Paul Begala:
[D]espite the bed-wetting from Beltway Chicken Littles, the President's problems are eminently fixable. The Affordable Care Act isn't collapsing. The Obama presidency isn't imploding. And the ninnies making those sweeping and stupid predictions will one day look like the Washington pundit who boldly declared of the Clinton presidency, "This week we can talk about 'Is the presidency over?' " He asked that question 11 days after Bill Clinton's inaugural. His first inaugural. Clinton's presidency was not over for another 2,911 days.Noam Levey:
Despite the disastrous rollout of the federal government's healthcare website, enrollment is surging in many states as tens of thousands of consumers sign up for insurance plans made available by President Obama's health law.
A number of states that use their own systems, including California, are on track to hit enrollment targets for 2014 because of a sharp increase in November, according to state officials.Kevin Drum:
It really is all about the website. In places where it's working, people are signing up and are pretty happy with what they're getting. Rate shock is an issue for a few of them, but not for a lot. The bottom line is the Republican Party's worst nightmare: Once Obamacare has been up and running for a while, it's going to be pretty popular.Time, indeed, for Democrats and progressives generally to come out of their crouch on health care reform and start punching back hard against the New Confederate/ Republican/ Stupid Party and their media enablers.
BONUS: Just for good measure, Michael Hilzick:
... the myth of Obamacare’s “failure” is a product of the same Republican noise machine that has been working to undermine this crucial reform since Day One. It’s assisted by news reporting about canceled health policies that typically ranges from woefully misinformed to spectacularly ignorant, and even at its best is incomplete.
Indeed, the spectacle of Democrats panicking over bad news on Obamacare resembles the herds of giraffes one sees on the Serengeti being stampeded by swarms of tsetse flies. Here’s a lesson the giraffes could teach the Dems: Stampeding leads only to injuries and death, and doesn’t solve the tsetse fly problem…
