Why the ObamaCare Crash is so Embarrassing for Liberals
By Chris Stirewalt
Published October 22, 2013 •
A belief in science and technology is as central to liberalism as spiritual faith is on the right. That’s not to say that there aren’t lots of religious liberals, but just that the devotion to “progress” is the central aim of the political movement for more than a century.
How crushing, then, that the most liberal president of all time would oversee the most notable technological failure by the federal government, perhaps ever. The disastrous launch of the Web site and telephone banks for President Obama’s new health-insurance entitlement program is laughable at best, terrifying at worst and no matter what, astonishingly incompetent.
Obama, whose campaigns were praised endlessly for tech savvy and who revels in being the first high-tech president, has overseen a massive tech botch. This understandably infuriates liberals who plumped for their president and his law on the grounds that government was up to the task and that Obama could deliver a brighter, sleeker, faster and more affordable future for health care. As it turned out, he couldn’t even oversee a Web launch.
Some Republicans, not content to endure just their party’s current reversals, are imagining future defeats. Some on the right are saying ObamaCare’s failure to launch is really a trap intended to create a single-payer insurance system; that the “fix” will be to socialize all health insurance.
Not really.
Liberals certainly believe that the president’s public-private partnership on subsidized insurance will be a gateway to a European-style system. At the time of passage, the left wingers consoled themselves in the belief that the failings in the larger program of ObamaCare – scarcity of care, unaffordable private coverage, mass dumping of employee coverage etc. – would be remedied by a future (Democratic) president and Congress.
Obama himself wanted a “public option” but had to retreat in the face of opposition from Clinton Democrats in the Senate. His compromise plan, which included the individual mandate much hated on the left and much assailed by him in his primary campaign, would have to be an interim step before the next interim step.
A belief in science and technology is as central to liberalism as spiritual faith is on the right. That’s not to say that there aren’t lots of religious liberals, but just that the devotion to “progress” is the central aim of the political movement for more than a century.
How crushing, then, that the most liberal president of all time would oversee the most notable technological failure by the federal government, perhaps ever. The disastrous launch of the Web site and telephone banks for President Obama’s new health-insurance entitlement program is laughable at best, terrifying at worst and no matter what, astonishingly incompetent.
Obama, whose campaigns were praised endlessly for tech savvy and who revels in being the first high-tech president, has overseen a massive tech botch. This understandably infuriates liberals who plumped for their president and his law on the grounds that government was up to the task and that Obama could deliver a brighter, sleeker, faster and more affordable future for health care. As it turned out, he couldn’t even oversee a Web launch.
Some Republicans, not content to endure just their party’s current reversals, are imagining future defeats. Some on the right are saying ObamaCare’s failure to launch is really a trap intended to create a single-payer insurance system; that the “fix” will be to socialize all health insurance.
Not really.
Liberals certainly believe that the president’s public-private partnership on subsidized insurance will be a gateway to a European-style system. At the time of passage, the left wingers consoled themselves in the belief that the failings in the larger program of ObamaCare – scarcity of care, unaffordable private coverage, mass dumping of employee coverage etc. – would be remedied by a future (Democratic) president and Congress.
Obama himself wanted a “public option” but had to retreat in the face of opposition from Clinton Democrats in the Senate. His compromise plan, which included the individual mandate much hated on the left and much assailed by him in his primary campaign, would have to be an interim step before the next interim step.
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