Chuck Schumer Must Be Running For Something...

You may have missed this during the hubbub of Thanksgiving, but New York Senator Charles "Chuck" Schumer (D/NY) dropped a little bomblet on his fellow Democrats.

In a post-Nov. 4 election drubbing, he made a speech at a National Press Club on Nov. 25, he had this to say...

"After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus, but unfortunately Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them," Schumer said. "We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem—health care reform."

The third-ranking Senate Democrat noted that just about 5 percent of registered voters in the United States lacked health insurance before the implementation of the law, arguing that to focus on a problem affecting such "a small percentage of the electoral made no political sense."

The larger problem, affecting most Americans, he said, was a poor economy resulting from the recession. "When Democrats focused on health care, the average middle-class person thought, 'The Democrats aren't paying enough attention to me,' " Schumer said.

The health care law should have come later, Schumer argued, after Democrats had passed legislation to help the middle class weather the recession. Had Democrats pushed economic legislation, he said, "the middle class would have been more receptive to the idea that President Obama wanted to help them" and, in turn, they would have been more receptive to the health care law.

Schumer said he told fellow Democrats in the lead-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act that it was the wrong time to pass the law.

"People thought—and I understand this—lots of people thought this was the only time to do this, it's very important to do. And we should have done it. We just shouldn't have done it first," he said. "We were in the middle of a recession. People were hurting and saying, 'What about me? I'm losing my job. It's not health care that bothers me. What about me?' … About 85 percent of all Americans were fine with their health care in 2009, mainly because it was paid for by either the government or their employer, private sector. So they weren't clamoring. The average middle-class voter, they weren't opposed to doing health care when it started out, but it wasn't at the top of the agenda."

-from National Journal 11/25/2014

Duh, ya' think, Chuck?? Oh, wait, but I thought it was going so well? But then again I can't say we didn't warn him...but...well, from his own words circa 2010, this is what he had to say...

"I am proud to support the historic Affordable Care Act – the 2010 health care reform bill that recently became law and will help over 30 million Americans, including almost 3 million uninsured New Yorkers to gain access to affordable health insurance.,."

Well, you can read the rest...LINK

Oh, he's just sad that his dream of replacing Harry Reid as Senate Majority Leader has been dashed and yeah, he's up for re-election in 2016. So we can understand how desperate he may be to distance himself from his vast mistakes. By the way, Chuck has been Chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee since 2010, so he has been the key election strategist on the issues the Dems have been running on and responsible for the losing streak in the mid-term elections.

Any thoughts?