Tag: Democrats

Obamacare Enrollments Surging in States Run by Democrats

Jon Ponder

Here is a story that was featured on the front page above the fold in the Los Angeles Times yesterday but that has gotten little to no coverage anywhere else in the “liberal media”:

Despite the disastrous rollout of the federal government’s healthcare website, enrollment is surging in many states as tens of thousands of consumers sign up for insurance plans made available by President Obama’s health law.

A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials.

“What we are seeing is incredible momentum,” said Peter Lee, director of Covered California, the nation’s largest state insurance marketplace, which accounted for a third of all enrollments nationally in October. California — which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month — nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month.

Several other states, including Connecticut and Kentucky, are outpacing their enrollment estimates, even as states that depend on the federal website lag far behind. In Minnesota, enrollment in the second half of October ran at triple the rate of the first half, officials said. Washington state is also on track to easily exceed its October enrollment figure, officials said.

Why Bill de Blasio Doesn’t Care, Is Driving Cadillacs in His Dreams

Trish

Much is being made of Bill de Blasio’s recent mayoral win in New York City, with the Washington Post even calling it “historic,” since he will be the first Democrat to serve in that office since David Dinkins won in 1989.

It’s not just worth nothing that de Blasio won, but how. De Blasio focused on income inequality in NYC, or what he called “two cities,” one rich and one poor, much the way the ultimately disappointing Sen. John Edwards talked about two Americas.

As Marketplace’s Sabri Ben-Achour noted:

According to the Census Bureau, income inequality in the New York City region is higher than any other major metropolitan region in the country. So taking the whole city, Brooklyn to the Bronx, if you are in the bottom 20 percent in New York your income, on average, is about $9,000 a year. If you’re in the top 20 percent you make, on average, $223,000 a year. So otherwise, put [that] the top 20 percent of the population makes about 25 times what the bottom 20 percent makes.

[…]

3 Things to Know About Florida Politics Now

Trish
  1. Former Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist is running for governor in 2014 as a Democrat. The official announcement was made in Crist’s hometown of St. Petersburg, and puts an end, not to speculation that Crist would run, but to when the campaign would begin. It’s on.
  2. Alex Sink (D), former state chief financial officer, who lost to Gov. Rick Scott (GOP/Tea) in 2010 by 1% in a campaign where Scott provided $75 million of his own money, announced she is running for Congress to fill the seat of U.S. Rep. Bill Young (R), who died in October. Sink claims a fundraising headstart, and if successful, will help chip away at the Republican majority in the House. Dist. 13, where Sink is running, is 37.7% Republican, 35.2% Democratic, 23.2% independent, and the rest “other.”
  3. Republicans are already gunning for both Crist and Sink. This promoted tweet from the Florida GOP went up as Crist was delivering his announcement:

Republicans Can’t Even Pick a Winner in Baseball

Trish

54%

Proportion of Americans who said they didn’t care who won the World Series before the games concluded. Another 25% said they were pulling for the Boston Red Sox, who went on to win, with 21% fans of the St. Louis Cardinals. Among those identifying as Democrats, according to Public Policy Polling, 34% were rooting for the Sox while 16% were for the Cardinals. For those in the GOP, the percentage was Cards 27, Sox 18.

Voters: Democrats are Bad, but Republicans are Worse

Buck Banks

51%

Of Americans say Republicans are responsible for gridlock in Washington, D.C., while 35% percent say President Obama “lacks the skills to convince leaders of Congress to work together,” a new Quinnipiac poll finds. Asked another way, 53% say Obama is doing “too little” to compromise with congressional Republicans, but 68% of voters say congressional Republicans are doing “too little.” Said pollster Peter Brown: “Voters think the Democrats and Obama aren’t playing nice, but they think the Republicans are worse.”