On the Saturday, April 19, Disrupt, as MSNBC's Karen Finney hosted a discussion of ObamaCare noting that President Obama has started encouraging Democrats to brag about the program, guest Dana Milbank of the Washington Post blamed Republican governors for hurting Democratic Senators in red states as he charged that in some states "ObamaCare isn't going very well because of those Republican governors."
A bit later, Zerlina Maxwell of The Grio asserted that 10,000 people a year will die because of Republican governors who have refused to expand Medicare.
After Finney played a clip of President Obama boasting about ObamaCare, Milbank responded:
I think a lot of Democrats need to hear the President saying that because they've been out there supporting this law before, and then the rug is pulled out from under them and something goes wrong. So it is good for him to be saying that.
The problem is, a lot of these Senate Democrats who are in danger are in those states with the Republican governors where ObamaCare isn't going very well because of those Republican governors. So it's not necessarily going to work for the people who are in the most danger.
Ironically, moments later, Jamelle Bouie of Slate magazine fretted that in Kentucky Obama will not be able to receive credit for ObamaCare because the state, which has a Democratic governor, named its program KYNECT. Bouie:
I think the challenge for the Democrats in the red states, as like say in Kentucky where ObamaCare isn't ObamaCare, it's KYNECT, right? So it's connecting the state-level program to the national program in a positive way and trying to get like the warm feeling from those state-level programs to ObamaCare.
Finney soon added:
And the other thing is, you know, if you are, it strikes me, and the President kind of sounded off another message, if you're in a state where the governor or the legislature is blocking Medicaid expansion. We're talking millions of people. Why not take them to task for that?
Maxwell responded:
Right, and we're talking about 10,000 people a year that will die because Republicans are blocking Medicaid. So we're talking life and death, and this is beyond the politics of it.
