"The debate over repealing this law is over," President Obama declared last Tuesday in reference to ObamaCare. April Fool! By the end of the week some of Obama's most loyal media supporters were proving him wrong--by repeating his arguments.
"Is there any accountability in American politics for being completely wrong?" demanded the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne in his Thursday column. "Is there any cost to those who say things that turn out not to be true and then, when their fabrications or false predictions are exposed, calmly move on to concocting new claims as if they had never made the old ones?"
It won't surprise you to learn that Dionne did not demand accountability from Obama and the other politicians who sold ObamaCare on the fraudulent promise "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan." Rather, he asserted that the administration's claim of having "hit its original goal . . . of signing up more than 7 million people through its insurance exchanges" was a definitive refutation of any notion that ObamaCare is "doomed."
What about insurance cancellations, narrow networks, high deductibles, blown deadlines, work disincentives, adverse selection and the law's continuing political unpopularity? Dionne dispenses with all these problems in one sentence: "To be sure, the law could still face other problems, blah, blah, blah."
The next day it was former Enron adviser Paul Krugman's turn. He too asserted that "7.1 million and counting signups is a huge victory for reform." And not just a huge victory but a definitive one: "The nightmare is over. It has long been clear, to anyone willing to study the issue, that the overall structure of Obamacare made sense given the political constraints. Now we know that the technical details can be managed, too. This thing is going to work. And, yes, it's also a big political victory for Democrats."
"My advice to reform supporters," Krugman continued, "is, go ahead and celebrate. Oh, and feel free to ridicule right-wingers who confidently predicted doom."
What's this all about? It seems to us the main political salience of Obama's mission-accomplished speech is to constrain Democratic officeholders who have substantive or political doubts about ObamaCare. He made clear that support for ObamaCare remains a test of loyalty for Democrats; those who deviate will be punished by the party's leadership and its political base.
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