Shut Up, He Explained Again
Obama continues a debate he insists is over.
By James Taranto
April 18, 2014
They say it's the sincerest form of flattery. At a press conference yesterday President Obama asserted that when it comes to ObamaCare, the Republican Party "is going through the stages of grief--anger and denial and all that stuff--and we're not at acceptance yet." We used the same gag in October, though ObamaCare supporters were the butt of our joke. And we were recycling our own material: We also invoked the Elisabeth Kübler Ross "stages of grief" way back in November 2000 in reference to Al Gore's refusal to concede his loss to George W. Bush.
Blogress Ann Althouse astutely observes that Obama skipped "bargaining," perhaps "because he doesn't want his party to have to bargain with the other side." She is put off by the analogy:
Tell someone who's angry and unaccepting of a political situation that they [sic] should go away until they've accepted what is being done to them sounds to me like taunting and bullying. There's absolutely no reason why they should back down because some of their emotions correspond to Kübler-Ross's (bogus) stages. You're saying if someone doesn't believe that a political cause is dying or feels angry at the idea that it's dying, all you need to do is wait out the process, because bargaining and depression need to occur and then you win because finally there will be acceptance. Infuriating nonsense! It only intensifies and justifies the anger. Your opponents aren't just going through a "stage," and you sound inert and supercilious talking about them that way.
Another adjective that comes to mind is "unpresidential." Obama, after all, isn't president of only Democrats, nor are only Republicans opposed to ObamaCare or worried about its consequences. To those who see an inconsistency in this column's criticizing Obama for using a gag we've employed in the past, let us clarify things with a Shermanesque answer to a question nobody is asking: We promise that we will never run for, or serve as, president.
In his opening statement, Obama asserted that "the repeal debate is and should be over. The Affordable Care Act is working." He said the same thing on April Fool's Day, though the repetition is beginning to feel like "Groundhog Day." The assertion, and especially the reassertion, that the debate is over is self-refuting, for it is simply a statement of Obama's position in the debate.
An editorial in the Washington Post tries to cheer on Obama but ends up illustrating our point: "Obamacare's critics have had a bad week," the editors assert. "On Thursday, President Obama announced that 8 million people have enrolled in new health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act's marketplaces, and a significant portion of them are young Americans."
ObamaCare's critics would counter that there is good reason to be skeptical about numbers released by an administration that does not, to put it kindly, have a record of honest dealing. And the Post immediately concedes the point: "Yes, we need to learn more about the numbers. And yes, a lot needs to happen to complete the ACA's phase-in."
The editorial continues: "The debate about how well the law is working is not over." That doesn't directly contradict Obama's claim, since one can debate "how well the law is working" without debating "repeal." But the Post then asserts that "Mr. Obama is right to insist that continued Republican demands for repeal are unproductive and unwise." If the debate were over, they'd be nonexistent.
A Politico reporter asked the president: "Do you think it's time for Democrats to start campaigning loudly and positively on the benefits of ObamaCare?" Watch him contradict himself in response: "We need to move on to something else. That's what the American people are interested in. I think that Democrats should forcefully defend [ObamaCare]. . . . I don't think we should apologize for it, and I don't think we should be defensive about it."
He says "we need to move on," and two sentences later calls for a forceful defense, before saying that "I don't think we should be defensive about it," which reminds us of Martin Short as Nathan Thurm: "I'm not being defensive! You're the one who's being defensive! Why is it always the other person who's being defensive? Have you ever asked yourself that? Why don't you ask yourself that?"
Not all Democrats agree with Obama either that the debate is over or that the not-yet-over debate is good for their party. The Boston Herald reports that Rep. Stephen Lynch, the only member of Massachusetts' all-Democrat congressional delegation to vote against ObamaCare in 2010, "now predicts the law's botched roll-out will not only cost Democrats valuable House seats but could even jeopardize their control of the Senate in this year's hotly contested midterm elections":
"We will lose seats in the House," the plain-talking South Boston Democrat said in Boston Herald Radio's studio yesterday, delivering a harsh diagnosis. "I am fairly certain of that based on the poll numbers that are coming out from the more experienced pollsters down there. And I think we may lose the Senate. I think that's a possibility if things continue to go the way they have been . . . primarily because of health care."
Lynch cuttingly questioned whether many of his colleagues who echoed President Obama's health care promises even "read through the bill really," noting that many mechanisms created to fund the law still aren't in effect.
Among them, Lynch said, is a hefty tax on employers who offer so-called "Cadillac" plans that won't come into play until 2018.
"There's all these taxes and fees that are the tough medicine, that up to now they haven't implemented. I don't know who's going to do that," Lynch said. "Maybe . . . they expect the next administration is going to put these penalties in place. I think that's the time it's going to hit the fan."
Politico reports that the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee has adopted a "triage" strategy of "shoring up imperiled incumbents and [supporting] only the most promising challengers. . . . The goal is to stop Republicans from padding their 17-seat edge and keep the party within striking distance of the majority in 2016, a presidential election year that could well be more favorable to Democrats."
Sounds defensive to us. The Politico piece doesn't mention ObamaCare, or any other substantive policy question for that matter, but it's difficult to reconcile the Democrats' perception of their own political peril with the president's insistence that all is well. About the closest anyone comes to an optimistic assessment of Democratic prospects is this:
Many Democrats argue that 2014 is shaping up to be very different from the last midterm election, when the party lost 63 seats and the House majority. While the political environment isn't favorable, they say, it's far less bleak than it was in 2010. . . .
"This is a completely different cycle from 2010. In 2010, the map kept expanding [for Republicans] and that's just not the case this time," said Robby Mook, a former DCCC executive director. "This is not going to be a wave election."
He has a point there. It is impossible for the Democrats to lose their House majority this year. A Republican gain of 63 seats is out of the question as a practical matter, if not as a matter of pure math. On the other hand, Republicans currently hold a 233-199 majority. There are three vacancies owing to resignations; if they are filled with representatives of the same party, the GOP advantage will be 234-201. Republicans had 241 seats after the 2010 election, so a gain of just seven would be sufficient to duplicate the 2010 outcome.
There's no guarantee that Republicans will succeed in the end in capitalizing on these apparent advantages. But neither is there any evidence that acceding to Obama's demands to "move on" from ObamaCare would be productive or wise.
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