Was The Virginia Election Was a Big Win for Obamacare?

Obsessed with other people's sex lives and with denying millions of Americans - and some 400,000 Virginians - from access to healthcare insurance, Ken Cuccinelli maintained even in his somewhat peevish concession speech that the Virginia election had been a referendum on the Affordable Health Care Act, a/k/a Obamacare.   Most Virginians I know show the election far differently, with most concerned about the economy and jobs, funding transportation improvements, or concerns over Cuccinelli's extreme positions of so-called social issues.  A piece in The New Republic argues that the Virgini election was in fact a victory for Obamacare.  Here are article highlights:

As the Affordable Care Act was about to go fully into effect last month, the New York Times ran a big front-page article highlighting the fact that millions of Americans would go uncovered by the law as a result of the Supreme Court decision making it possible for states to opt out of the expansion of Medicaid. Half of the states have made this choice, creating a confounding scenario in which middle-income people can qualify for subsidies to obtain private coverage but the neediest working poor, who were supposed to be covered by Medicaid, are getting no help at all.

“How can somebody in poverty not be eligible for subsidies?” an unemployed health care worker in Virginia asked through tears. The woman, who identified herself only as Robin L. because she does not want potential employers to know she is down on her luck, thought she had run into a computer problem when she went online Tuesday and learned she would not qualify.

At 55, she has high blood pressure, and she had been waiting for the law to take effect so she could get coverage. Before she lost her job and her house and had to move in with her brother in Virginia, she lived in Maryland, a state that is expanding Medicaid. “Would I go back there?” she asked. “It might involve me living in my car. I don’t know. I might consider it.”

Last night, the prospects for Robin L. and the estimated 400,000 Virginians who would be eligible under a Medicaid expansion brightened considerably. The gubernatorial election was won by Terry McAuliffe, who made the Medicaid expansion such a central part of his campaign that for a time he was even threatening to shut down the state government unless legislators included it in their budget. The expansion, which is now being studied by an ad hoc state panel, still faces big hurdles—the General Assembly remains firmly in Republican control . . . . Still, the odds of the expansion happening are infinitely greater with McAuliffe in the Governor’s Mansion than with the fiercely anti-Obamacare Ken Cuccinelli.

So, the election was a clear win for Obamacare, right? Nope, say the pundits.  . . . . I’m not sure when I last saw such a stark example of election spin and punditry floating away from the substantive reality of governing and its impact on actual people. There is no mention in these accounts of the greatly enhanced prospects for the Medicaid expansion in Virginia as a result of McAuliffe’s win. No, it’s all about the exit polls and what it might mean for Obama and the Democrats. But Obama’s not on the ballot again, ever, and the Democrats aren’t on it again for another year.

All we know right now is that after a very rough patch for the law, the guy who ran strongly in support of it beat a guy who was strongly opposed to it, in the most purple state in the country. And as a result, hundreds of thousands of working poor may get health insurance coverage. How removed from the reality of these people’s lives does one have to be to chalk up such a result as a loss for Obamacare?

What I find so very disturbing is that Ken Cuccinelli and the GOP base do not give a damn about people like Robin L.  They blather on incessantly about their "religious faith" and "Christian values" yet by their actions show themselves to be the antithesis of the Gospel message.  They are all modern day Pharisees.  They are NOT nice or decent people notwithstanding all their self-congratulatory false piety.