Celebrating the achievement of lowered expectations

Ben Domenech at The Federalist has a good piece on the proper perspective to take on yesterday's announcement by the Most Equal Comrade - delivered with his characteristic snottiness - that there were now 7.1 million FHer-care enrollees.

All the 7 million number the White House will be touting for months to come really achieves is an end to the “website is broken” storyline which began unexpectedly last fall. Opponents of the law, who had expected all the other disruptions that Obamacare spawned (the substance story of people losing their plans, losing access to their doctors, the broad disruption to employers and employees), were given an additionalprocess story in the broken exchange and bungled launch and collapsing state exchanges. That latter storyline overwhelmed people in both parties – it was such a public faceplant that it made things seem even worse. But it was also a story that was destined to end eventually – indeed, it’s surprising it lasted for a full six months! – and it has largely ended due to all the exemptions, waivers, loopholes, and extensions the Obama Administration has slapped all over this launch process, like using bumper stickers to hold a jalopy together.

This is why talk of the 7 million figure as salvation from supporters of the law is completely bonkers: all you did was meet your lowered policy expectations. 

They came up with a number to announce that is decimal-point precise, but there are a lot of internals that will only subject themselves to meaningful parsing over the next several weeks and months.  We can be pretty sure, though, that the needle has not been significantly moved regarding the overall number of uninsured.

But the numbers that matter most - that is, that keep this law consistently unpopular - are the ones that tell the story of the wreckage on the ground:

President Obama promised that under his law, we could keep our plans, we could keep our doctors, and our premium costs would go down. None of that has happened. And unfortunately for supporters of the law, that’s what people care about. All Obamacare had to do to be a popular success was to work – was to match up with the expectations President Obama and the Democrats set for it. If it did, they would be running on the issue for a generation – if it didn’t, the issue would be a weapon for the other side.

It hasn’t. They can’t. It is. 

So The MEC can crow and wax combative, but he's still facing a majority of the post-American public that knows what a ruinous development this has been.