Barack Obama has never HAD the upper hand in the #Obamacare debate…

…so why are we talking about his need to “regain” it?

Obama tries to regain ObamaCare edge after mandate delay setback

The White House is working to get back on offense in the debate over ObamaCare, after a surprise delay in part of the implementation knocked its message off course.

President Obama touted the law’s benefits in a White House speech Thursday, emphasizing a provision that is already in place and heralding positive news about the cost of insurance policies sold through the law’s insurance exchanges.

Contra the Hill article, the administration has been singularly bad at messaging Obamacare. And it shows in the polling:

Poll after poll, pollster after pollster, the same answer comes out: Obamacare is not popular.  People are free to argue that Barack Obama should win the messaging battle over Obamacare; people are not free to argue that Barack Obama has won the messaging battle, or that he was winning it prior to the employer mandate delay.  The law was rammed down our collective throats, and Democrats not named Barack Obama have been paying the collective price for that ever since. I have my own suspicions on why there’s that particular division: but it doesn’t matter anyway.  Barack Obama’s had his last election, and he is distinctly and historically bad at getting other people elected.  The best thing that the President could do for his party in the 2014 elections is to give up right now and signal that he’ll sign a repeal of Obamacare.  And even then it’d be because the Democratic party would purge its toxic Congressional leadership, while at the same time inviting the GOP to go Full Metal Overreach and possibly even (stupidly) try impeachment with its new majorities.

Since all of that is a low-probability scenario – and, frankly, would get in the way of Barack Obama’s long-term plans* – we can instead ‘look forward’ to a situation where we’ll see, once and for all, whether the federal government can get a highly-complex system that: nobody understands; that had to be drastically altered while still in the implementation phase; and that half the country hates; up and running on the first try.  Two months from now.  And oh, yeah, the unions just realized that they’re going to get hammered on Obamacare unless somebody does something, with ‘somebody’ including ‘all those Republicans in the House that the unions have been attacking on behalf of the Democratic party.’

In short: these are the salad days for Obamacare.  At least at this point you can still say that the blessed thing might work.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I regret to tell some of you this, but Barack Obama doesn’t really care enough about this country to want to radically change it: he’s doing so partially because of inertia from 2009-2011, and partially because he doesn’t like to be told no. Obama mostly wants to enjoy the perks of his office – which he will – and when his term is done, Barack Obama will continue to enjoy most of the perks of his office for the rest of his natural life without him actually having to do anything.  Do not be surprised if we see the man create the first ever seal for the Office of President-Emeritus of the United States: it fits Obama’s personality, and will probabl[y] add quite a bit to his honorariums.