Our political Quote of the Day comes from The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, who notes the Obamcare problems and how it has hurt Barack Obama and the Democrats.
Democrats—especially Obama, but all Democrats—have to take charge of the situation right now. In danger of losing the country’s trust, they must say in essence: “All right, we did screw up Round 1. We’re going to admit it, and we’re going to apologize, and we’re going to fix it, and we’re not going to bullshit you. But we’re also not going to panic. We’re going to make this thing work.”
If they do all those things, they will still come out looking a hell of a lot better than the radical obstructionists. Obama’s approval rating may be down to 40 percent, but that’s four times the Republican Congress’s rating. He can step in and take more control of the agenda here, and he and the Democrats can be seen as the ones sincerely trying to fix these problems, while the Republicans will inevitably be seen as wanting only to kill yet another law and throw yet another wrench into the engine. They will be led once again by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the man who has enticed his party to go down several rat holes already these past couple of years. He is now sitting up on his throne warning that hackers are about to steal applicants’ Social Security numbers, a charge that rings with all the veracity of his earlier accusation that the administration knowingly targeted conservative nonprofit groups.
The current situation is serious. But I remember a lot of other times when it was supposedly curtains for Obama, too, because inside the Beltway, the more disciplined Republicans, who after all are in the luxurious position of just sitting back and firing away, have an easier time winning news cycles. But out beyond the Beltway, the party that shut down the government for three weeks and killed immigration reform and wants to decimate food stamps and can’t even pass its own spending bills doesn’t look very appealing to most people. The fate of Obamacare can be changed. The DNA of the GOP cannot.
it is true that:
- –we have an almost attention deficit media and voters who can turn on a dime, creating a new press narrative.
- –Obama’s screw up on promising over and over that Americans can keep their insurance and doctors and the historically catastrophic rollout of the program will hurt the Demcrats.
- –the Republican and conservative media are quite adept at picking up a weakness and hammering it.
- –this would not be the first time that Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
- –the cumulative impact of what Republicans have halted or refuse to act on coupled with the government shutdown could hurt the party in the end.
The bottom line it depends on a)who can play the hardest hardball b)who can recover faster. Right now you’d have to say the GOP can play the hardest hardball. The GOP hasn’t really recovered so much as the Democrats look dismayed, frightened, incompetent and defensive.
So much can change.
Or it won’t.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.