>>>>We had the same type of arguments with social security got started up
>>Alas, I have to disagree here, Victor.
>>While it's true that there was strong conservative opposition to both bills, check the record and you'll find that Social Security and Medicare both had strong bipartisan support in the congress while AHCA was passed on strict party lines.
>>While I think that many GOP pol's are whack jobs, all of them aren't and there was zero GOP support for this bill.
>>You have to listen to what other people say, like it or not, or democracy won't work and our guys just didn't listen on this one.
>
>The real question is how many R's voted against because they really opposed it and how many did so because they were afraid of being primaried from the right. After all, the basic idea of the ACA started out as a Heritage Foundation idea.
>
>Tamar

Fear of being primaried from the right is a form of listening to your electorate.
Our fundamental error here (we do it with guns too) was assuming that things that are "self evident" to us must be to people in other parts of the country.
One of the most frequent arguments we heard was that the model is working in Mass.
Well, it is. I have friends and family up there and they all applaud it.
But let's get real. Mass was the only state that McGovern carried in 1972.
He even lost NY, but he carried Mass.
Even the repubs in Mass are to the left of many dems in other states.
To assume that the people in say, South Carolina, Montana, or Texas would think the same way about an important issue like this as the people in Mass is to ignore political history.

To paraphrase Rumsfeld - you govern the electorate you have, not the electorate you want.