Strassel: Democrats Run for ObamaCare Cover
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303615304579155962427302786?mod=trending_now_1After weeks of vowing they wouldn’t cave on the president’s signature legislation, some Democrats are doing just that.
Jeanne Shaheen doesn’t sound like a Democrat who just won a government-shutdown “victory.” Ms. Shaheen sounds like a Democrat who thinks she’s going to lose her job.
The New Hampshire senator fundamentally altered the health-care fight on Tuesday with a letter to the White House demanding it both extend the ObamaCare enrollment deadline and waive tax penalties for those unable to enroll. Within nanoseconds, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor had endorsed her “common-sense idea.” By Wednesday night, five Senate Democrats were on board, pushing for . . . what’s that dirty GOP word? Oh, right. “Delay.”
After 16 long days of vowing to Republicans that they would not cave in any way, shape or form on ObamaCare, Democrats spent their first post-shutdown week caving in every way, shape and form. With the GOP’s antics now over, the only story now is the unrivaled disaster that is the president’s health-care law.
Hundreds of thousands of health-insurance policies canceled. Companies dumping coverage and cutting employees’ hours. Premiums skyrocketing. And a website that reprises the experience of a Commodore 64. As recently as May, Democratic consultants were advising members of Congress that their best ObamaCare strategy for 2014 was to “own” the law. Ms. Shaheen has now publicly advised the consultants where they can file that memo.
Chad Crowe
In the Senate, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin is working on legislation to delay the individual mandate’s enforcement for a year. CNN reports that all 16 Senate Democrats up for re-election are expected to support Ms. Shaheen’s proposal. In the House, Democratic members are stacking up behind all of these ideas, and more.
Even House liberals have felt it necessary to reassure voters that they, too, are angry—though so far they are merely calling for scalps. “I’d like to see somebody lose their job over this. I think it’s outrageous,” complained New York Rep. Sean Maloney. “Somebody’s got to man up here—get rid of these people,” said Minnesota’s Rick Nolan. This is presumably a call for a certain “somebody” to do something more than 1-800 commercials from the Rose Garden.
This Democratic freakout has been building for months, even if it was masked by the shutdown headlines and the way the media reported that event. Nationally, yes, the GOP took a drubbing on the shutdown. But next year isn’t a national election. It’s a midterm that will turn on key states, where polls all along have found disapproval of ObamaCare, the president and his party’s handling of the economy.
In Arkansas, Mr. Pryor’s home state, a poll conducted by the University of Arkansas from Oct. 10-17 found that 39% of likely voters blame Mr. Obama for the shutdown (only 27% blame congressional Republicans). Just 29% approve of Mr. Obama, and Mr. Pryor’s disapproval ratings jumped 21 points in just a year, to 44%, from 21%.
More worrisome for the Democratic senator is a recent poll conducted by OnMessage for his GOP rival Tom Cotton. Only 33% of Arkansans support ObamaCare. The number drops to 28% for independent voters. Even one-third of Democrats in the state oppose the law.
The numbers aren’t much better in Ms. Shaheen’s New Hampshire, or in Alaska, Louisiana, North Carolina, West Virginia or Montana. The Democrats up for election in these states know that the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads isn’t the Republican Party, but their own president’s law.
The GOP’s aggressive shutdown tactics only forestalled this flight for political cover. It allowed Senate Majority Harry Reid to keep his troops united, on grounds that they needed to make a point. But absent a GOP bogeyman, Democrats quickly realized that they had no further excuses for inaction—save partisan fealty to a failed law. That won’t wash with voters.
The White House’s problem is that political cracks like this don’t get patched; they grow. Until this week, the administration could write off the 20-odd House Democrats who voted with Republicans this summer to delay parts of the law as victims of a tough vote orchestrated by the GOP. But now a numerically significant number of Senate Democrats have, on their own, signaled that it is acceptable for members of the president’s party to demand consequential ObamaCare changes.
The pressure for other Democrats to join will rise, as will the pressure for the party to embrace more extensive changes to the law. Even before the ObamaCare rollout, Mr. Pryor and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan had co-sponsored legislation to kill ObamaCare’s rationing board (the House version has 23 Democratic co-sponsors). Alaska Sen. Mark Begich had introduced a bill to delay the business mandate for two years. There is bipartisan opposition to the medical-device tax, to the ObamaCare slush fund and to the IRS’s central role in coordinating the law.
The White House has lived in fear of this moment, and the administration’s biggest problem is that it has no quick bandage for this bleed. Healthcare.gov is weeks or months from being fixed—if it is fixable at all. Enrollment numbers will thus remain dismal. The insurance horror stories are only beginning. The congressional hearings, too. The administration could sack Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, but it knows that getting a replacement nominee through the Senate would likely prove more painful than keeping her.
Democrats will do their best to keep shifting blame to the GOP, but those complaints are losing traction. This week was a turning point.
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