Obamacare designed to fail?

Unlikely.

With a strong majority in Congress and filibuster-proof Senate in 2008, Democrats were able to push Obamacare through. What did the electorate think of this? Next chance they got to caste their vote, the solid ultra-safe Democrat seat of Edward Kennedy went to the Republicans and more carnage lay ahead in 2010 when the Democrats lost the largest number of seats in Congress since 1938.

How do things look going forward for the Democrats?

Charlie Cook, one of the most respected political gurus, notes that “Recently, however, the HuffPost Pollster website produced a graph of national polling on Congress that showed one of the most dramatic shifts I’ve ever seen in 40 years of involvement in politics. ”

2014 congressional generic-ballot

News on other fronts isn’t any better with Millenials, white women and even California signalling that they have had enough as a direct result of Obamacare. For Democrats looking for reprieve from the bad news, it should be noted that Obamacare will keep cascading till the 2014 elections. The website is unlikely to be operational any time soon and other “features” of the health plan, like being able to keep your doctor and choosing your hospital, should become well known now that, as Pelosi put it  “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”.

You can’t implement Obamacare II if you are not in power. The other option Obama does have is that he can go rogue. In fact that is the option suggested by his supporters.

President Obama’s repeated use of presidential powers is causing a tough problem — his own supporters now expect him to use it to achieve everything they want.

From immigration to the minimum wage, congressional Democrats and liberal activists this week urged Mr. Obama to declare an end run around Capitol Hill, assert executive authority and make as much progress as he can on the expansive agenda he laid out for his second term.

That tendency was noted recently by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley who teaches constitutional law and also happens to be an Obama supporter. In his testimony to the House he noted the following.

Despite the fact that I once voted for President Obama, personal admiration is no substitute for the constitutional principles at stake in this controversy. When a president claims the inherent power of both legislation and enforcement, he becomes a virtual government unto himself. He is not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system; he becomes the very danger that the Constitution was designed to avoid.

An interesting aside to all this is Prof Turley’s reaction to how WaPo reported the news.

The Washington Post has a controversial take on yesterday’s hearing in its coverage by Dana Milbank. The hearing raised the serious question of a pattern of allegedly unconstitutional actions by President Obama in either barring enforcement of federal law or directly violating those laws. However, the Washington Post only reported on the fact that impeachment was raised in the hearing in the discussion of the constitutional means left to Congress to address presidential abuse. Republicans object that the Post piece misses 99 percent of the hearing detailing the rise of an imperial presidency under Obama and four hours of discussion of the dangerous shift of power in the tripartite system. Impeachment or presidential abuse. It seems that two hearings occurred simultaneously. Both sides appear to be claiming the other is blinded by bias. The Milbank and Republican accounts appear a modern version of the parable of the elephant and the six blind men.

Welcome to the MSM news coverage Turley.

Going rogue is more likely to get Obama impeached than anything else. If Obama thinks he can actually implement something in that manner then he is even dumber than his comments about 57-states, Austrian language and knowledge of US geography imply. Just like Canada is a center-left nation, which leaves Harper as a Fabian-conservative, America is a center-right nation that is kept on even keel with the help of the MSM, which is significantly liberal. Obamacare II isn’t happening.