When it was passed, Kevin Williamson predicted that ObamaCare would collapse and either be repealed or drastically altered. His reasoning was that any attempt to rearrange 1/6th of the US economy was going to end in disaster. The public would be furious and the politicians of both parties would sprint to remedy the problem. Throw in the fact that the mathematics never made sense and it could not last and therefore would not last.
This is the classic line of retreat from these guys. Rather than fight, they smugly claim that they can just sit back and wait for things to happen. They are forever sitting in the pumpkin patch, waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive and defeat the Left. The fact that the savior has yet to arrive, despite three generations of conservatives waiting in the pumpkin patch, never gets mentioned. It also new promises that he will arrive any minute.
That’s the theme of this article an old warhorse from Conservative Inc., with regards to the coming midterms. We’re seeing a lot of soul searching on the part of Democrats now that the poop has hit the fan with the exchanges, rate hikes and cancellations. It’s hard to know how this is playing with the voters, but the way to bet is the people who show up for midterms are not happy with the results of ObamaCare thus far.
Democrats probably believe the marketing from the Left. That is, this was just part of the plan, a game of three dimensional chess. The argument that this disaster was part of the plan to advance single payer does not hold up though. If these guys were that clever, they would not be running for the hills right now. The people who wrote this bill are not geniuses. They got trapped in a process and created a mess.
Now they have a big problem. Obama and the White House probably don’t care. Obama has always been oddly indifferent to politics. Steve Sailer has thoughts on that, but the better answer is that Obama is just an entitled incompetent. He’s had an easy life, because he ticked the right boxes at the right time in history. As a result, he expects the world to wait on him. When it doesn’t, he just watched basketball on TV.
The Democrats in Congress are learning that they cannot rely on this administration to guard their interests. That means they have to figure out how to cut their own deal with the GOP to avoid owning the whole mess of ObamaCare. It also means they may have to cut Obama loose, so to speak. Inside the party that is going to be very difficult. Obama may be a lame duck and he may be lazy, but he’s still president.
Then there is the natural divide within a party when facing a midterm. Safe Democrats will hold a different view than vulnerable Democrats. Mary Landrieu will have no choice but to become a vocal opponent of ObamaCare if she expects to remain in the Senate. On the other hand, Elizabeth Warren can be the defender of the faith as she has no fear of the voters. The party is a collection of people who planned to hang alone.
Harry Reid can scheme against both sides to help those with a chance to win over those who are in hopeless races. Landreiu, if she is not careful, could find herself getting the cold shoulder from her party in 2014. That sort of stuff makes it very hard for the party to navigate. At some point, they will have to land on a strategy to unburden themselves of this fiasco. It may take one more election for that to happen.
The trouble is they were not prepared for this. The whole game of social democracy is that people like free stuff. If every free stuff scheme has something close to a majority getting their beak wet, then there’s never a majority in favor of getting rid of it. There may not be a majority getting welfare, but there are plenty of others willing to support what they view as riot insurance. Welfare keeps the blacks at home and away from the suburbs.
The middle class goes along with socialism because they fear social unrest more than the tax colector. With massive money creation and borrowing, social democracy looks like the cure to all of life’s problems. The trouble with ObabaCare is there is no benefit to any group the voters think important. No one is getting the free stuff or the protection from those wanting free stuff. ObamaCare is just a wrecking ball through the existing order.
That’s why the theory in the Forbes article seems right, but the Democrats are not there psychologically. Again, they thought this was going to work. They have spent the last year calling Republicans Hitler loving child rapists. That said, the GOP has always been there to help them, so maybe they will deliver this time. The stupidity of the GOP is hard to fathom, so it’s best to assume they have some stupid idea you can’t imagine.
That means collapse may be inevitable, but before that can happen, the GOP will rush into take the blame or find someway to mitigate the damage to the party that created it. The smug pundits of Conservative Inc. can then predict the next time that there is no need to fight the Left, as things will work out in then end. It makes one wonder about whose interest they are protecting, but everyone knows the answer to that one.
