s going to be phenomenal pain.”