An uncertain fix

Yuval Levin offers a lengthy analysis of President Obama’s “fix”. In essence, I think Levin is saying that Obama doesn’t know what the policy implications of his fix will be, but knows that the political implications of not offering it will be dire. Under these circumstances, Obama naturally decided to proceed with the fix.

The president still hopes that Obamacare can eventually be implemented more or less as designed. But, says Levin, he is no longer confident that it can be. His priority now is to keep his coalition together and in power so as to be able to control events when the dust clears.

This approach makes sense from a power politics point of view. The problem for Obama, though, is that he can’t be sure of the political implications of his political fix because they depend to some extent on the policy implications.

As I suggested last night, the immediate political implications seem clear. Vulnerable congressional Dems may well break with the president, but the Party as a whole will remain reasonably united. But if, in a few months, the fix hasn’t fixed the cancellation problem, the coalition will come under even greater strain than before.

Enormous uncertainty, then, is the order of the day.

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