Edsall is simultaneously overestimating the policy sophistication of the white middle class and underestimating its morality. While it is true that, as Edsall points out, Obamacare is an aggressively redistributionist program that intends to shift hundreds of billions of dollars away from the middle class to the poor, I don’t think many voters have done the math on this. They are not reacting to the $455 billion in Medicare cuts that help to feed the Obamacare beast because not many people really understand how the new system is supposed to work. And at the same time, unlikely as it may sound to the finely tuned consciences of the New York Times editorial page, there are scores of millions of middle class white Americans who don’t hate minorities and would actually like to see things go better for them.
I suspect that one of the reasons Obama’s approval rating is in free fall is because of his obvious surprise and petulance in his public encounters over the disaster of Obamacare. He has made some grudging half apologies, but it is clear that the only thing he is sorry about is that he cannot — not yet, anyway — simply decree what happens with health care in this country. He believes himself above the law and is impatient about finding a means of achieving that discretion. For our own good, of course. Many observers on the Right have long known this about Obama. Suddenly, though, it is out there for all to see. The American people don’t like tyrants, even smooth-talking, Harvard-educated ones. The great trek away from Obama and what he stands for — above all, government unlimited — has begun. The journey will not be pretty, but I think it is all but certain to continue.
All of the myths are here: fat is bad, meat ‘in moderation,” grains are good, etc. No, those ten foods are not “healthier than I think.” They’re much worse than you think.
This would be a useful bit of legislation. It would basically gut ObamaCare, but the Democrats might feels forced to go along. But we also need a fix to the tax code to fix the portability issue, and decouple health insurance from employment.
I wouldn’t call it “slow.” It actually basically vertical:
The education President Obama received at Columbia University and Harvard Law School — and delivered to others as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School — encourages the fantasy of a political world subject to almost limitless manipulation by clever and well-orchestrated images. This explains why the harsh exigencies and intractable forces of politics keep stunning the president, each new time as if it were the very first.
How might higher education be reformed to produce political leaders more familiar with how the world really works, more alive to the realities of social and political life and better able to discuss them honestly with the American people?
He’s lived his entire life in a bubble of unreality. A lot of us realized this in 2008, but a few million too few.
The Obamacare fiasco now flunks Justice Holmes’ extreme rational basis test in the 1905 decision of Lochner v. New York: “I think that the word liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion, unless it can be said that a rational and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute proposed would infringe fundamental principles as they have been understood by the traditions of our people and our law.”
In the light of day, Obamacare is that bad, even if the minimum wage law is not. Even the most ardent defender of government power must concede that it is sickening when a president tells people without healthcare insurance that they must navigate his government websites or go without. If “the right to healthcare” is fundamental, Obamacare violates it. Delay here is no option. If left in place, every single structural problem that besets Obamacare today will continue to wreck innocent lives a year from now. Striking it down is an act of mercy for the American people.
Bottom line: other than that it is logistically impossible and unconstitutional, the president’s “fix” is just fine.
Since people in DC seem so big on “comprehensive solutions,” I propose a much broader effort than simply repealing ObamaCare. It should be called the “Liberty Restoration Act,” and should be festooned like a Christmas tree with a rollback of much of the federal code (e.g., the idiotic incandescent bulb ban, and toilet specs, and ethanol requirements).
It should be understood that they are in cahoots with Obama, to the degree that they hate free markets. They’re just pissed that he wouldn’t stay bought. No sympathy and no honor among thieves.