By Maggie Lee / Staff

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine called the new federal healthcare reform "one to put on the mantel" in an address to the Georgia Democrat party faithful last week, and for the midterm elections, urged his party to exploit the "civil war" in the GOP. 

"Let me tell you, this Georgia governor's race is very, very appealing to us," keynote speaker Kaine told guests at the annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, a party fundraiser, held in a downtown hotel.

Georgia's gubernatorial race is one among 7 or 8 nationwide where, Kaine said, the Democrats will be playing offense.

And the intransigent Republican reaction to new federal healthcare law will play into Democrat hands, he predicted.

 DEMS: "WE'LL WIN GEORGIA"

"I encourage them [Republicans] to print up a lot of bumper stickers that say, 'Bring back preexisting conditions,'" he laughed.

There are now seven GOP candidates for governor; the party primary is July 20.

Kaine argued the Republicans have "a civil war going on in the party right now, including the tea partiers who anger is motivating … and the institutional Republican party."

By contrast, he opined, Democrats "like each other."  But their challenge, especially during midterm elections, he admitted, is keeping everybody from blue dogs to progressives on the party line. 

And due to the bad economy and the regular midterm bias against incumbents, "we're going into an election cycle when we got to assume we have a headwind in our face," he admitted. 

"If we think 2008 means we can coast, we got another thing coming."

TURNING HEADS

But one Democratic asset, he said, is President Barack Obama's healthcare reform bill, signed into law the night before Kaine's speech. 

It's "on the mantel, over the fireplace," he said, alongside social security, Medicaid and Medicare and the Voting Rights Acts.

The new federal law enables young people to stay on parents' insurance until age 26, gives a tax credit for small businesses buying insurance for employees, and lowers prescription prices for seniors using Medicare, among other things.  Eventually, said Kaine, it will end "egregious and heartless" insurance company practices like denying coverage due to preexisting conditions. 

Kaine, the former governor of Virginia, recalled an overwhelming crowd at a free clinic in his state and said it reminded him of what he saw in Honduras as a missionary in the 1980s.

"We don't live in the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere. We live in the richest, the most powerful; the best nation in the history of this earth. We can do better."

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed agreed:  "We have closed the 80 year battle over healthcare reform with a resounding victory."

During the dinner, the state Democratic Party handed out annual Georgia Giant awards.  One went to Ambassador Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor and congressman. The other was for Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin, after office in 41 years, Georgia's longest-serving constitutional officer. 

The $250-per-plate dinner attracted about 1,500 people.