Was heathcare reform a fatal political blunder by the Democratic Party? That thesis of Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, received a respectful airing this week from the veteran political journalist and New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall.
Schumer's position--that the Democrats should have delayed healthcare reform at the start of Obama's first term and focused instead on policies to help the middle class--goes to the heart of what it means to govern. It's proper to give it a closer look.
It's even more important to examine the misconceptions about Obamacare that lie at the heart of Schumer's analysis. The fundamental flaw in that analysis is a misunderstanding of Obamacare, as some of Edsall's own data reveal. The lesson, as I've written before, is that the Democrats' blunder was not in passing the bill, but in running away from it once it became law and abandoning it to be defined--misdefined--by their Republican opponents.
"We must convince the middle class that the only way out of their morass is by a stronger and effective government, not by demeaning or running away from it," Schumer told his audience. But by trampling over the Affordable Care Act, he became part of the problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
