Her party decimated, newly-reelected Democrat minority leader Nancy Pelosi shared her one ObamaCare regret with Vox: messaging!
Even Democrats, she says, were inept at handling the messaging required to really sell America on ObamaCare. Alas, she was so busy not reading the ObamaCare legislation to worry about messaging, so it just wasn’t done correctly.
Nancy Pelosi cannot think of a single part of the Affordable Care Act that has underperformed her expectations.
Not the lack of competition in the marketplaces that has worried President Obama — or the double-digit rate hikes this past fall. Nothing.
“I can’t think of anything like that,” the House minority leader said about 40 minutes into an interview this week, when I asked her to name a part of the health law that had gone worse than expected.
Her only regret about the law? That other Democrats didn’t step up to the plate to defend it — leading to what she called a sea of misinformation about her signature legislative achievement.
“If I had to fault myself, I would say I should not have trusted that other people were going to be the message piece while we were doing policy. We were in the foxhole; we were in the trenches fighting the fight,” she said.
It’s actually quite stunning that after the party’s historic losses over the past eight years, the House minority leader is still blaming messaging for the failure of ObamaCare.
This is the same “messaging problem” that prompted Obama to hit the road bolstering this monstrosity, promising again and again that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” and the “typical” American family will save $2,500 per year.
In his 2009 State of the Union address, Obama infamously declared that illegal aliens would not be covered (they are), that abortion would not be covered (it is), and that the ObamaCare monstrosity would “add not one dime” to the national deficit (it’s added trucks-full of dimes).
Yet even this “messaging” couldn’t boost ObamaCare approval above 50%.
As deadlines loomed for the more onerous and destructive parts of ObamaCare to kick in, Obama chose to, with his pen and his phone, kick those unpleasant aspects down the road.
Yet even as he hid the worst horrors of ObamaCare from the American people, ObamaCare approval has always been disappointing to the left. Americans just don’t like it, even if we like some parts of it, the parts do not equal the whole.
Americans, when polled on other parts of ObamaCare, hate the mandate, hate the requirements for health insurance that include things that could never apply to them as individuals (prenatal care for men or post-menopausal women?), hate the high premiums and high deductibles that make using their “health insurance” improbable barring some catastrophic event.
Ask Americans if they are willing to trade keeping their “children” on their own policies until they are 26 for buying an affordable policy that meets their actual needs or for eliminating the federal mandate. That’s the question that needs to be asked. My guess is that “support” for the typically-espoused favorite parts of ObamaCare would dwindle to single digits in a flash when put up against the individual mandate or the onerous and illogical coverage requirements or ever-increasing premiums and shrinking health care options.
What more can they possibly “message” about this law that would make people think that they aren’t really paying an exorbitant sum for coverage they don’t need, can’t use, and amounts to a pre-ObamaCare catastrophic plan?
Yet Pelosi preposterously ponders: if only she hadn’t been so busy passing the bill so we could see what’s in it and had time to devote to proper messaging . . . well, obviously, the American people would be thrilled with ObamaCare.
Personally, I’m happy to hear this. Yes, Nancy, that’s right. It was just poor messaging. Keep thinking that. Oh, and while you’re at it, please go ahead and make Keith Ellison chair of the DNC, run Elizabeth Warren in 2020, and encourage Obama to help you rebuild the party you—and he—decimated.
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