« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

The post-apocalyptic future of Obamacare?

At least, "post-apocalyptic" from the Left's point of view.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  March 28th, 2012 at 10:00 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

So I watched this clip of James Carville furiously spinning the suddenly-more-plausible possibility of Obamacare going down utterly in flames as being the most awesome thing ever for Democrats:

By the way: I should ask Erick how he manages to avoid pointing and laughing at performances like this. I don’t know that I could manage the same self-control.

Anyway, Allahpundit watched the clip, too, and he’s got a legitimate question about whether Carville is correct and that this would be ultimately good for Democrats. The answer is… if it is, not in the sense that everybody is meaning. Except maybe James Carville: he’s clever enough to give out the wrong reasoning in public.

The basic argument being presented here is, as far as I can tell, that killing Obamacare will at least rally the base, bringing them back to the polls just in time to recreate the energy and dedication that got elected Barack Obama in 2008. The President will go out and convince the American people that the Supreme Court slapping down Obamacare means that it’s now the Republicans’ problem to solve. That, and the judicious choosing and pushing of individually popular features of Obamacare will put the Democrats back over the top, and did you catch all the hidden assumptions that I loaded into this paragraph?

Let’s unpack ‘em:

  • First: note that casual equation of ‘rally the base’ with ‘recreate the 2008 Obama voter demographic.’ Not really justified. Obama won in 2008 because he won independents 52/44 and moderates 60/39. This recent CNN poll suggests the problem then for the Democrats; in that poll independents oppose Obamacare 41/53, moderates only support it 52/41… and liberals only 63/26. This means that ‘rallying the base’ is a prerequisite not for ‘winning the election,’ but rather for ‘avoiding losing the election by a catastrophic it not apocalyptic margin.’
  • Second: the President. Convincing people. Or anything. This would be President Obama, right? The joke has long been among the VRWC that one of best things that can be done to further one of our policy positions is to con Barack Obama into making a speech about it: the man has no judgement and no demonstrated ability to learn from his mistakes. And he’s notoriously bad at convincing people to go into a direction that those people, in fact, do not wish to go.
  • Third: that because some individual features of Obamacare are popular, arguing that they’ll go away with the larger law will be a powerful driver of votes. Because, after all, noting that stopped the Republicans from gaining 63 seats in the House and 7 in the Senate during the 2010 election cycle – no, wait, in point of fact it did not. Largely because the assertion can be fairly easily counter-argued, and in fact will be: if an individual feature is so popular, let the legislature go back and enact it. The true issue is the incredibly complex and disastrous-to-pernicious interrelated clauses, additions, add-ons, out-and-out bribes, and other detritus that was all swept up in one big messy pile and called Obamacare.

So… if Obamacare going down in flames isn’t good for letting Democrats win, then how will its destruction actually be good for Democrats? Easy: its destruction will wreck the political careers of both Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi (I wish that it’d also wreck Harry Reid’s career, but the Senate’s funny that way. Besides, Reid’s very possibly not running for another term in 2016 anyway). Because when you think about it; Obamacare’s pretty much the only thing that the Democrats have done that they even remotely want to talk about. It’s not that Obamacare is great – it’s actually awful – but everything else that they’ve done has been worse. When and if that goes away, the way that Obamacare goes away will hopefully make it clear in the process that the next Democratic Speaker of the House (and there will be one eventually: just not in 2012) should be someone who is nota San Franciscan liberal who treats the Speakership as if it was a crude, Stone Age club…

But I malign our primitive ancestors with that comparison: they worked with the best that they had.  It’s too frightening to even think that, when it comes to Democrats, so did Nancy Pelosi.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Tags: ,

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • greyeagle

    I hope the entire law is tossed as quickly as possible. The problem is that as far as the elderly are concerned, he has so many regulations in place to ration care for them, I am afraid that he will use them anyway regardless of the what the Supreme Court says.

  • FlyingTigress

    Did Baghdad Bob shave his mustache and hair, and learn how to speak with a Cajun speech pattern?

  • NeoKong

    Photobucket

    Every four years Americans hold a presidential election. Somebody wins and somebody loses. That’s life. But 2008 was an anomaly. The election of President Barack Obama is about something far bigger than four or even eight years in the White House. Since 2004, Americans have been witnessing and participating in the emergence of a Democratic majority that will last not four but forty years. To understand the emergence of a lasting Democratic majority, James Carville first reviews the profound and relentless incompetence of the Bush administration—and the pursuant collapse of the Republican Party.

    Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,312,062 in Books

    Good luck with that Jim.

  • snowshooze

    The clip is too short… and here I am hanging…

  • loganyung

    Americans have finally woken up to the “Hunger Games” utopia of the Democrats, and we don’t like it. I think we all can imagine the future where we’d have to prostrate ourselves in front of some grotesquely painted self-absorbed bureaucrat in order to get that kidney transplant. That’s enough to make me sick.

  • snowshooze

    I know… He is as Dem as it gets. But I really enjoy listening to him.
    He has moxy. And great big brass furniture.
    I just loved it when he dressed down Obama back during the spill.
    If the dimwits had a drop of sense, Carville would be their man.

  • zachv

    It’s looking quite likely that SCOTUS — at the least — is going to strike down the individual mandate and thus the teeth of Obamacare. I think it’s hard NOT to argue that this will be poorly reflected upon the Democrats, who had spent their entire political capital in a fruitless exercise of the Commerce Clause.

    But, I think Moe, you can draw this question out even further to reflect on how this will effect the dynamics of the race between Romney (should he be chosen) and Obama.

    Mark Belling posed this question to Romney himself earlier today, , and it’s an interesting discussion.

    Don’t know if that link will work.

  • zachv

    http://www.belling.com/mediaplayer/?station=BLNG-IP&action=ondemand&item=21949929&feed_name=MarkBelling.xml

  • snowshooze

    And if those idiots in Massachusetts want it… hey… it is theirs.
    You might consider, that wayyy back in the beginning… all the States were essentially separate little countries. We all just banded together to address some common concerns. Thus…. the United States. The Federal Government being created at OUR convenience. To do OUR bidding.
    Now, think of that a while.

  • jamesm

    Romneycare is now part of the national discussion. Massachusetts won’t take Romney back so we may be stuck with him.

  • zachv

    However, that hasn’t stopped Santorum and his supporters from using as a hatchet on Romney camp. And I doubt it will stop the Obamacare supporters either if it’s not struck down by the SCOTUS.

    In the interview I linked to, Belling again, asks another question that’s pretty potent, which is what Romney’s response is if Obama turns to Romney in a debate and says, “We based our plan off of yours.”

    To summarize the answer, Romney says, that he would have told any Democrat that called him not to do it, which none did. Then he goes on to explain what differentiates his plan from Obama’s.

  • snowshooze

    And although it’s author is running to ruin the rest of the country…
    Romneycare exists in only one State.
    Ok, understood is the fact that Willard, the Weasel, has cost shifted as many of his Residents onto Medicare to burden 49 other states to carry his dead ass residents… then it is sort of a National issue…
    But, I stand by my evaluation that it is indeed, a State issue.

  • drfredc

    Back in the early 1990s, WA Dems passed the rough equivalent of Hillarycare. Woopee! Break out the party bus… And when the public found out all the nasty details of government control of their health care, many Dem legislators got tossed out of office at the next election. With some help from the GOP, the legislation was ‘changed’ or ‘repealed’ in the next session. The Dem’s quickly regained control of WA state’s legislative branch.

    Go figure, if this could also be in the cards for Congress if Obamacare is repealed… There’s nothing in the GOP LOSERship that provides any evidence that they are competent at articulating a coherent message about anything that doesn’t put money or power in their pocket…

  • garfieldjl

    Considering it could be argued than anything that Romney is going to come up with regarding healthcare is probably going to be extremely similar to what he did in Massachusetts.

    Furthermore, Romneycare blunts any attempt Romney makes of pounding Obama over the head concerning Obamacare.

  • FlyingTigress

    “Say WA?” is, fortunately, proportionately a little stranger than the US as a whole. Portions of the state seem to function as the surrogate for as I like to think of it, “the teenager’s basement bedroom in Mom and Dad’s house” for teens of all chronological ages, from all across the U.S.

  • snowshooze

    But argue that it ain’t a done deal.
    What I would like to see, is everybody and their DOG… in revolt against Romney. Period.

  • fredflintlock

    Maybe he could appeal to his buddies at the United Nations when the high court rules against him. I can hear the MSM already,”While a few naysayers claim that appealing a Supreme Court decision is unprecedented and controversial, many see it as a courageous move by the Obama Administration to save our nation’s health care system”.

  • Seedyrom

    position as would the country. While I don’t agree with Carville often, he has better sense than most of Obama’s advisors. Theman was right about the Gulf oil spill. Obama screwed that up and it still is a mess in the bayou.

    As Dennis Miller said, Carville looks like a muppet washed on hot, all wrinkled up and ugly after drying. .

  • johnt

    It’s a day by day creation, note the repeated “I really believe that ,assurance? Of course you do Jammy, as do all the other freaks whose very existence centers on the federal government, who find meaning nowhere else.
    Absent the media fools like Jammy would lead lives of deperate obscurity and emptiness.

  • SoFiMil

    Obama’s likely response will be to double-down, and advocate a modified word-smithed version of Obamacare he says will meet constitutional scrutiny.

    He could compound his problem by instead pushing for a single-payer plan.

    Neither of these proposals will go over well with the vast majority of the American people.

    In the small chance he doesn’t push for a new look-Obamacare as a law during the Presidential campaign, the lefty base will toss Obama under the bus.

  • Scope

    Here is a most excellent article talking about the high paying lobbyists that pushed for Obamacare, in exchange for the promise of more business. Scalia brought up the fact yesterday that if deals such as the Cornhusker Kickback were not done, the Democrats would not have had the votes to pass Obamacare.

    What wasn’t mentioned was the fact that some of the major lobbyists who lobbied for Obamacare, such as the American Hospital Association, and Pharma, filed amicus briefs (there is a link to the actual amicus brief in the link above) asking the justices to please uphold the individual mandate, because they made special deals with the Obama admin. and members of Congress in exchange for the promise of more business via the individual mandate. If you read the brief, they outright say that because of the deals they made, if the mandate is stuck down, they are so screwed. They ask that if the mandate is struck down, to please then also strike down the portions of the bill where they would still be required to hold their end of the bargain with big discounts and price controls, but the increased business won’t be there to balance their deals.

    I remember that during the Obamacare debate, the AMA heads also jumped in bed with Obama. There were articles linked here at the time showing the mass exodus of doctors who cancelled their membership with the AMA because of the collusion with the Obama administration. They were not in favor of socialized medicine.

    Some of the justices have questioned how they are supposed to go through 2,700 pages, and to pick and choose what to keep or what to get rid of if the mandate is struck down. The justices have had the above linked amicus brief, and surely have read it prior to the oral arguments. I thought I read somewhere where even Verrielli asked the justices to strike down portions of the law if the mandate is found to be unconstitutional. Kagan seems to believe that a half loaf is better than no loaf. Ginsburg thinks they should use a scalpel rather than a wreaking ball in what to keep, and what to strike down. Should the SC justices venture into rewriting the Obamacare bill by picking and choosing what to keep and what to get rid of?

    The liberals have been touting the success of more young people being insured by being able to stay on their parents polices until age 26. The HHS moved the date up to 9/2010 in order to require children to not be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. As has been pointed out, the liberals front loaded the schedule with what look like the goodies, before the real pain of the full law hits in 2014.

    It was disturbing to hear Eric Cantor give a speech in front of a university audience, a year or so ago, where he said the Republicans don’t want to get rid of the pre-existing clause, or the up to 26 year old coverage clause. Some of those same sentiments have also been expressed by some other Republicans. If the pre-existing mandate is retained, how does he propose that the insurance industry is to cover those additional costs, without the mandate, and without necessarily causing all premiums to skyrocket? What is his solution? or does he even have one? Cantor’s biggest campaign donor is Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, who has the monopoly on health insurance coverage in the state of VA. Here is a fascinating study on state health insurance monopolies via control by the state insurance regulators. Before any health insurance reform is applied, this state monopoly must be broken.

    The justices are even more aware than anyone just how intermingled the entire law is. Most out here don’t have the first clue as to how many backroom deals were made to get the law passed. If you didn’t read the AHA amicus brief, would you have known how many millions of dollars exchanged hands to become yet another Obama crony? I wonder how many more deals were made with how many others. The law must be struck down in full, and we need to start over from scratch.

  • snowshooze

    But as an adversary, being opinionated, articulate and intelligent…
    Yeah, Carville is pretty cool.
    NO! I do not agree with 5% of what he says, but I would enjoy having a beer with this guy and fighting about just about everything.
    If Carville ran against Obama in the Dem primaries… I think he could eat Obama’s lunch.