The 2014 midterm elections are over. Although ballots are still being counted in some of the close races and there will be at least one state that will hold a run-off in December because neither candidate for the US senate received at least 50% of the votes cast, the damage has been done, or the repair has been made – depending on whether your choice of color is red or blue.  Red was the color of choice for the majority of those who actually took the time to vote.

Speaker Boehner said that, and I paraphrase here, by electing so many Republicans to office and kicking out the Democrats who supported President Obama, Americans sent a clear message that Obamacare is a failure and they want it repealed. What?  Most Republicans did not talk specifically about the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) during their campaign.

What they talked about was Ebola, ISIS, people entering the country illegally, the beheading of innocent Americans and any other negative things that were occurring leading up to the midterm elections and laid the blame for what they called the poor handling of those situations squarely at President Obama’s feet. Then they tied any Democrat who was up for reelection to the President and what they labeled as his failures and implied that these candidates too were just as responsible because they had voted in favor of many of the issues that President Obama supported.

That sounds more like fear mongering to me. And it has nothing at all to do with Obamacare, which is a law that helped many Americans who had no health insurance because they could not afford it to finally be able to get health coverage.  It is still helping them and offers hope to those who are still without coverage.

It could have offered hope and help to even more people if Republican controlled states had not refused to expand their Medicaid programs and had it not been for all of the negative messaging and predictions of failure by Republican lawmakers before and after Obamacare became law. Good news though for all of those Americans who Speaker Boehner says want this law repealed; he has vowed to continue his efforts to repeal or destroy it.

The US Supreme Court has recently agreed to hear the case regarding Obamacare and for some of us that is a scary proposition. The Court did not have to agree to hear this case but the fact that they did means that at least four of the Justices agreed to hear it.  Even if they rule against the administration in a way that does not strike down the entire law, they can still gut it by ruling against vital parts of it.  Remember the voting rights ruling?

There are those groups who have key unresolved issues at stake who turned out in very low numbers. Many of the eligible voters who turned out in low numbers or did not vote at all were among those who heavily criticized President Obama as the midterms approached and made inflammatory statements like ‘the President has thrown us under the bus.’  Did those same voters throw the President under the bus?  Where were they during the midterm elections?

No matter your political affiliation, if you fail to vote, it does not matter in the least! My message and admonition to all eligible voters is that we need to make a commitment to ourselves right now to always vote; and not just during the Presidential election cycle.  And because I am a Democrat and believe that the Democratic Party has the winning message that will bring our country together, lead us forward and help it and all Americans to prosper; I admonish all Democrats – especially those who did not vote during the 2014 midterm elections, to resolve to always vote from now on.

Democrats are in a deep hole that it will probably take more than a decade to dig ourselves out of because Republicans now totally control at least 29 states. That gives them a massive amount of power to control things at the state level and, make no mistake; this is not a small thing.  That is why Democratic voters must gear-up now for 2016.  Winning then will be the best way to stop the Republican onslaught and reverse the ill-advised direction in which they are steering America.

Eulus Dennis