In a year where simply being the superior candidate by a cosmological distance evidently isn’t enough to achieve a two-digit lead, where that superior candidate is targeted with a fusillade of spurious accusations while her opponent’s real lapses of taste, judgment, intellect, ethics and morality come in such rapid succession that no single one has the chance to damage him, and where many Americans’ irrational dislike of her has an almost sexual intensity while they somehow find her opponent’s boorish, crass arrogance ‘charming’ and ‘refreshing’, there is still one foolproof, guaranteed, can’t-miss strategy that will not only assure a Clinton victory but will drain all the drama from the question and assure her acceptance speech is delivered before the kids’ bedtime on election night.
And who would have guessed that this would all be delivered with an Iowa-sized bow courtesy of the ACA? The law Congress’s only action in anyone’s memory—aside from conducting ‘investigations’ of Hillary Clinton and smear campaigns against Planned Parenthood—has been 50+ show votes to strike down? The law that her opponent’s website promises to ask Congress for a full, immediate repeal of on the first day of his administration?
Here’s the thing, though: the ACA has saved America’s senior citizens about $21 billion on prescription medication. Those who formerly found themselves in the ‘donut hole’ save, on average, about $2,000 each. And if the GOP achieves what they have attempted 50+ times, and Donald Trump is given the chance to ask for the full repeal his website says will be his priority on day one, all of these benefits that seniors have come to count on and plan their household budgets around… vanish. And the burden of thousands of dollars in no-longer-covered prescriptions will fall back on those living on fixed incomes.
The Ad:
Captioned scenes of Congress voting to repeal Obamacare described in headlines as the 10th time. The 20th time. The 30th time. The 40th time. The 50th time.
The graphic of Donald Trump’s position page with the excised and magnified excerpt “On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare.”
And then the simple facts and figures of what this will mean and how it will impact seniors. Just the facts. No need for concerned-to-frightened looking seniors deliberating over their prescription bottles; the people this ad is aimed at don’t need to see actors dealing with this circumstance—they are picturing, very clearly, themselves or their parents caught in it.
Then Sec. Clinton assuring seniors that the advances the ACA made for their quality of life and peace of mind will not be taken away from them when she is president.
Run this ad in all swing states, and the GOP loses its largest and most reliable voting base. Insert the state’s Washington representatives who have voted for repeal to help their Democratic opposition in those races. The GOP has used Obamacare to their political benefit for so long that the sweetness of it being the agent of their destruction would be very difficult to overstate.
As would the pleasure of serving them this particular dish ice-cold.