Two Ohio Democrats With Very Different Views Of Health Care Reform-- Michael Wager And Jennifer Garrison

Yesterday we looked at what happened when a real Democrat, Michael Wager, was confronted with idiotic Republican assertions about health care reform. Conservative Republicans in Ohio and across the country opposed Social Security, opposed Medicare, opposed Medicaid and now oppose the Affordable Care Act, all as a matter of course. It's the nature of who and what they are. Wager, the progressive Democrat running in the northeast corner of the state east of Cleveland, doesn't share that nature. He pushed back, talked about how he thinks the Affordable Care Act doesn't go far enough but is a decent first step and said he would have voted for it.

Steve Israel has basically ignored Wager's race against vulnerable Republican incumbent David Joyce (in an R+4 district Sherrod Brown just won 2 years ago). Instead, he's been terribly excited at the dim prospect of elected extreme right-wing fake Democrat Jennifer Garrison, an anti-Choice/pro-NRA tracking champion who based her political career on virulent homophobia, her trademark issue. Unlike Wager, she has publicly stated she would not welcome a campaign visit from President Obama and, unlike Wager she has claimed she would not have voted for the Affordable Care Act. Just the kind of candidate that makes Steve Israel tingle all over!

A letter to the editor from a Garrison staffer this week serves as a perfect contrast to Wager:

In a letter published over the weekend, the writer was badly misinformed on Congressional candidate Jennifer Garrison's views of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). If he would have done any research at all, he would have found that Garrison has repeatedly stated that she would not have voted for Obamacare. Taken straight from her campaign website, "I was frustrated and angered by the process by which Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act." She would not have supported the ACA because of the cuts to Medicare…

Those are Republican talking points that the NRCC and John Boehner's office hand out to GOP candidates. And, basically, so is this healthcare position Garrison put up on her campaign website:

Like a lot of Americans, I was frustrated and angered by the process by which Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act. There are admirable parts of the law-- covering pre-existing conditions, helping more Ohio families to get health coverage, and raising the age by which children can remain on their parents’ plans. But there are serious concerns, such as rising premiums on small businesses and the treatment of multi-employer plans that negatively impact many labor families. I’ll work to fix the Affordable Care Act so that it works better for people in our part of Ohio.

This is the voice of the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and, in many ways, it's even worse than the voice of the Republican Party, since that voice will not be undermining progressive values and principles inside the party caucus-- and in committees-- the way Garrison's would. Garrison has been recruited by the Blue Dog Coalition-- which helps explain Israel's loyalty to a candidate in an R+8 district with no chance to win-- but even with intense DCCC help, she has only managed to raise $571,064 (which includes a $30,303 check she wrote herself) to Bill Johnson's $1,766,423. (Ironically, the no DCCC help, Wager has raised almost double and has $525,901 cash on hand, compared to Garrison's $230,780. A vaguely competent DCCC chairman would be ignoring Garrison and doubling down on Wager. Hopefully we'll have a competent DCCC chairman in time to clean up Israel's two consecutive disasters by the 2016 election.