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Pride Goeth …
President Obama today, in Rose Garden remarks touting more than 7 million Americans signing up for healthcare during ObamCare’s open enrollment period:
I’ve said before, I will always work with anyone who is willing to make this law work even better. But the debate over repealing this law is over. The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.
Leave it to this president, having been dealt the first decent hand he’s had in a long time, to overplay it.
Yes, these numbers are useless without context — how many people have actually paid their premiums; what the demographic mix means for future rates; how many people included in this count were previously insured but got thrown off of their old plans because of Obamacare mandates. The reality may actually be pretty underwhelming (the Daily Mail is claiming that a RAND Corporation study — one that the Los Angeles Times used earlier this week to claim ObamaCare might be exceeding expectations — will actually show only 858,000 previously uninsured Americans have paid for new policies. It’s hard to tell, however, as the study hasn’t actually been published yet.)
Still, stories like this live and die by the one-line takeaway — and here that’s the 7 million number.
A wiser man would have realized that one brief respite on an issue that’s given him headaches for four years is not the time to crow. This is not that man:
In the end, history is not kind to those who would deny Americans their basic economic security. Nobody remembers well those who stand in the way of America’s progress or our people. And that’s what the Affordable Care Act represents.
…There will be days when the website stumbles — I guarantee it. So, press, just — I want you to anticipate — (laughter) — there will be some moment when the website is down — and I know it will be on all of your front pages. It’s going to happen. It won’t be news.
Wow — The debate is over. Our opponents are on the wrong side of history. Our failures aren’t news. The liberal avoid-talking-about-the-issue-on-the-merits hat trick. The only thing that’s missing is a little ham-fisted anecdotal pathos:
And those who have based their entire political agenda on repealing it have to explain to the country why Jeanne should go back to being uninsured. They should explain why Sean and his family should go back to paying thousands and thousands of dollars more. They’ve got to explain why Marla doesn’t deserve to feel like she’s got value. They have to explain why we should go back to the days when seniors paid more for their prescriptions or women had to pay more than men for coverage, back to the days when Americans with preexisting conditions were out of luck — they could routinely be denied the economic security of health insurance — because that’s exactly what would happen if we repeal this law. Millions of people who now have health insurance would not have it. Seniors who have gotten discounts on their prescription drugs would have to pay more. Young people who were on their parents’ plan would suddenly not have health insurance.
You can’t stop him, folks. You can only hope to contain him.
This was the president who was supposed to salve partisan wounds; to point us towards the better angels of our nature. And he’s now ridiculing the American people about a law that 53 percent of them hate.
How can you discern an egomaniac? He’s the one sermonizing about a single successes while surrounded by failures.
Published in General
Is this not how politics is played by the Liberal’s? Find the one shiny part of your policy, show it to the press, hope to generate a wave to ride on. I would argue that is politics in general, regardless of party. Your failure, and ours, is making it personal. Obama is a lame duck, the Dems are not going to win the House back and might lose the Senate. God be willing. It is has been time to stop talking about Obama and pull the spotlight onto the Dem’s failures and misdeeds. We can win on those, Obama is that something that ought not to be spoken of again.
Pride goeth . . . (you know the correct ending of that line, right?) . . . before destruction.
So, kicking millions of people off their existing plans and telling them they will be fined if they don’t sign up for Obamacare results in millions of people signing up for Obamacare. Who would have guessed that would happen?
And despite the higher cost for less coverage, Obamacare is an undeniable success because . . .?
Obama will win on this — he’s got three years to finish us off. The media is there to protect him from big falls and gaffes. It’s over. Dealing with facts has been proven over and over not to work. Getting things just right so that we really put our ideas across is a Utopian vision and we are being fooled to think otherwise.
Get the levers of power in the country and you can do and say anything. The left has the power, the whip hand, the cudgel, the baseball bat, the nuclear option. We Americans have lost control of our own country. These people just came in and took it.
Silent majority, moral majority, 70-30 on all the major issues of the day — these are meaningless essentially. This isn’t where the ball game is played. We have been sidelined with farm team faux debates while they have taken the power right out from underneath us. We can win the arguments all day long but it matters not a whit if we don’t fight the real team. THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE DEBATING POINTS. The debate is diversion that we got suckered on.
But there’s all that free stuff!
Quick baseball analogy (since it’s that time again): It’s as if behind 12-3, he comes up to bat, hits a home run, circles the bases, grabs a mike and starts making a Lou Gehrig speech. Says something about his team that no one quietly escorts him back to the dugout, muttering, “hey, chump, we’re still losing.”
This will take my mind off of Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS and The Tea Party scandal, Syria, Iran going nuke, and Cuba taking over Venezuela. Oh I almost forgot the Crimea and depending when you read this the Ukraine.
We need to stop calling it Obamacare and start calling it Democare. The ACA needs to be hung around the whole Democrat party.
The spin meisters don’t get the last word on ObamaCare – the actuaries do. President Obama can drag his feet on executing the most odious components of his signature legislative achievement and perhaps delay his political comeuppance. But it remains so unpopular even so arrogant narcissist as the president dare not implement it as written. This will not succeed for the simple reason that it cannot succeed. Political will is not enough to overcome its false premises and internal contradictions,
You know what a racket is? A racket is when gangsters sell “protection” to local speakeasies and who threaten to firebomb the premises unless the owner pays up. A racket is when the Music Man stirs up fears of moral turpitude that only a boy’s band will remedy.
A racket is when you artificially create a need for your own services.
Millions were kicked off their existing plans because the government deemed them “predatory.” For example, perhaps they don’t cover maternity leave and contraception coverage for … nuns. Then along comes the same federal government to offer nuns a suitable policy. And we’re supposed to breathlessly thank-God-you’re-here-Superman?
It’s a racket; RICO-quality stuff. The fact that the racketeers actually believe they’re helping people doesn’t matter – they create the need in the first place, and now they’re congratulating themselves for it.
And today they’re bragging that there’s nothing you can do about it, pal.
Every month, when I pay my health insurance bill, I am reminded of how much I’m paying and how little I’m getting. With millions of people like me receiving a fresh dose of outrage every 30 days, I can’t see the polls turning favorable for this monstrosity.
Can’t wait to see what happens when the employer mandate the president delayed until after the election finally kicks in!
Wow. You can’t satirize this man. I’m eagerly awaiting the Rand study publication.
I keep thinking back to the HMO debacle of the 90s (right?). It all sounds like a good idea until you actually get sick–until you lose your doctor and can’t get the specialty care you need. Turns out that decisions, even medical ones, have trade offs.
That experience caused a cultural riot, and I’m hoping this does too. Meanwhile, I put on my most sympathetic face and continue to sow seeds of dissent amongst all my liberal co-workers and policy maker friends.
So: The law touted as being absolutely required to get 30 million uninsured, insured, signs up 7 million – and we’re circling the bases and taking a bow from the dugout?
Only in Barry’s America is this cause for celebration. But it’s quite true that he can (and will, obviously), tout a number from the mountaintops, and it’ll carry some weight for awhile. Eventually that’s not going to matter much. What will matter is reality on the ground, perceived by voters, who will remember their insurance rates going up, insurance being cancelled forcing them into the exchanges where they’re not getting any kind of deal at all, and voters wondering what will happen when other “features” of the law kick in post-election. Specifically the employer piece.
I wish I was more confident that people were paying more attention. Until it bites people in the can, though, you can usually bet on the status quo not changing. That’s what Barry’s betting on: Cynicism.
A Facebook friend just posted this:
“Obama said basically that millions of people will now benefit from Obamacare, they just don’t know it. Say, like if your house burnt to the ground; you don’t have to vacuum anymore, or your car explodes so you don’t have to buy new tires…that kind of benefit.”
Obama knows, just as all Congressional Democrats and the Republican establishment know that the law is here to stay and nothing is going to be done, so all the criticism is meaningless. Time is on their side. He does not care. He is the president; in time he will be the ex-president and those in Congress will continue as before. The law stands, the government bureaucracy will go on and you and I and your children and my children are just going to have to eat it. Bon appetit.
And in 40 years, those that are still around will great to read glorious articles in the New York Times about how the greatest president we’ve ever had gave healthcare to the huddled masses.
This strategy works for Democrats, because they have the media on their side. A media desperate for talking points they can use to write articles that keep the faithful happy.
So far, the strategy has worked with the IRS and Benghazi scandals. Despite the reams of evidence of malfeasance, all Obama has to do is come out once in a while and say, “There’s nothing there – it’s just Republicans being mean.” And the next day, there will be articles titled, “Benghazi – Just How Mean are Republicans?”
If Bush had a bootlicking media like this during Katrina, after he told ‘Brownie’ that he was doing a heckuva job the next day’s papers would have been filled with headlines like, “Director of FEMA does great job,” probably coupled with ‘background’ stories about how wonderful Brownie’s children are and how much his wife loves him.
When you’ve got that kind of unquestioning megaphone amplifying and reinforcing everything you say, The Big Lie is a great strategy.
“Leave it to this president, having been dealt the first decent hand he’s had in a long time, to overplay it.”
Hard to believe this won’t become the “Mission Accomplished” banner of his presidency. The question is, how bad do things have to get before the media breaks rank with the White House?
Let’s try Demo-don’t Care
Obama claimed 7.1 private policies signed up for under ObamaCare. While there is a whole lot of substantiation being avoid by the Liar in Chief, based on the ratio seen in the most credible reports so far, over half of the policies the White House and HHS have been announcing in their prior fabrications have turned out to be Medicaid policies, and most of those renewals. Since Medicaid expansion was part of the Unaffordable Care Act, claiming they are ObamaCare “policies” has a fig leaf to hide behind. But counting renewals is patent fraud whether you are inside or outside of the Beltway.
And, of course, they have an automatic correction when they need it, umm, 6 million didn’t pay the premiums. How could we have possibly known at the time? The number was on a teleprompter! I had to read it! You wouldn’t want me to improvise, would you?
Of course, that’s a story the identity politics entertainment celebrities will not be addressing on air.