Oy, Kraushaar. Oy, Galston. Oy, half the damn press corps. It’s ugly out there, folks.
The two that set me off in particular today are Josh Kraushaar’smassive overinterpretation of the events of last week, leading him to believe that Democrats are close to abandoning the ACA. And then Todd Purdom on the imminent collapse of “Big Government progressivism” if the ACA doesn’t work well (complete with supporting quotes from William Galston). Anyway, here are some links to what I’ve written in response.
There’s just a lot of nonsense right now. Which is pretty much what happens when these press frenzies get started, but it’s very frustrating. As I wrote over at Salon over the weekend, a good comparison here is Whitewater, of all things; yes, there is a substantive story on health care reform here, but what the press are up to is mostly just fantasy.
Today, I took on Kraushaar’s argument that the Upton vote was about Democrats turning against the ACA. As I said last week…no, it really isn’t.
Oh, and then there’s the “doom for liberalism” argument. On Friday, Ipointed out that public opinion doesn’t work that way.
I’ll dredge up a couple of other relevant posts from a while back. At the beginning of the month, I argued that “repeal” really is dead; the status quo ante has been disrupted far too much to ever return to it. Whatever happens in the future, it will be building on the new, ACA status quo, not repealing it and returning to the past arrangements. And I’ve also been saying that the spin at this point is irrelevant; what matters is whether the law works.
[Cross-posted at A plain blog about politics]
