Obama could still fail, says… TPM

When we saw the headline “Four Ways ObamaCare Could Still Fail,” our reaction was that it sounded like an unrealistically low estimate. But we read the article because we were intrigued because of the source: TalkingPointsMemo.com, a news site with a strong (and acknowledged) liberal Democratic slant. Its framing as friendly criticism makes the piece, by congressional reporter Sahil Kapur, a powerful indictment of ObamaCare.

To be sure, it’s not clear Kapur intends to indict ObamaCare, and if he does, he downplays it, presumably in order to avoid alienating his liberal readers or his liberal editors. In his lead paragraph, he summarizes the problem as follows: “Republicans remain committed to botching its implementation, which–along with inherent complexities in implementing parts of the law–leaves in place significant obstacles to achieving its key goals.”

When you read the rest of the piece, however, it’s clear that the emphasis should be reversed: The law’s deficiencies–or “inherent complexities,” to use Kapur’s obfuscatory euphemism–are the primary difficulty. The Republican commitment to botchery is real, and it does compound ObamaCare’s problems, but it is a secondary problem.