Democrats return to Washington emboldened by election wins
Emboldened by their victories in Senate races from Massachusetts to Montana, and encouraged by their pickup of eight House seats, newly elected and returning Democratic members of Congress said Tuesday they won by focusing on protecting and expanding entitlements and by calling for higher taxes on upper-income people.
Many Democrats who voted for the Affordable Care Act lost their seats in 2010, but some of them – like Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire – were back Tuesday as House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi welcomed new members at the Capitol.
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The biggest difference between the 2010 election in which she lost her seat and last week's election, Shea-Porter said, was that "there was no fear about the health-care law. I think that was the big thing that was driving the 2010 election and the Tea Party coming in. You remember how they talked about the death panels and how you'd lose your physician. I think that's over. I think people recognize that this is a consumer-friendly bill. It has to be fixed in small ways and as we go down the road, we will."
Shea-Porter said her constituents "do want us to compromise but they're also asking us to protect the programs they rely on – to keep the social contract of Medicare and Social Security – and they want us to create jobs."
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/14/15143389-democrats-return-to-washington-emboldened-by-election-wins?lite
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