In that Florida-13 election, the GOP candidate's message was almost entirely anti-ObamaCare

And candidates are offered the option of getting elected in exchange for repealing laws how and when?

What you said makes no sense. HRC is not going to commit to repealing ACA. Fix it perhaps, but not repeal. Especially since huge parts of it already in place are hugely popular. How on earth would taking a GOP position help them get elected? That is just dumb.

And by the way I am also interested in what you think the biggest parts of ACA are.

Right, because a Clinton would never consider co-opting a popular GOP position for his or her own use — you know, such as welfare reform.

Obvious wishcasting. In that Florida-13 election, the GOP candidate's message was almost entirely anti-ObamaCare, as well as focusing on Obama's Minimum Wage Economy. Neither of those issues are going to disappear.

Obvious wishcasting. In that Florida-13 election, the GOP candidate's message was almost entirely anti-ObamaCare, as well as focusing on Obama's Minimum Wage Economy. Neither of those issues are going to disappear.

In Alex Sink, Democrats had a better-funded, well-known nominee who ran a strong campaign against a little-known, second- or third-tier Republican who ran an often wobbly race in a district Barack Obama won twice. Outside Republican groups — much more so than the under-funded Jolly campaign — hung the Affordable Care Act and President Obama on Sink. . . . the Obamacare rollout debacle shifted the landscape entirely, and Sink eventually found herself facing another little-known Republican casting her as an Obama/Obamacare cheerleader in a tough political climate.

Both Democrats and the GOP plowed millions of dollars into the swing district race in hopes of an election year boost. The results appeared to vindicate the strategy of the GOP, which focused its attacks on linking Sink to Obamacare and managed to win with an untested candidate who had frustrated many in the national party.

Anyone post the Bloomberg poll on Obamacare? Think it came out yesterday but didn't see it here.

Still, rank-and-file Republicans want several key provisions retained. Sixty-two percent of Republicans want to retain the law’s ban on denying coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions...

FiveThirtyEight Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver has been largely absent from the political forecasting scene he owned in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. But that hasn't stopped the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee from sending at least 11 fundraising emails featuring Silver in the subject line over the past four months, even as Silver was building the foundation for his new website that's launching Monday and was not writing regularly.

It's all part of a digital fundraising game that will increase in intensity as the election draws nearer, as candidates, political parties, and other groups bombard their email lists with messages designed to draw contributions. One of most widely used tools is fear. Many of the emails seek to convince supporters that the political situation is dire enough that it requires action, and that's where Silver comes in.
. . .
There are plenty of other themes in the past few months of DSCC emails, including alarming one-word subject lines such as "catastrophic," "disastrous," and "doomed."

With a referendum on secession looming in Crimea, Russia massed troops and armored vehicles in at least three regions along Ukraine’s eastern border on Thursday, alarming the interim Ukraine government about a possible invasion and significantly escalating tensions in the crisis between the Kremlin and the West.

Strangely, I get emails from both sides.

Where do you get your news? You can find dozens of articles making the same point I did.

Jake Sherman and Burgess Everett are out with a fun post-mortem on FL-13, a children's treasury of Democratic squirming. (Note to politicians: If you dodge an interview and pledge to call back later, then don't, the reporter can write that.) The only problem I see with it is a reference to "Jolly’s nearly singular focus on the health care law."

By no means should Democrats deny that Obamacare hurt them in this race—it was a test, and the Republicans won it. But Jolly's particular focus on the law was not total. He did not mention it in his November announcement speech, at a moment when the cancellation of health plans was the major national political story. In his debate appearances and campaign ads, Jolly reached for Obamacare like a special sauce, to be used to complement everything else on the plate.

...

Jolly didn't just run around the district pledging to repeal Obamacare. He told a whiter, older electorate than had voted in 2012 that Obamacare was the reason they might lose coverage—oh, also that he learned his craft under Bill Young, that he was from Pinellas County, that he helped fund Jessica's law, and that he was a reliable conservative. It's wrong to say he ran on Obamacare alone, and impossible to say that Obamacare helped Alex Sink. And that's what Democrats need to figure out. They did not expect, in 2014, for the law to be anything but popular. They did not expect half of the states—most of the ones with competitive Senate races—to have said "nah, no thanks" to Medicaid expansion. But they haven't figured out how to sell what people might like about the law or talk to the people who feel they've been wounded by it.

Unless of course, you weaken or suspend the mandates, in which case you undermine Obamacare.

While I agree that FL-13 wasn't merely a referendum on Obamacare, I wouldn't put all that much stock into Weigel's analyses. (Mind you, he's a nice guy in person and an entertaining guy to follow on Twitter.)

Look, Robert Costa works for the Post now, so I have to get news from somewhere.

Have you blown through your WaPo paywall quota already?

It should also be noted that Weigel focused entirely on Jolly's campaign activities, and totally ignored the larger effort of various GOP aligned groups, which placed even more emphasis on ObamaCare.

EDIT: Here's the New York Times take - Sink "couldn't outrun the tsunami of advertisements tying her to President Obama's healthcare law."

Some of the outside ads focused not on Obamacare, but on Sink's record as CFO.
And even the Obamacare-centric ads warned voters that the problem with the law was that it would cut Medicare.

It should also be noted that a 2% win in a district with a 2% voter registration edge for Republicans isn't the death knell for anything.

I got quite a few e-mails from the GOP leading up to the 2012 elections

Scott Brown has formed an exploratory committee for a New Hampshire Senate run. Might have a chance.

The West's impotency and passivity in foreign affairs, and the Obamacare make-it-up-as-you-go smorgasbord, are emblematic of this profoundly, soul-sappingly mediocre era in American history.

Ick.

People who don't think this is a nation in decline are out of their gourds.

The West's impotency and passivity in foreign affairs, and the Obamacare make-it-up-as-you-go smorgasbord, are emblematic of this profoundly, soul-sappingly mediocre era in American history.

Ick.

People who don't think this is a nation in decline are out of their gourds.

The West's impotency and passivity in foreign affairs, and the Obamacare make-it-up-as-you-go smorgasbord, are emblematic of this profoundly, soul-sappingly mediocre era in American history.

Anyone who thinks Reagan presided over a mediocre age is delusional.

It's an age of overwhelming mediocrity, by any serious measurement.

Of course. Lefties love mediocrity.

Of course. Lefties love mediocrity. A boring national life devoid of greatness, where everyone sits around playing with toys is indeed the lefty paradise.

Obvious wishcasting. In that Florida-13 election, the GOP candidate's message was almost entirely anti-ObamaCare, as well as focusing on Obama's Minimum Wage Economy. Neither of those issues are going to disappear.

Strangely, I get emails from both sides.

Again, running a Mediscare campaign is not exactly making the election a referendum on Obamacare.

Wealthy, long lived mediocrity with wondrous technology and violent crime rates much lower than in the past. More mediocrity please.

A boring national life devoid of greatness, where everyone sits around playing with toys is indeed the lefty paradise.

Actually the violent crime rates are not all that great.

And don't you guys keep complaining about the distribution of the wealth being a huge problem? Is it really a good thing if the country as a whole is wealthier but all the wealth is distributed among a few thousand people at the top?

Because nothing says good times like starting wars!

How about: Striving to accomplish great things, and accomplishing great things.

The nation is far less "equal" today than in 1979. It's not even a close call.

You don't even have the courage of your so-called convictions. But enjoy your toys!!

Even though Russia is yet again the invader of another country's sovereign territory, Mouse, anyone who urges a more robust nonmilitary response is the warmonger?

Just curious: Where exactly in your living room does Charles Lindbergh's portrait hang? And where's the one of Stanley Baldwin?

Binary thinking is a powerful drug...

But one of the prime ways in which it's declined is in the thing progressives supposedly care the most about -- disparities in income and wealth.

According to everything I have seen violence is down worldwide, and is perhaps at its lowest level ever. In the US the FBI certainly thinks violent crime is WAY down, from 1979 for example when it was sky high.

There is a middle ground between "Things are perfect" and "We are in decline".

Where exactly have I argued against a response to Russia?

Because nothing says good times like starting wars!

Putin regaining territories previously freed from Russian/Soviet domination by a strong and effectual United States/Europe, from an impotent and ineffectual United States/Europe, is obviously a sign of decline. It's not even arguable.

The invasion, and potential invasion, haven't been met with anything -- other than a foolish pre-emptive foreswearing of military force.

Despite imprisonment rates that are much, MUCH higher than those of any other nation, or our own nation 60 years ago, our murder rates are worse now than they were then

Arbitrary end points. Here's a chart showing murder rates over the last 115 years.

One of the people caught up in the crackdown is Quentin O’Toole, Deloitte & Touche LLP’s local chief operating officer. When the New Zealander tried to return to Moscow from a trip abroad in December, he was detained at the airport and held in a cell overnight before being deported, according to two people familiar with the matter. The reason: speeding tickets.

O’Toole didn’t even commit the offenses -- his wife did, while driving a car registered in his name, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Moscow’s automated traffic cameras issue tickets by license plate, rather than by driver. It took Deloitte’s lawyers six weeks to get O’Toole’s visa reinstated. O’Toole and Deloitte both declined to comment.

Even foreigners employed by prominent Russian enterprises have been deported. One executive of a mining company said he was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in mid-January along with his wife and children because his driver had racked up about $1,000 of speeding tickets.

While his family was allowed into the country, he said he was denied a lawyer and held for 12 hours in a detention area with about 30 other people before being deported. His company eventually got the visa reinstated, the executive said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Even if we assume that's accurate (Democratic Underground? Seriously?), it still reinforces my point.

Putin is not going to go nuclear over the Ukraine. He's a bully, not a lunatic.

That's not the point. SBB offered his view that the Obama administration's response to date has been inadequate. I am concerned too, albeit not to the same extent.

Just curious: Where exactly in your living room does Charles Lindbergh's portrait hang? And where's the one of Stanley Baldwin?

The current murder rate is actually at an historic low, and you've provided no evidence whatsoever that your supposed other factors (improvments in medicine or incarceration rate) actually affect that conclusion.

The true test of an ideologue is doubling down on a claim after having been shown that it's factually wrong.

Of course, it's harder to extrapolate back. But obviously, the availability of work, and the high marginal tax rates on high income earners, helped depress the murder rate in the 1950s and 1960s.

It's uncertainty that ups the level of crisis. WW1 started because countries didn't know how the others would react. They thought they could win by simple bluff and bluster.

saved the lives of just as many gunshot/stabbing/severe beating victims as a modern trauma center would?

If the 82nd Airborne division was currently located in eastern Ukraine, or if Ukraine was a member of NATO, there'd be zero chance Putin would use force. It's only because he thinks we probably won't retaliate that he may use force.

now you're going to claim the medical facilities of the 1920s, with no antibiotics, primitive surgery, and a lack of internal imaging technology (MRI, Ultrasound, CAT scans, etc.) saved the lives of just as many gunshot/stabbing/severe beating victims as a modern trauma center would?

How delightfully ironic.

If you let him grab a little of Ukraine, he'll decide to grab more. If you let him grab the whole Ukraine, he'll set his sights on the Baltics.

Or, alternatively, it was segregation and patriarchy that did the trick.

What makes you think he'll be content with some slivers?

I'm not sure this is entirely accurate. Certainly Conrad in Austria explicitly wanted war

hat makes you think he'll be content with some slivers?

If you let him grab the whole Ukraine, he'll set his sights on the Baltics.

But calling Florida’s 13th District a “historically Republican district” is a tough pill to swallow after over a decade of Democratic strategists practically guaranteeing victory once Young left the seat.

Possible retirement that Republicans dread: Bill Young (R, FL-13) — Democrats specifically targeted Young almost the second after the 2012 elections ended, surely as a way to pressure the longest-serving House Republican to step aside (Republicans have done the same with Peterson). If Young runs, he’s probably fine, even though his 58% victory in 2012 was the second-smallest of his 22 general election victories; if he doesn’t, the seat — which President Obama narrowly won — would probably be a toss-up.

The more he succeeds the weaker we are in assembling a coalition against him.

Neat trick turning this just into the murder rate, and then justifying anything and everything away through medical advances. However people who are experts in the field, like for example the FBI, which tracks crimes, thinks violent crime as a whole has dropped a huge amount since the glory days of 1979.

now you're going to claim the medical facilities of the 1920s, with no antibiotics, primitive surgery, and a lack of internal imaging technology (MRI, Ultrasound, CAT scans, etc.) saved the lives of just as many gunshot/stabbing/severe beating victims as a modern trauma center would?

No, I'm going to claim that "logically possible" isn't the same as "actually happened". Pics or it didn't happen.

In this case, the media were merely repeating what Democratic political operatives had long been claiming:

after over a decade of Democratic strategists practically guaranteeing victory once Young left the seat.

Look who's ideologically doubling down on the stupid. Is this some form of performance art, or are you actually this lacking in self-awareness?

Having him run your military was a really really really bad idea

We can all rest assured that the fear that some liberals in DC, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and NYC think his uncontested conquering of the territory of other nations is really a sign of weakness has Putin quaking in his boots.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight by our lefties calling you weak ....

But should I assume you're comfortable with USG's current incarceration rates, since they've nicely corresponded to the drop in violent crimes?