The contests for statehouses in New Jersey and Virginia are the best referenda the country could ask for on Obamacare, and Congress would be wise to wait to see how these two states vote in November before it takes any final vote on the president's plans to radically rewrite the rules of American medicine.
Recent polls show that Republican Bob McDonnell in Virginia leads his opponent Creigh Deeds by double digits.
An anti-Democrat trend is also shaping up in New Jersey where GOP nominee Chris Christie is also far ahead of incumbent Jon Corzine.
Both New Jersey and Virginia went for President Obama ten months ago and thus should be providing their liberal nominees with a cushion, not a collapse. What has happened?
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The answer is obvious: the president's policies are deeply unpopular outside of the Beltway and the hard left precincts of the Democratic Party, and the idea of giving even more power to the party that controls all the levers in D.C. is out of the question. The stimulus is understood not to have worked. The cap-and-tax-and-tax-and-tax House bill threatens every business in the land. The vast deficits dwarf those that triggered anger against Republicans. And now Obamacare looms over every American with health insurance they like, including seniors who understand that the president's program targets Medicare and thus their access to doctors and treatments.
Polling on the health care scheme being pushed on the country show its support plummeting and opposition soaring. Even a huge infusion of cash from Big Pharma on behalf of the "government option/public plan" will not decisively impact the debate. The ice has hardened, in fact, and the doctors America depends upon are overwhelmingly against the scheme which means that most patients who talk to their physicians will hear the same negative message. All of AARP's spin can't change this, and the doctors won't sit quietly by as their profession is nationalized no matter what the AMA advises. A San Diego neurologist e-mailed me yesterday saying that he was refusing to meet with any pharmaceutical rep until Big Pharma withdrew from the field. I expect that sort of hostility will deepen, and those sorts of actions will spread. Unlike most debates inside the Beltway, this one has immediate and huge real-world implications for tens of thousands of professionals and millions of seniors, not to mention everyone with health insurance through their employer. Spin doesn't work when people are paying close attention. The president's "guarantees" aren't believed.
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