Politico Magazine: It's Your Fault Obamacare Doesn't Work
Yahoo/Daily Ticker: It's Your Fault The Economy Sucks

Students of leftist excuse-making know that whenever things begin going downhill for the progressive cause, their advocates in the media offer the same two or three excuses:

1. My, this country is just ungovernable!

2. No single man could run a government this large! (Oh, and by the way: Let's make it larger still!)

And, of course:

3. The American Public is just too stupid to understand what's good for them and/or the American Public is just too stupid for this president or policy.

Politico Magazine trots out that decades-old line once more:

Are Our Brains Just Not Wired for Obamacare?

Since the launch of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges on Oct. 1, frequent glitches and long waits have dominated the news coverage. But these reports—while frustrating the Obama administration and delighting its opponents—distract from a far more important question: Are consumers doomed to make poor choices about health plans? Maybe our brains just aren’t wired to use a site like HealthCare.gov, whether it works or not.

"Whether it works or not." In other words: What does it matter if it works or not? We're too dumb to use it anyway.

Does a monkey care if a space shuttle is in good working order? All the monkey is going to do is crap on the console.

The exchanges are based on a laudable idea: that competition, transparency and consumer choice will lead to higher-quality, more affordable products. The decisions consumers make will thus have significant implications for their own personal and financial health, as well as the overall sustainability of the exchanges. But despite the good intentions behind the website, behavioral science research suggests that many consumers may be ill equipped to make good decisions in the insurance marketplaces.

After some sort of obvious stuff about too many choices leading to difficulty choosing, and people's incorrect estimates of the odds of low-probability events happening, he comes to his conclusion:

...

Americans are now making decisions about health coverage on an unprecedented scale. The insurance marketplaces may well make good on their promise of affordable, quality health coverage. But this will require setting aside our political biases, and addressing our psychological ones.

Got that, dummies? Put aside your political biases and your psychological hang-ups, Winger.

You'll also be happy to know the economy is in the tank because of your "fears" and "complaints," you fearful complainers.

How Complainers Wreck the Economy

omething’s wrong with the U.S. economy. We all know that. But maybe the real problem is us.

Anybody who follows economic polls is numb by now to the fact that Americans think everything is wrong.... Gloomy is the new normal.

...

It’s easy to disregard what’s going right and highlight nothing but the challenges we face—which seems to be a lot of people’s preference. But gloom itself may now be a bigger economic problem than any of the traditional ones. There’s no bellyacher index I’m aware of, but if you read between the lines, there does seem to be growing evidence that we believe things are worse than they are—and maybe even want to believe that.

In case you don't know who he's talking about: He means you conservative ideologues who believe, for some crazy reason, that unemployment is forbiddingly high, wages are not just stagnant but falling, and the labor participation rate is lower that it has been since the Great Depression.

Here’s one example: Obamacare is obviously a hugely divisive issue that contributes to that wrong-track feeling a lot of people have. Consider this, though: Only 19% of American say the law has harmed them in any way...

Ah, the good side: Obama's only harming one fifth of the population.

"The goal has been met," then, I guess.

Let's skip to his conclusion.

There are plenty of Americans, needless to say, who haven’t let a weak economy or a few disappointments slow them down. They’re starting companies, doing deals, trying new things and in some cases making a lot of money. But are there enough of them to drag everybody else along? My guess is no. At some point, you either stop complaining and pick yourself up, or people stop hearing your complaints.

Notice that it's only under failing Democratic presidents that people have the onus of picking themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Under Republican presidents, every layoff is the president's fault, and the people have the right to expect -- nay, demand -- he rescue them from their every plight.

posted by Ace at 01:20 PM

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