Obama’s Waterloo?

That’s a metaphor many are using to describe President Obama’s increasingly desperate effort to cram socialized medicine down Americans’ throats–surreptitiously, of course. The reference is apt in that the health care debate is likely to be a turning point, but there are obvious differences: Waterloo brought Napoleon’s long and brilliant (if fundamentally insane) career to a close. Obama, in contrast, has been President for only six months and has accomplished little or nothing as of yet. (Other than getting elected, of course.) In that sense, one could argue that it would be closer to the truth to describe the health care fiasco as Obama’s Monkey Business.
Metaphors aside, the Democrats’ “never let a crisis go to waste” strategy appears to be crumbling. Americans are steadily turning against the Democrats’ health care plan, even though hardly anyone knows what is actually in it. At the White House the strain is showing: Charles Grassley says that a Democratic Congressman quoted Obama as saying that the Democrat’s concerns about Obamacare are “going to destroy my Presidency.”
Whether that is right or not, the White House obviously is watching the plummeting poll numbers. Hence the Democrats’ nearly-hysterical insistence that the legislation be enacted immediately–which is to say, before the American people find out what is in it. The funniest evidence of the Democrats’ disarray is their panic in the face of Republican Kevin Brady’s attempt to chart the byzantine health care structure that would be established by the House Democrats’ version of the bill. Here it is; it may remind you of a similar chart that was used to great effect in opposing Hillarycare in the 1990s. Click to enlarge:
ChartHealth771.jpg
The Democrats are so spooked by the idea that their constituents might learn some of the details of their health care plan that they are trying to block Republican Congressmen from mailing out the chart. They claim it isn’t accurate. Well, that’s possible: I’m not sure anyone could definitively diagram the shifting contours of the Democrats’ plan, the chief hallmark of which is that the Democrats can’t acknowledge its real objective, the socialization of medicine in the U.S. But if we’re going to start calling discussion of the health care issue “inaccurate,” how about if we begin with Obama’s press conference last night?
With every day that goes by, it appears less likely that the Democrats will achieve their dream of a government takeover of the health care industry. For now, anyway. And, while it’s too much to expect President Obama to be deposed and exiled (to Palau, say, with the Uighers), perhaps he will at least be chastened, like President Clinton, only more so.

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