You know things aren’t going well when the Washington Post is forced to report bad news for Democrats.
Scott Clement and Aaron Blake recently wrote…
Why Obamacare isn’t getting any more popular — and probably won’tIn just one week, a barrage of national polling has reached the same verdict: Obamacare’s Rocky Balboa-esque announcement that 8 million people have signed up for health care has done absolutely nothing to reverse the law’s basic and long-standing unpopularity.A new high of 55 percent disapproves of the law in a Pew Research Center/USA Today poll. And the Kaiser Family Foundation’s tracking poll, a Post-ABC poll and a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last week all found little lasting changes from earlier this year — when the law was at the heart of its implementation struggles.The stagnant numbers would seem to fly in the face of the strong publicity the law earned by passing 7 million and then 8 million sign-ups. For a law that had experienced almost nothing but bad news for months, one would think a little good news would lead to at least a little recovery.And some polls initially suggested that might be the case. But whatever momentum the law carried from the sign-ups announcement — and a later projection that it will actually cost less than previously thought — has gone by the wayside.The stark numbers are bad news for Democrats, but they also shouldn’t be surprising. Attitudes on the law have not fluctuated much since its passage in 2010 and are deeply entwined with long-held partisan loyalties, helped along by a highly political public debate.
Democrats deserve to pay a high political price for Obamacare in 2014, 2016 and beyond. Maybe that will make them think twice the next time they decide to reform one sixth of the American economy on a purely partisan vote in the middle of the night behind closed doors.
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