Why Clinton and Democrats Are So Keen on Early Voting
Democrats are out in force to ensure their supporters vote early. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook boasted that he had hopes to build an insurmountable lead in early voting in key battleground states that will cut off any viable path for Donald Trump to become president, according to The Hill:
Nevada, North Carolina and Florida could all be decided before Election Day because of historic spikes in early voting, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said Thursday.
"We are encouraging supporters to cast their vote early because it is possible ... that we could build an insurmountable lead in those key states before Election Day," Mook said on a press call with reporters.
Wins in those three states would make it very difficult to imagine an Electoral College scenario in which Trump, the Republican nominee, would win the White House.
Victories in North Carolina, which Republican Mitt Romney won in 2012, and Florida are especially important.
Mook estimated that 40 percent of votes in those battleground states could be cast before Election Day.
"So that's why we're not just encouraging everyone to vote and to make sure they vote, but to take advantage of early voting," he said.
For example, 2.7 million Floridians have already requested to vote by mail, compared to the 1.8 million who have done so at the same time of the 2012 election cycle.
Despite claims by Democrats about the importance of informed voters, the party seems to be making a concerted and very expensive effort to get people to vote as early as the various states’ laws allow them.
Are there “fear factors” that are prompting the party to pour resources -- more than they ever have done before -- to get people to vote?
Perhaps Democrats fear that the ObamaCare apocalypse that is upon them will be the October surprise that can swing elections. Two recent Wall Street Journal columns highlight the danger if and when voters discover and feel the pain of vast premium increases and loss of coverage that is rippling across America. In Clinton vs. Clinton on ObamaCare, the paper takes note of Bill Clinton’s shocking admission that ObamaCare is “the craziest thing in the world” as Americans “wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half.” The statistics are dismaying:
The average national premium increase in 2017 will be 24.2%, according a Barclays analysis of rates approved by state regulators. That includes eye-watering average hikes in states like Illinois (43.9%), Iowa (31%) and Arizona (68.1%), and the results aren’t great in Florida (17.7%), Colorado (20.2%), North Carolina (20.4%) or Pennsylvania (23.6%).
The counties served by federal exchanges with only one insurer will increase to 18% in 2017 from 2% this year, while those with two insurers will jump to 21% from 12%. The 17 state-run exchanges aren’t doing better. Minnesota recently waved through a 56% average premium increase and allowed insurers to turn away customers to prevent a collapse.
The Kentucky state-run exchange, Kynect, was once extolled as a success. But the state recently gave up and will revert to the federal Healthcare.gov. Goldman Sachs calculates that the insurers like Aetna and UnitedHealth that quit the exchanges covered about 35% of all ObamaCare enrollees in 2016.
Against this backdrop of fewer choices and soaring costs, some ObamaCare beneficiaries will be shielded because the subsidies rise with higher premiums. But about one of five enrollees earn too much to qualify, and of the 17 million people in the individual market, eight million buy off-exchange where there are no subsidies. Mr. Clinton rightly noted that “the people getting killed in this deal are the small-business people and individuals who make just a little bit too much to get any of these subsidies.”
The situation has grown so dire that even Barack Obama has been forced to admit his signature achievement is going down the drain, though he could only admit there were problems and of course they were the fault of Republicans. Still, considering he has spent years boasting of the success of his namesake legislation this was certainly a bracing recognition that Obamacare was failing at an accelerating pace.
The Republicans would be committing an act of great political malpractice not to take advantage of this opportunity to win voters away from the Democrats by not only pointing out over and over the disaster of ObamaCare but presenting its own alternative. Of course, the GOP commits political malpractice on a regular basis, so one can only have a modicum of hope by now that they have learned from their failures. After all, the reaction against ObamaCare did lead to Democrats being defeated across America in 2010 and the problems are more manifest and worse now. Mike Pence, in his debate against the obstreperous Tim Kaine, touched upon ObamaCare, as has Paul Ryan, as has Todd Young in Indiana in his race against Evan Bayh. The collapse and implosion of ObamaCare is accelerating into November. Republicans should learn from Obama’s first Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel who said one should never let a crisis go to waste. Speed is of the essence since early voting totals are going up each and every day.
The party can point out that Hillary Clinton not only fully endorses ObamaCare but also intends to expand upon it via, among other steps, a public option (Hello the National Health Service of England, that paragon of failure). How about a commercial reminding people that Hillary Clinton tried to impose her own version of ObamaCare when she was First Lady? Her effort was an epic fail. “If you dislike Obamacare you will hate HillaryCare” has a certain ring.
President Obama has schemed to put his “legacy” achievement on life support but has been cut off by Republicans in Congress, by the law that should stand in the way of Obama using a special Treasury Department fund (the Judgments Fund) to illegally bail out insurance companies to cover the massive losses they have suffered under Obamacare, and by stubborn realities, such as basic economics. As the reality of lost coverage, sky high premiums, smaller networks and higher deductibles make clear what Republicans and non-partisan experts have been warning about for years (ObamaCare would be a “man-made disaster), Democrats are rushing people to the polls before it is too late and they take out their collective anger on Democrats as they did in 2010.
One can hope Republicansincluding Donald Trump, as Kimberly Strassel advocates in her Wall Street Journal column, mobilize to make clear the pain that Democrats have inflicted upon millions of Americans. One can see commercials crafted from Bill Clinton’s gaffe. Every single Democrat who was voted for ObamaCare can be pictured as being responsible for its passage (especially Senators). When Paul Ryan attempted entitlement reform Democrats ran mendacious and fallacious commercials of him pushing an elderly wheelchair-bound woman off a cliff. Surely turnabout is fair play.
Could Democrats also be rushing people into early voting for fear of future email leaks, such as by Guccifer 2 or from Wikileaks? We have been promised more revelations to come. Have any of the previous email leaks done anything to enhance Hillary Clinton’s reputation or that of the party itself (especially regarding how leadership conspired to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination)?
As more news rolls out regarding the “unusual” FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email and private server scandal, her numbers suffer. Upon her resigning as Secretary of State, Clinton enjoyed very high approval ratings. Then the truth intervened and her numbers began a never-ending plummet. FBI Director James Comey may have verbally harmed her credibility, her but the granting of get-out-of-jail-free cards to not only her but her various aides through immunity deals seem to confirm Donald Trump’s views that they system is rigged and that the Clintons live under a different set of rules (or no rules) than other Americans.
Could the Clintons fear another medical mishap, another coughing fit, more stumbling on stairs or falling (didn’t Bill Clinton, that old frenemy of his wife’s, declare that she fainted frequently before it was excised by CBS eager to save that one second of TV time)? The worst week of her campaign was when she went stumbling towards her van after cutting short her attendance at an event commemorating 9/11. Could another fainting spell prevent her return to the White House?
There could be another reason Democrats are pushing early voting to an unprecedented degree this cycle. Could Donald Trump improve his electability and help down-ballot Republicans? Could he take a page from Mike Pence and focus on a conservative agenda that appeals to the independents that he and Republicans need to win elections? By all accounts, Mike Pence was the victor in his Vice-Presidential debate with Tim Kaine. There were a few rumors (probably planted by Democrats) that Trump was displeased that Pence did not defend him from the volley of attacks launched by Kaine. But these were refuted by Donald Trump, who revealed how proud he was of Pence’s performance and how it reflected on his own skill in picking talent. Could Trump recalibrate his own campaign and lead his ticket to victory?
Is that what Democrats fear the most?