Democrats scrambled for a life raft last week dealing with the new heath care law, worried that its troubled debut could sink the party’s chances in the midterm elections.
“The administration handled the politics about as well as they handled the website,” said perennially endangered Augusta Democratic Rep. John Barrow.
Ouch.
Barrow has survived into his fifth term in what is now a solidly Republican district by showing a willingness to cross the aisle and adopt a pox-on-both-their-houses approach to the political parties.
Does Barrow forecast the law known as Obamacare playing a bigger role in the 2014 elections than it did in 2012?
“It all depends on your record on the issue,” Barrow said, implying he can sidestep any flak because he didn’t vote for it.
He usually votes against the parties’ signature policies on health care, the budget and other areas. Given Congress’ communicable-disease levels of approval, it works to his advantage.
The 2014 race could be Barrow's biggest test. In a district redrawn to force him out, Barrow won by 7 points last year against state Rep. Lee Anderson, whose difficulties with the English language drew comparisons to television's "Honey Boo Boo."
This time, the state GOP already has an Augusta-based staffer dedicated to ginning up Republican votes in the district.
The possible challengers both have tried and failed in the past: congressional staffer John Stone lost to Barrow in 2008 and businessman Rick Allen lost to Anderson in a primary runoff in 2012. Meanwhile, Barrow already has replenished his campaign bank account with more than $1 million.
Democratic turnout is likely to sink without President Barack Obama on the ballot, and national Republicans already have deemed Barrow one of their primary targets and Obamacare their primary issue.
A typical missive from the National Republican Congressional Committee arrived Thursday: “John Barrow is a co-conspirator in the disaster that is Obamacare.”
This is because Barrow has refused to vote for a full repeal of the law. Instead, his wish list reads like a poll testing of the various provisions: keep the ban on discrimination based on pre-existing conditions and the patients’ bill of rights, but kill the requirement that all individuals buy health insurance and a new board designed to limit Medicare payments.
Barrow jumped on a politically tantalizing House Republican proposal last week that would allow insurance companies to continue selling all insurance products they are selling this year – regardless of whether they meet the new law's standards for coverage. It came in response to the wave of cancellation notices for people in the individual health insurance market who hold policies that do not meet the law's requirements.
There were real questions about whether this could be implemented, even before Obama offered a similar administrative fig leaf that would allow existing customers – and not new ones – to keep the plans.
Barrow admitted implementing the bill would be rough, but said he supported it because he wanted to “encourage” something constructive out of Republicans and not the full-repeal broken record.
While dismissing Republican insistence on repeal, he said Democrats have been in such a protective bunker that they won’t consider changes.
Maybe now that they are sweating 2014, Barrow said, all the better.
“Now that the thing is finally staring us in the face, folks are starting to do their homework,” Barrow said. “If folks are nervous about it, maybe it will force them to do their job.”
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