5 Times The Left Refused To Take Voters’ No For An Answer — And Won

Although they often style themselves as “open-minded,” the Democratic Party’s ideologues possess a metaphysical certainty that rivals that of any pontiff or potentate of old. What elite liberals lack in factual knowledge, reasoned discourse, or a track record of success, they more than make up for in the absolute, unquestioned assumption that their policies are right — that they will “bend the arc of history toward justice” — and therefore, they must be implemented regardless of what America’s unenlightened citizenry desires. That’s why, unlike Republicans, when Democrats are in power they force their agenda on the American people relentlessly. Here are a few such examples:

1. Passing the “Affordable Care Act” (Obamacare)

The Left’s greatest stride toward establishing national health care in the United States came with the 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly called “Obamacare.” The American people did everything they could to signal their opposition to the bill from the outset. Polls show that support for Obamacare never topped 50%, and more Americans opposed than supported Obamacare from August 2009 until after the 2016 election.

The American people’s repudiation only emboldened Democrats, who openly touted their intentions to ram the bill down the nation’s throat like a liberal, legislative tongue depressor.

“We have to pass health care reform,” said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on January 28, 2010. “We’ll go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed.”

The ACA began its path toward becoming law after it passed the Senate — which is a problem in itself, since the Constitution requires that all spending bills originate in the House of Representatives (Article I, Section 7). The Founding Fathers believed taxes should be raised by the body most accountable to the people. Senate Democrats got over this barrier, because then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took an unrelated bill that had passed the House (H.R. 3590, a six-page bill to give military members a tax break), stripped out everything except its bill number, and inserted the entire text of the 2,407-page Obamacare bill in its place. Suddenly, a Senate bill “originated” in the House.

To pull the bill over the finish line, Reid handed out a host of pork barrel spending to coerce reluctant Democrats. His infamous bribe for then-Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), the “Cornhusker kickback,” assured that the state of Nebraska would never have to pay for the cost of Medicaid expansion, unlike the other 49 states. (The House later removed Nelson’s bribe from the final bill.)

The Senate passed the bill on Christmas Eve 2009, by a 60-39 party line vote, and went to the House, where it “originated.” The House wanted to amend the Senate version of Obamacare, but Pelosi knew their bill couldn’t pass the Senate: Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority when Senator Ted Kennedy died, and Massachusetts voters replaced him with a Republican who campaigned against Obamacare.

Rather than heed the Democratic voters of Massachusetts, the House came up with a plan: The House passed the Senate version of the bill, then passed the amendments they wanted in a separate bill (the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010) — and enacted that bill through a process called reconciliation. Congress created reconciliation in 1974 to deal with budget issues; it had never been intended to pass a massive social welfare state program like Obamacare. But reconciliation had what Nancy Pelosi needed: “Instead of needing 60 votes, a reconciliation bill only needs a simple majority in the Senate,” explains the House Budget Committee. Reconciliation bills “cannot be stalled in the Senate by filibuster.”

So, the Democrats rammed through a bill opposed by most Americans, including the deep-blue state of Massachusetts, employing multiple legislative illusions.

Obamacare is unconstitutional on multiple fronts, not least because the federal government cannot compel U.S. citizens to purchase anything, including health insurance. In 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts came in with an assist, siding with the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc by rebranding the “individual mandate” as a tax. As this author has reported at The Daily Wire:

The ACA, conventionally known as Obamacare, punitively fines anyone who fails to purchase a qualified health insurance plan $695 for a single person or as much as $2,085 for a family of four. Chief Justice John Roberts famously defined this penalty as a tax in the Supreme Court ruling that saved Obamacare from being overturned [NFIB v. Sebelius]. 

Since that time, Americans have had to bear the burden of the Left’s intransigence. Health insurance premiums in the individual market have more than doubled since the advent of Obamacare, rising by 129% between 2013 and 2019. A total of 14 million people lost their private health insurance in the

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