Nope, ObamaCare Didn't Help Democrats at the Polls
Time's Kate Pickert has a helpful report on the health care overhaul and the election. Key line: "There are clear signs that pundits who predicted high-profile losses for the Democratic Party in districts and states where health care was a major campaign issue were right." It's very difficult to pin any individual loss (or win) on a single issue, and obviously Democrats were set for a significant loss this November in just about any case. But as I've argued previously, the key thing to note about health care and the election was that prominent Democrats, including multiple White House representatives, confidently predicted that it would be a winning campaign issue—something that would actively help Democrat fortunes—and they seem to have sold that message to a lot of the party rank and file. It never seemed particularly likely that this narrative would turn out to be true, and, as it turns out, it wasn't.
