I cannot imagine what it must be like to be Barack Obama right now. I feel sorry for him.
His legacy and his signature achievement is being eroded every day, both by partisan hacks who are actively trying to destroy him, but also now by people who see ineptitude (the ACA rollout) and feel betrayed ("If you like your insurance plan, you can keep it.")
Just when I was feeling hopeful watching the Cruz Carnival take the GOP to the cliff's edge, we get this, a self-inflicted wound of such enormity that it threatens Obama's entire Presidency and endangers Dems everywhere.
I am so depressed.
Story after story after story about failure, incompetence, bungling, it's worse than we know, yada yada, yada. I find myself not reading beyond the headline, changing the channel, and seeing very little that suggests anything is going to get better soon. Now even the promise of November 30 being the date by which the healthcare.gov website will be working properly for "the vast majority of Americans" looks shaky.
So now I see a banner headline streaking across the top of my screen saying that the President is going to speak today about healthcare. I'm already cringing.
I'm a strong supporter of our President, always have been. It pains me to see what he is going through. It also pains me that I want to grab him by the lapels and scream at him, "How in world did this happen? How in the world did you not see this coming? Are you such a hands-off manager that you didn't have a clue that this debacle -- there's just no other word for it -- was coming?"
The worst part of all of this, aside from the people suffering real harm from cancellations, is that this whole bungled roll-out reinforces the idea that government can't do anything. There's just no getting around the fact that this monumental clusterfuck hangs like an albatross around the neck of the Democratic ideal that government has a role in helping people where the private sector can't or won't because it is profit-driven, not people-driven.
If only this had been done right, it would have paved the way for a Democratic resurgence. Instead, it's a mess, and Republicans are the vultures already landing to tear flesh from the carcass that isn't yet dead.
I know they'll eventually get it working, but the damage has already been done. At the end of the day, the President looks like he's leading from behind, is an inept manager of incompetent people, and told Americans over and over and over something that turns out not to be true. And this last shortcoming may end up being the most damaging of all.
Mr. President, I do support you, but boy, you're making it hard for even your true believers.