Sure, they can celebrate Obamacare's
setbacks if they like. But conservatives' glee is unwarranted and
premature VIDEO
Brian Beutler
The
proximate political goal of President Obama’s “you can keep your plan
fix” was to calm restive congressional Democrats before they did
anything rash …
… and it appears to have served that purpose.
That’s not to say everything’s
fine
now. But they’re off the ledge. The clarion calls from politically
vulnerable Dems to do something, and do it fast, have subsided for the
moment. And the hope is that in this window of relative repose the
administration can get the website working, increase enrollment, and
calm the public outcry.
At the same time it exposed the
unctuousness of the right’s concern for people whose plans have been
canceled. Republicans, who have been demanding a comparable legislative
fix, are suddenly skeptical that this plan will work, and conservatives
are torn between hoping Obama’s plan fails — that everyone’s plans
remain canceled and they continue to blame him for it — or that it works
too well and damages the law in the longer run.
But
the fix hasn’t taken the shine off the right’s schadenfreude party. If
you were expecting conservatives to react to the Democrats’ mad scramble
with anything less than unrestrained glee you … well, I guess you don’t
understand the politics of Obamacare.
Everyone’s entitled to a
little gloating, I guess. But I do think conservatives — who just last
month spilled gallons of ink explaining why conservatism wasn’t in
collapse — are engaging in a bit of premature celebration.
Obamacare
has a real problem — an enrollment bottleneck created by
Healthcare.gov’s failure — and the truth is the wave of cancellations
wouldn’t have been easily brushed off even if the website had been
working perfectly. Together they’ve driven some Democrats into conflict
with one another.
But the conflict isn’t especially deep. Ask
congressional Democrats whether they support Sen. Mary Landrieu’s bill
to require insurance carriers to reinstate canceled policies. Some will
say no, some will say yes, some will have a different plan that they
like better. Deep down they know that a ham-fisted solution shouldn’t
become law, but they don’t feel like they can be caught supporting
nothing either.
Ask them, by contrast, if they support the
Affordable Care Act, or think it should be repealed, or regret their
votes for it, or believe it can be fixed, or anything like that, and
they’re unanimous.
You don’t have to squint very hard to notice
that these divisions are about equal to, but opposite, the divisions
within the Republican Party that resulted in a government shutdown last
month. Every Republican agrees Obamacare is an excrescence that should
be wiped off the books. But some of them had different ideas about how
to respond to its imminent launch.
The difference is they chose
the maximally self-destructive option. Maybe they wouldn’t have if they
knew how badly the rollout would go. But that’s what they did.
Conservative and moderate members openly attacked each other;
grass-roots and establishment groups continue to do battle. Democrats,
by contrast, are tranquil. They haven’t followed their desperation into a
burning furnace.
Not yet, anyhow.
We’ll know Democrats are
warring with each other, or in full retreat from the law, when Harry
Reid and Nancy Pelosi can’t restrain rank-and-file members from forcing
legislative sabotage on Obama. That hasn’t happened yet. Obama’s
administrative fix staved it off for the time being. But the scenario’s
not outside the realm of possibility if the relaunch isn’t smooth, and
enrollments fail to reach escape velocity.
Brian Beutler is Salon's political writer. Email him at bbeutler@salon.com and follow him on Twitter at @brianbeutler.
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