The Democrats got elected on the economy and the wars in the middle east. Once the left got control they decided they had a mandate for socialized me dicine and ignored every other issue.
Only a right-wing nitwit of the dimmest kind would think that Obamacare was "socialised medicine". It gets the US a fraction closer to the kind of "na tional insurance" funded health care invented by that arch-lefty Bismark to take the political wind out of the sails of his socialist political oppone nts.
The UK's national health service - which is about as close to "socialised m edicine" as you get in an advanced industrial country - runs on the same ba sis. It delivers better health care statistics for the country as whole as the U S system, and costs half as much per head, but the US does seem wedded to t he idea of sticking to a much more expensive and rather less effective syst em that is ideologically purer - presumably because it allows the medical i nsurance companies to cream off rather larger profits than their more close ly regulated French and German equivalents.
eir super-majority in the Senate. Losing Ted Kennedy's seat no less. They h ad to use all kinds of tricks to get the ACA passed at the last minute whil e they still had their super-majority. With Obama's first midterms, the Dem ocrats lost the House of Representatives.
The medical insurance companies did spend a lot of money on buying the kind of election results that they hoped would allow them to keep on ripping of f the American health insurance buyers for a few more years.
The founding tax evaders did set up the US constitution in a way that makes it relatively easy for the people who own the country to buy the kinds of electoral outcomes that let them keep on ripping off the rest of the countr y.
As Ken Livingstone said - If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It. It became the title of his autobiography.