Perhaps this will give Democrats, if not Obama ,some much needed backbone. In a special election to fill a vacant House seat, Democrat Ted Deutch destroyed Republican Ed Lynch in an election where the passage of the health care bill was the biggest issue in the campaign.
As reported by AP, Deutch won with 62% of the vote.
Lynch tried to make the healthcare bill, as watered down as it was, the primary issue in the campaign, making the election a referendum on the health care bill. Lynch continuously repeated the Republican and conservative lie and mantra that the bill was a government take over of healthcare ( something a great many people would prefer anyway) and that it would cut Medicare benefits.
It fell on deaf ears.
If the Florida vote is any indication, conservatives and the tea party movement will make no in roads with independents and certainly with no Democrats in the fall running against the healthcare bill. Their arguments, hollow and dishonest to begin with, but enough to give them a small victory in having made Obama run from the public option, didn’t make a dent in the Florida election.
It could send a message to Democrats in congress that the best thing they can do to hold onto the House is to use reconciliation to pass a public option before election day. In every poll the public option gets a 57-60% approval and was as high as 72% in a CBS poll last June.
Republican and conservative opposition to the healthcare bill might still fire up those who are already predisposed to vote Republican but is liable to be rejected in November by independents and if so, the healthcare bill could very well end up, not the Waterloo for Democrats, but for Republicans.