Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said the special election defeat in Florida this week wasn’t a statement against Obamacare — “on the contrary,” the loss supported the party’s platform.
“Winning is way better than losing,” Wasserman Schultz conceded on MSNBC. “But, if you look back at the special election cycles that we’ve been through, 2006 Democrats lost every special — every competitive special election in that year and we ultimately took the House back in 2010. We won every special election that was competitive that year and we lost 63 seats. So, you know, Greg Walden, the head of the NRCC last night, basically said that, you know, these elections are not predictive. And if you look at this race very closely, you can see that, I mean, it’s sort of – see, we haven’t held in almost 60 years.”
David Jolly won the seat left vacant by the death of his former boss, Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young, who began his House tenure in 1971. Jolly defeated former gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink despite being a lobbyist, not traditionally the most attractive pedigree for a candidate.
“And our candidate is really, I mean, she lost — but she lost by less than 3500 votes. It’s the closest we’ve ever come in this race,” Wasserman Schultz said.
But when asked if it was a referendum on Obamacare, she protested, “Oh, no.”
“In fact, the voters in Florida-13, very specifically, I think, said that they don’t want to repeal, especially independents, if you look at the polling in the exit polling, independents were actually opposed to Jolly’s message of repealing Obamacare and supported Alex Sink’s message of — if there are problems as they arise, we should fix them,” the DNC chairwoman said.
In the next breath, she slammed House Republicans for their dozens of votes on repealing, replacing or fixing parts of Obamacare.
“As problems arise, we should work together to fix that. We shouldn’t be voting like we are this week for the 51st time,” Wasserman Schultz said.
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