Yes, ObamaCare is working. Yes, ObamaCare is a huge success. Yes, 8 million people signed up, 12 million+ if you include Medicaid expansion, 22 Million + if you include kids staying on insurance etc. Yes, 28% of those signed up are young enough to offset costs. Yes, 35% are under 35. Yes, President Obama was right and the GOP was wrong – yes, Bill Kristol, Chuck Todd, and Joe Scarborough I am talking to you. Yes, the Dems are going to slaughter the GOP in 2014 riding the coattails of ObamaCare. And yes, the Press is still getting the whole point of what is going on wrong.
The President is a genius. His is a brilliant Politian but his brilliance stems from two things that the Press ignores and denigrates in equal measure. He is a strategic savant, able to see many moves ahead and to set in motion disparate elements of seeming minutia that ultimately corner his opponents and advantage his compatriots. Secondly, he is never, ever, sick at sea. That is, the President doesn't allow his ego to affect his decision-making. He doesn't panic and change a working strategy because of the momentary fear and angst of the immediate, of the news cycle or the polling.
This is what drives the press insane. They cannot see what is coming, and they cannot believe that their constant harping, heckling, hectoring, means almost nothing to the President. He set up a strategy for DADT, and then it worked. He set up a strategy for DOMA – a little late for the people who wanted immediate change – and then he watched the dominoes fall. A year ago, before Harry Reid was forced to end the filibuster, President Obama had confirmed the fewest judges to the federal bench in the modern era. Last week he passed George Bush and is steaming ahead with what appears to be the possibility of filling almost every vacancy on the bench (if we hold the senate).
When he negotiated on the Debt Ceiling and every argued he was rolled the President got what amounted to a second stimulus bill. Billions of spending out of a spend nothing do nothing congress. The Press killed him. The Rs gloated that he was weak and that they would roll him again and again. The President, realizing that the final arbiter of being rolled or not would be in Nov 2012, won re-election in a landslide as the unemployment number fell below 8 for the first time around Aug-Sept one year after the second Stim, the GOP agreed to, kicked in. That is strategy folks. It isn't luck, it isn't witchcraft it is tradecraft. And, just in case you were wondering, he has never been "rolled" again on the debt ceiling but he has crashed the GOP twice, breaking them into bits. Shut down anyone. That wasn't luck.
ObamaCare was always going to work. The President took a Need, health insurance reform, and a Want, affordable health insurance, and combined them into a bill. When you get a Need and a Want into one piece of legislation, it is a home run. Combine that with the strategy of a fixed funding source, thank you medical device tax – that obscure piece of legislation that funds ObamaCare for the next decade – and you end up with a synergistic amplification. The sum of the parts is greater than the parts themselves.
ObamaCare was always going to work, folks. I've been ranting at Dems for 6 year that they should be running on the bill, that they should be touting it. That they should be jamming the Rs every chance they get on ObamaCare. But I too misunderstood what was happening until the rollout glitch.
Here is the reality:
Imagine that Apple comes out with a new phone. This is what is called a Want. This phone is perhaps the coolest, best thing that has ever existed on the earth. Next, imagine that because Apple really wants you to buy this product that the discount it. Based on your income, as much 100%. Meaning, if you are poor you can get it free, if you are rich you pay full rate.
Now, finally, imagine that this new phone will actually save your fing life. This is what we call a Need. This magical new phone saves the lives of you and your children. It does it a simple way. When you get sick this phone will cure you, treat you, and control how much money you have to spend to get help. This magic phone will save your life. Literally. Save. Your. Life. It will prevent you from going bankrupt; will make your quality of life infinitely better.
Now the big question the Press missed. Is there anyway someone could keep you from waiting in line to get that Apple phone? If Apple botched the roll out would you give a shit? Or would you just get the life-saving, magic, phone of awesomeness -- no matter who tried to stop you?
That is what the Press isn't getting about ObamaCare, there was a crisis for about a week when the roll out went badly because there was a chance the website couldn't be fixed. The administration brought in the best tech people in the country and asked a simple question. "Can you fix the site?" The answer was yes -- crisis over.
Except that the Press, lemmings that they are, used what was a snafu every Big Bang roll out goes through, and I do mean every, and made it into the end of Obama's Presidency. The GOP, because the glitch seemed to confirm their own racialized, insane narrative of the Obama Presidency; i.e. that the President is an incompetent bumbler who stumbles from bad out come to bad outcome, only breaking the incompetence with bouts of cowardly hiding beneath his bed at the sign of any conflict.
Not only do the Press look foolish for the months of hysterical coverage, the comeback, which it ain't, looks so much strong because of it, and the GOP, which has committed all its resources to one final anti ObamaCare push in 2014, is zugzwanged. They are trapped. Any move they make is bad. If they get onboard with ObamaCare – thanks for the branding help by the way GOP, you think that might sting a little bit for the next 50 years or so as the law becomes wildly popular – their base will savage them. If they stay the course the rest of the states and districts they have carved out for themselves, mostly white, mostly poor or middle class, mostly conservative, will realize that the blue states are getting tens of billions of federal resources, while their states go bankrupt trying to deal with the uninsured without Medicaid subsidies. More, and this is the real issue, people in Red Republican States are going to die. Not metaphorically, not figuratively, but actually stop living, because they don't have health insurance. People in FL, in PA, in GA are going to die, this year, because the GOP hates the President more than they love America. The first time that happens, the first time an enterprising reporter asks a doctor, "could this person have lived if they had ObamaCare," and the doc says "yes," that is the day the GOP dies as a national political party. That is the moment they go the way of the Whigs.
And when that happens folks, it isn't an accident. It isn't luck. It is the will of President Obama. He has destroyed the GOP -- utterly. That destruction starts now. ObamaCare is 17 days old. Let me write that again so that people understand what I mean. ObamaCare is 17 days old. Everything that went on before April 01 2014 was foreplay. Passing the bill, signing up. Going through the endless regulatory restructuring. It was all foreplay and the Law, the one the GOP has spent the entirety of their party opposing, is 17 days old. What a difference 17 days makes.
8 million people signed up, massive favorable in how Medicaid expansion is going. Huge savings and thousands upon thousands of provable, demonstrable, stories of ObamaCare saving lives and making people secure in a world of massive economic tribulation. 17 days old and the GOP is in full retreat.
If Ds raise enough money, they will sweep into November at the head of a Tsunami. This is the beginning of a lasting governing coalition. One that will rival 40 years of Reagan government contraction and 40 years of FDR expansion. These are the Obama years. The Obama decades. Things aren't perfect, there are problems aplenty, but, a Glitch ain't one.
Peace,
J. Christian Watts
Follow me on Twitter @JCWPolitics