Nancy Pelosi and her party need to strike the right balance if they hope to win in November. Dems seek the right ACA message

House Democrats are looking for a way to blunt their Obamacare woes.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats’ campaign arm, is about to embark on a large-scale public opinion survey that will – in part – seek to uncover how voters in key districts across America feel about the 2010 Affordable Care Act.


The DCCC bi-annual National Research Project, which begins in the next several weeks, will also include focus groups across several dozens competitive districts. The DCCC is devoting much of its energy to uncovering how – and how much – they should talk about the battered health care law.

( PHOTOS: 20 quotes: More Obamacare, less work)

It’s an issue that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Democrats need to figure out quickly if they want to be competitive in November. The party is stinging from a disappointing loss in Tuesday’s special election in Florida, which is being blamed in part on the Democratic candidate’s struggle to turn Obamacare into an advantage.

Rep. Steve Israel, the New York Democrat who chairs the DCCC, said party leaders will use the results — including the data on Obamacare — to help their rank-and-file members craft individual responses to ACA-related attacks and criticism.

“We’re going to be focusing on women, we’re going to be focusing on middle-class economic issues, and of course, we’ll be looking at the Affordable Care Act,” Israel said in an interview Thursday. “The Affordable Care Act is not the reason for the research project, but the ACA will be part of it.”

( PHOTOS: 25 unforgettable Obamacare quotes)

Israel, like Pelosi, President Barack Obama, top White House officials and legions of progressive pundits believe that Obamacare will be a boon in the long run — even if it doesn’t feel that way right now.

“All of the polling that I am looking at in battleground districts with swing voters says that the average swing voter would prefer to fix and improve the Affordable Care Act than to repeal it,” Israel said. “That theory will be in the research project.”

Pelosi downplayed Obamacare’s political impact in an interview. “Our members are good,” she said, adding that enrollment in health insurance plans is increasing.

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Pelosi is right: It’s not all bad for Democrats. Recent polls have shown that the law is gaining favor with the public, and the number of uninsured has dropped. She said Republicans could’ve used floor time to overhaul gun laws, pass jobs bills and increase the minimum wage

“I told members this morning, and I have for several days: this dome is keeping the message in,” Pelosi said, referring to the U.S. Capitol dome. “We have to get it out.”

But there are challenges to the Democratic message. Troubles with the law have repeatedly forced the White House to weaken or delay implementation of critical provisions. In the latest move, the administration last week expanded exemptions to the individual mandate, further fueling GOP attacks on the law.

Key Democratic strategists, who spoke anonymously to discuss party strategy, were blunt about Obamacare’s problems, especially from the political angle. They said Alex Sink’s loss in the Florida special election was a “nightmare.” Sink campaigned on Obamacare, and couldn’t beat the deeply flawed Republican David Jolly. Democrats know they can’t ignore Obamacare — they need to find a successful way to talk about it.

“It is no question that it’s a challenge,” Israel said. “It’s a challenge we have to manage. The research project, along with a broad range of other issues, will guide us in managing it.”

A Democratic strategist involved in House races said, “We’re going to test the the hell out of this. We’re really hurting from Obamacare.”

At the same time, a number of other disparate dynamics are surfacing. There is a fear that more and more will join Republicans to vote to change the law – a phenomenon that has recently worsened.

And Democrats are beginning to openly fret about the flood of outside Republican money that’s continuing to brand Obamacare as toxic. They are pining for an outside political entity – like the Obama administration or the Democratic National Committee – to take charge and defend the health care law in a way that could turn what’s now a negative into a positive. Some Democrats are calling for a wave of television ads to counter the barrage of anti-Obamacare messages that Democrats are seeing in their districts. Israel tersely said, “all hands have to be on deck.”

“There’s obviously an awful lot of misrepresentations being put out by organizations like the Koch brothers,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the national finance chairman of the DCCC. “I would love to see someone out there telling the success stories, because there are a lot of success stories.”

Himes added: “You know what we also have on our side – we have reality. It’s been very challenging for [Americans for Prosperity] to actually find people who have really been badly hurt, whereas there are millions of Americans who’ve gotten coverage. So, yes, I wish we were better engaged in the battle, but we also have the truth on our side.”

Asked if he expected a group would surface to support Democrats, Rep. Joe Garcia, a Democrat who holds a competitive south Florida seat, jokingly asked a reporter if he believes “in the tooth fairy also.”

“I’m a Democrat. We go out into the field and engage in war, and we expect to the cavalry to come sooner or later… Sometimes the cavalry shows up,” he said. “The other times, you’ve got to fend for yourself. But you’re already in the fight. There’s no getting away from the fight.”

Garcia said he would not take the barrage “sitting down.”

“Maybe we can call it economic stimulus for my district,” he said. “It’s money they’re spending in my district.”

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