I wasn’t raptured up yesterday, nor did I see any sign of abandoned clothing lying around on the sidewalks. And I’ve detected a distinct lack of wild beasts and other apocalyptic indicators roaming the streets. Conclusion: the rapture did not take place yesterday.
As a result, we still need to worry about things like building up momentum for the 2012 election cycle, since all indications are now that it will take place on schedule. And an excellent way to get the ball rolling in the right direction would be to win this Tuesday’s special election in the NY-26 district.
NY-26 is normally rock-solid Republican, and this special election was expected to be notable only for the hilarious circumstances of the departure of the district’s previous representative. Then Paul Ryan and his Medicare Destruction Act of 2011 happened. And the Democratic candidate, Kathy Hochul, saw her opportunity and seized it. She has been running hard on Medicare, arguing that her opponent (lockstep Republican Jane Corwin) would vote to destroy Medicare.
It’s working. The most recent poll in the race shows Hochul actually ahead by 4 points. Critically, the poll also shows that more voters (21%) name Medicare as the “most important issue in the race” than any other issue. And of those voters, the vast majority prefer Hochul.
A win by Hochul would be a very big deal in this race. There are signs across the country of buyers’ remorse with respect to the Republican victories of 2010 – Tallahassee’s first Democratic mayor in 20 years, for example, in an election widely seen as a rebuke to the increasingly unpopular right-wing policies of new Governor Rick Scott. A victory in NY-26 would be the biggest such sign yet, though, since it’s been portrayed as a referendum on Ryan’s bill.
I’ve added Hochul to our Act Blue page, and I’ve put the donation widget in the top left corner of the page. Here it is again. If you can toss her a few bucks, why not do so? The Medicare plan you save just might be your own.
