Makes no difference to me, I’m not trying to move poll numbers. All that matters to me is whether the attack has substance, and it does. No presidency has never seen the “I didn’t know nuthin’” defense used so much. It’s as if his advisors purposely keep him uninformed so as to avoid him having to be accountable for anything.
And no, of course he didn’t directly oversee the website, but keep in mind this is a guy who promised fundamental change. Yet he didn’t change the contracting process that led to underqualified companies being put in charge of his most important domestic initiative.
And there have been instances of successful programs postponed or with many problems at the beginning, nowadays no one remembers the critics nor the early technical problems.
I’m still waiting on those WMDs in Iraq. Any time now right?
A presidency that relied on I Don’t Know? Try the blessed Saint Ronnie Reagan and Iran/Contra. He set the gold standard for I Don’t Know/Remember.
You do know that contracting processes in the government are buried under layers of laws and regulations? I wonder how the GOP would have reacted to Obama just waving his hands and saying “We’re going to do it differently for this program.” I’m guessing with cries of “Favoritism! Payoffs!” Which I guess is no different from what they are saying now. :rolleyes:
Quite true. The problem with ACA is that it needs young and healthy people to sign up, and if they don’t do it in that first year, the insurance companies take big losses. Think the public will support an insurance company bailout?
According to the latest Pew poll, 31% of the uninsured have no intention of signing up.
How much do you want to bet those aren’t the old and sick refusing? Jon Stewart can’t be helping either. He’s probably doing far more damage to the cause right now than Republicans ever could among young people.
I’ve compared Obama to Reagan many times. In the early days, Obama himself wanted to do for liberalism what Reagan did for conservatism. However, what they actually have in common is advisors who protect them rather than inform them. Reagan was getting senile and had no patience for briefings that were longer than a single page. The reality of Obama, on the other hand, bears no relation to the image of an intellectual, detail-oriented individual.
This is why choosing glitz over substance is going to be so damaging to Democrats. With a little foresight, the administration would have realized that the health care bill that is their main initiative wouldn’t work unless the contracting process was also reformed. And given how much energy Obama and other Democrats spent on attacking the contracting process during the Bush years, you’d think they would have expended some energy reforming it.
Except, they never actually had a problem with the contracting process. They had a problem with Haliburton. Well, strap yourselves in, some of these healthcare.gov contractors are about to become just as infamous.
Your opinion on Obama has shown to bear no relation to reality. You consistently buy ridiculous spin from his opponents while ignoring good journalism (and indeed, even deriding good journalists as “partisan sources”). Obama is far from perfect as a President, but your criticisms of him have been mostly fact-free.
The proof is in how often his own administration protects him from unpleasant facts in order to shield him from accountability. That was primarily a trait of the Reagan administration. Did Bill Clinton ever claim to not know what his administration was doing?
Face it, as Dana Milbank said, he’s a “bystander in his own administration”. And the real damage being done to democracy by the unwillingness of Obama supporters to hold the administration accountable for anything is serious. If we follow their views to their logical conclusion, we end up with an unaccountable bureaucratic state under the control of no one.
You mean the private contractors that were supposed to do it better than the government?
Speaking of substance what you are doing here is attempting to tell others to ignore the Republican elephant in the room that already damaged the furniture to get rid of the ACA with less substance or reason for success than a jelly fish has against a boat’s propeller. What is happening in Virginia is evidence enough to show that your reasoning is extremely flawed.
Nothing has happened in Virginia yet. Given that McCauliffe has staked out unabashedly liberal positions on a variety of issues, it would be pretty remarkable if he wins. Note that the libertarian candidate is drawing 10% in the polls:
Both of these claims are alarmist and not reality-based. Sure, he’s said “I don’t know” a few times… but so what? No President is aware of everything that goes on- it’s impossible.
And liberals have been quite willing to criticize the President- ever been to Daily Kos? Your assessment of Obama’s supporters is, not surprisingly, totally inaccurate.
If I were you, I’d be very careful about making any claims discounting the polls as not telling the real story… the polls have a far, far better track record than you do.
Ah yes, ignore the polls showing McCauliffe with a 17% lead now after the people saw how insane the Tea Partiers really are, and the ACA criticism actually increased the interest for it and many found that it was mostly lies what the republicans used against it, after all the polls are still skewed no?
More than a few times. It has been his primary fallback anytime something goes wrong, and it goes back to his campaign, where all missteps were blamed on his staff.
I’m gratified that some are holding him accountable for the actions of his administration. I hope you’ll join them.
That’s a single poll, Rasmussen. His average lead is lower than that. Obviously McCauliffe is the favorite, but far from a sure thing. So save the gloating for either the day after the election, or when McCauliffe actually does have an insurmountable lead, like the Republican in New Jersey.
His average lead is 10 points. No, it’s not insurmountable, and no, it’s not a sure thing, but right now the chances are pretty good that McAuliffe will win. His average lead in the polls is significantly larger than Obama’s lead was at this point in the 2008 or 2012 campaign (whether nationally or in the state of VA).
Pointing at the problems prevalent with the web site (that are technical in nature and not evidence of a failure with the law as phone and other ways are available to enroll) just shows that most people do not see a problem on being critical of what happened with the web site and still being supportive of the administration with the overall effort; they support, if not of the law, the people who want to see it a success and rejecting the people that want it to see it fail.
