Will those who benefit from Obamacare offset those who are harmed by it?

At PowerLine, Paul Mirengoff analyzes a Politico article that attempts to assess the political fallout from Obamacare.  The Politico writers, says Mirengoff, acknowledge that those in the individual insurance market aren’t feeling the love for the Democrats now, but imply that the majority of these people would have voted Republican in any event.  Mirengoff notes, though, this impression is belied by facts in the Politico article:

But later in the article we learn that, according to a survey by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, nearly half of those who brought their own insurance are between the ages of 18 and 44. We also learn, thanks to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, that there is no statistically significant difference between the political party affiliation of those who buy their own health care.

To be sure, when pressed, more people in this group say they lean Republican than Democrat. But the Kaiser poll clearly supports my statement that the party allegiance of Obamacare losers (at least this set of them) is split. Moreover, as one analyst quoted by Politico says, anger over cancellation letters is likely to cross party lines.

In other words, actual numbers suggest that the first wave of Obamacare victims may turn some Democrats into Republican voters, at least temporarily.

Obama and the Democrats, however, are counting on the fact that, for every voter who turns against the Dems because he lost his insurance, his rates went up, and his coverage quality went down, the Dems will still gain voters who got insurance despite preexisting conditions or who benefited from the subsidies that voters with sticker shock are funding.  Just as Republicans fear the moment when 51% or more of Americans get government hand-outs, the Democrats look forward to the moment when 51% or more of Americans look to the government for goodies.

What I think both the Democrats and the Republicans are forgetting is that a large segment of that 51% doesn’t vote.  How do I know this?  Because I have a family member who is part of that 51%.  I love this family member, who is an honest, decent person with a great deal of integrity.  Nevertheless, her choice of friends leaves something to be desired.  (And no, I don’t know what bizarre combination of nature, nurture, and peer pressure resulted in me being a very wholesome professional living an upper-middle-class life in a chi-chi suburb surrounded by children and dogs, while she ended up being a college drop-out living in a trailer park.)

He may benefit from Obamacare, but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be mentally organized enough to vote for Democrats
He may benefit from Obamacare, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be mentally organized enough to vote for Democrats

This gal’s friends all get some form of welfare:  foods stamps, welfare checks, free clinic health care, etc.  Many of them dropped out the employment market years ago.  To the extent that they are almost entirely dependent on government largesse, it is in their best interest to vote Democrat.  Obamacare definitely increases their fealty to the Democrat party.

The problem that the Democrats have with this cohort, however, is that, while it’s in these people’s best interests to vote Democrat, the same pathologies that leave them dependent on government also mean that most of them can’t or won’t vote.  Some are convicted felons (with their criminal records invariably tied to substance abuse), so they can’t vote.  All of them are eternally disorganized.  A combination of substance abuse, mental health disorders, and old-fashioned stupidity means that these people cannot get their acts together sufficiently to voter their own interests.  Most aren’t even registered, and wouldn’t know what to do if they were.

While these people are the Democrats’ natural constituency, they aren’t Democrat voters.  Sure, if you do a man on the street interview with one of these people, he’ll talk the party line and sound like he’ll be the first ones at the polls on election day.  If you were to go to his house on election day, though, you’d discover him slumped on the couch, beer in one hand and doobie in the other, unaware that he missed his opportunity to keep those welfare checks coming.

It's guys like this who reliably vote for Democrats, mistakenly believing that you help people by making them helpless
It’s guys like this who reliably vote for Democrats, mistakenly believing that you help people by making them helpless

Ironically, for a long time, those who have repeatedly voted Democrat for the benefit of this welfare class probably aren’t themselves recipients of welfare.  Instead, they’re the true believers, from the working class on up, who look at these pathetic, disorganized, drunk, and drugged masses and think that a vote for the Democrats, by keeping the welfare spigot open, will help these people.  Put another way, when we see Democrats win, it’s not because the welfare crowd cast the votes, it’s because the bleeding-heart crowd did it on their behalf.

I realize, of course, that this is a simplification that doesn’t take into account functional poor people who believe that they can survive only with government handouts and who make damn sure to vote for the party in charge of the handouts.  These are the voters Republicans need to reach, so that we can explain to them that the Democrats are rather quickly killing off the working- and middle-class geese who have been laying the golden eggs that have then been redistributed to the welfare class.  Destroy your tax base and there’s no more welfare.  These same people need to be convinced that welfare does not need to be a way of life.  And more specifically, blacks need to understand that, just because slavery was work, not all work is slavery.

The big question is whether these once-reliable Democrat voters, now that they're feeling the full effect of Obama's lies, will still vote Democrat
The big question is whether these once-reliable Democrat voters, now that they’re feeling the full effect of Obama’s lies, will still vote Democrat

Obamacare is going to have a very profound effect on Democrat voters, I suspect, but not in the way Democrats hope and Republicans fear.  The Democrats screwed by Obamacare and insulted by Obama’s lies will have their “come to Jesus moments” and may well shift political allegiance, even if only temporarily.  On the flip side, those who voted (and I mean actually cast a vote) for the Democrats and who are not screwed, will continue to vote Democrat.  But the poorest people, the ones who now have heavily subsidized, gold-plated health insurance, will not suddenly rush to the polls.  Health insurance or not, their pathologies will continue to render them incapable of the mental organization required for sending in an absentee ballot or getting out of the house and to the polling station on election day.