Monday, November 28, 2011

Democrats Man the Obamacare Lifeboats

The past several weeks have seen several indications of just how willing and eager Democrats – including the President himself – have become to distance themselves from the unpopular, 2700-page health care law:

  • Bloomberg ran a story last week about how President Obama is afraid to talk about Obamacare to average voters; he mentions the law at political fundraisers, but “he’s just not making the sales pitch in public.”  Even liberals have been flummoxed by the President’s silence on Obamacare; one asked rhetorically, “Why not just own it?”
  • Former Senator Blanche Lincoln blasted the Administration for having “4,200 pages of pending, new regulations to be put on the books that just create huge uncertainty.”  She also sounded skeptical of Obamacare: “We have to be willing to look as we make this journey in health care, not only what we’ve done that’s good, but that things that are not going to work.”  Of course, as many would note, Lincoln voted for Obamacare, and thus bears responsibility for the more than 10,000 pages (NOT a mere 4,200 pages) of new federal regulations and notices that have been issued since March 2010 implementing the law’s mandates and requirements.
  • Two weeks ago, five Democrat Senators wrote to the Administration asking for another Obamacare waiver, finally conceding that the law “may cause disruption for farmers and others in the agricultural sector” by causing members of farmer co-operatives to lose their current coverage.  Among the signatories was New York’s Chuck Schumer, who just last March was claiming that “As people learn about the bill…it’s going to become more and more popular….Those who voted for health care will find it an asset, those who voted against it will find it a liability.”  By asking for a waiver, Schumer has now admitted Obamacare is a political liability for him, because as his constituents learned more about the bill, they found out they could lose their current health insurance coverage thanks to a law he voted for.
  • The most recent Kaiser health tracking poll found that only a bare majority of Democrats (52%) approve of the law, and that approval among Democrats dropped by 13 points in just one month.

Last year Speaker Pelosi famously said we had to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.  More than one year later, many Democrats are finally finding out what’s in the law, and have discovered that they don’t like it any more than Republicans do.