Why is today important?
Because it might scare the Democrats. That’s why.
If Virginia and NY-23 go GOP, Democrat leadership can quell any nervousness among “moderate” Democrats just by saying “there there my wobbly colleague, those two areas simply returned to the way they’d been voting for decades. Those two races just show that Obama’s coattails aren’t big enough to cover the entire country. But you’ll be fine.”
But if blue New Jersey goes red a week after Obama visited there, scaredy-cat Democrats might just start wondering if Obama’s coattails might be poisonous. Because that means nobody is safe.
And that’s what any opponent of Obamacare wants.
The Hill reports:
Centrist Blue Dog Democrats might see their position strengthened if Democrats suffer broader electoral losses, one Blue Dog member suggested Tuesday.
Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) argued that an election night rebuke for Democratic candidates across the nation could lead some in the party to rethink their plans on healthcare reform and other issues.
“It looks as though the anger that has been boiling up the last couple of months is going to lead to a pretty high turnout from Republicans and from people who are concerned about increased spending,” Altmire said Monday evening during an appearance on Fox Business Network.
“And I do think that if the results show Republicans have a pretty good night, that probably is going to lead some Democrats to think that, going into next year, we need to take a second look at the way that we’ve done a lot of bills we’ve addressed up to this point,” the Pennsylvania congressman added.
Altmire himself said he’s unsure whether he’ll support the healthcare legislation.
Look, the only thing many of these legislators care about is staying in office. That’s it. The only threat they respond to is one sizable enough to threaten their job security. Along with the thousands of calls and letter coming into the Capitol, a seismic political shift like a Republican clean sweep would see wobbly Democrats getting wobblier and wobblier on controversial issues such as healthcare.
