Thanks, GOP, for all the ruckus

Yesterday, Wonkblog's Sarah Kliff surveyed professional reaction to President Obama's Care-full re-rigging of ACA regs, which ranged from the sublimely simple--"We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies," said the state of Washington's insurance commissioner--to the frightfully tangled, such as this memo from an industry consultant:

[I]nsurance companies have 32 days to reprogram their computer systems for policies, rates, and eligibility, send notices to the policyholders via US Mail, send a very complex letter that describes just what the differences are between specific policies and Obamacare compliant plans, ask the consumer for their decision--and give them a reasonable time to make that decision--and then enter those decisions back into their systems without creating massive billing, claim payment, and provider eligibility list mistakes.

... which are but a few of the minor reasons why Washington's commissioner declined the president's option: "I have serious concerns about how President Obama’s proposal would be implemented." His major, long-term concern is risk-pool contamination, which could lead not just to rate creep, but rate explosions.

So much for the policy angles of Obama's forced move, tragically born of pure political necessity. Republicans are America's unparalleled grandmasters of the propaganda game; they instantly whisked away their damning shutdown debris and propelled a nation of more than 300 million--about 50 million of whom are uninsured, and thus in perpetual danger of bankruptcy or death--straight to the spectacularly wrongheaded conclusion that Obamacare is mostly about a comparatively few (and essentially worthless) cancelled health insurance policies.   

And for all of Republican pols' three-years worth of pounding hysteria already, this is just the beginning. They'll ride their fabricated Obamacare bugaboos and the law's vastly exaggerated flaws throughout 2014 and well into 2016. They'll panic the public, engage in rolling assaults and demolish whatever confidence in government the electorate has left. 

Unless Obama & Allies take up an aggressive offense--one that far transcends the relative meekness of telling friendly steelworkers in Cleveland that "those who say they are opposed to [Obamacare] and can’t offer a solution, we’ll push back."

No, no, not "we will push back"; we are pushing back, starting today; and in fact we're going to start pushing first. Let the other guys push back for a while; force them to defend against a coordinated, relentless bombardment of their malicious nihilism and propagandistic rot.

This is demonstrably doable as a top-down approach, in that Republicans have been doing it successfully for years. It does, however, also require bottom-up support, which is to say that Obama's base must stop using the lazy, "both-sides" press as an excuse to remain fetally positioned.

Obama has got to get motivated and mad--though, by virtue of personality, less publicly angry than his allied surrogates--and his base has got to get mad, too. Really mad. And I just don't see it. What I do see is an increasingly indifferent base that when complaining at all, its complaining is mostly whimpering about the unfairness of it all.

Fuck that. That's what conservatives did for years, before Nixon's aggressive offense against the "liberal media"--which, for decades to come, worked fabulously well for the right.  

 

Comments

[Peter G]

Yea. But as near as I can tell quite a lot of what should be the president's base are so angry that a quantum leap to single payer wasn't achieved that they are effectively not only useless but completely counter productive.

[shsavage]

Probably right, Peter. And perhaps these folks are secretly wishing for the ACA to fail as well, because they think there would then be no alternative to single payer. Alas, this is not true. The GOP would like for the end result to be a total ACA collapse, with more uninsured people than before it was implemented, and a ballooning federal deficit as a result.

[shsavage]

Here is Drum's take on all the ruckus:

"Well, this isn't very exciting, but here's what really happened yesterday. Obama made a short speech and then took questions. It wasn't the high point of his presidency, but virtually no one outside the Beltway thought it was a disaster. It was just another forgettable presidential press conference. The Obamacare website is in deep trouble, but the evidence is pretty clear that it really is getting better, and will continue to get better. Lots of people are suffering from rate shock, but not as many people as Republicans and the press would have you believe. It's early days, and signups will continue to improve as we get closer to the deadline. Insurers are upset with Obama's new fix, but they'll calm down. Their denunciations yesterday were pretty pro forma."

"This is a bleak moment for Obama, but it's not his Iraq or even his Katrina. Within a few months everything will settle down. Republicans have an obvious political motive for stoking panic, but the rest of us should be a little smarter about buying into it. OK?" -- http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/chattering-classes-are-now-full-chicken-little-mode

So, Keep Calm. The sky is not falling...the chattering classes just want you think it is.

[Peter G]

That's my take too shssavage.