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A Note To Progressives

November 5, 2015

Progressives, Take Note: Obamacare And Gun Control
Did Not Propel You To Victory Last Night

by CHARLES C. W. COOKE

Just a few short days ago, the Virginia state senate was run by Republicans, 21 to 19. Then, something remarkable happened. Hoping to spearhead a sweeping set of political and economic reforms, the state’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, issued a heartfelt plea to the electorate. Standing at a “make or a break moment for his progressive agenda,” McAuliffe conceded that he saw only one way of ensuring himself a “legislative legacy”: the ushering in of a Democratic majority. Only then, he explained, would he be able to work with much-beloved figures such as Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama to advance gun control, the expansion of Obamacare, and other popular policies. And should he fail? Well, then these proposals would be stopped in their tracks and the governor would be relegated to a mostly ceremonial role for the remainder of his tenure.

Yesterday evening, in a stunning testament to the potency and popularity of McAuliffe’s pitch, the makeup of the Senate . . . stayed exactly the same as it was before.

McAuliffe’s failure will come as a particular blow to the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, whose talent and enthusiasm for wasting vast sums of money in pursuit of the impossible remains second to none in scope. Aiming to demonstrate that the restriction of the Second Amendment can be a winning issue for the Left, Bloomberg dropped a cool $2.2 million into the race, the vast majority of which was spent to air a television commercial in which it was argued in earnest that those who are saddened by the cruelty of the deranged and the criminal are obliged to agree to the diminishment of their rights. Rather unsurprisingly, this ploy failed, despite its progenitors’ considerable financial advantage. Overall, Bloomberg’s groups spent more than $2 million trying to flip the two Senate seats that seemed potentially competitive. The NRA — commonly presumed to represent a financial force — spent just 5 percent of that total. The white whale continues to elude.

Medicaid expansion proved no more seductive. By now, Democrats had expected their all-out push for health-care reform to be yielding positive electoral dividends. Instead, it has continued to be a serious drag on the party’s fortunes. In Kentucky, the Republican candidate for governor won by a blowout margin — in part as a result of dissatisfaction with the changes that a more fully implemented Obamacare hath wrought. At the beginning of Election Day, outgoing Democratic governor Steve Beshear had predicted that his party would be so obviously helped by the reforms that any opposition to them would “pound the Republicans into dust”; by midnight, he was feasting on crow. In Virginia, voters wisely declined to make the same mistake that Kentucky has. Short of a stunning turnabout, this refusal will obtain until at least 2017, at which point the law may well have been changed beyond recognition. As president, Obama will never see his signature achievement extended fully into his backyard.

by Charles C. W. Cooke, staff writer for National Review. Follow him on Twitter: @CHARLESCWCOOKE

Read the original article from National Review, here.

Progressives, Take Note: Obamacare And Gun Control
Did Not Propel You To Victory Last Night

by CHARLES C. W. COOKE

Just a few short days ago, the Virginia state senate was run by Republicans, 21 to 19. Then, something remarkable happened. Hoping to spearhead a sweeping set of political and economic reforms, the state’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, issued a heartfelt plea to the electorate.

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