I’m going to go ahead and accept this as an answer to the question I posed earlier. Why, yes, it was indeed insane to think that ObamaCare would be a boon to Democrats in the midterms.

This one’s for you, Missouri!

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”…

The confidential presentation, available in full here and provided to POLITICO by a source on the call, suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal…

The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed…

The presentation’s final page of “Don’ts” counsels against claiming “the law will reduce costs and deficit.”

The powerpoint comes from a lefty shop called the Herndon Alliance, which “partners” with ObamaCare shills like the AFL-CIO, SEIU, MoveOn, etc. I’m not sure how much of this is revelatory: Two weeks ago Claire McCaskill responded to the anti-mandate vote in Missouri by saying there’s still plenty of work to do on the provisions of the law, which is vague enough to mean virtually anything. For instance, no doubt plenty of House progressives want to “improve” it by passing a public option. But even so, the fact that they’re now so far in retreat that they’re willing to make rhetorical concessions even on their idiotic core plank about bending the cost curve shows just how worried they are that the GOP (a) will be making big, big gains in November and (b) might just have the public support needed to get a serious pro-repeal movement going among the electorate. This is pure defense. Flashback exit quotation via Jim Geraghty: “If Republicans want to campaign against what we’ve done… that is a fight I want to have.”

Update: From Ace, a plea on turnout:

Either way, liberals will be taught a lesson this year.

But they can learn one of two lessons:

1, America doesn’t mind a little socialism and the electoral condquences for pushing it are minor and livable, or

2, My God What Have We Done.

We need the lesson to be 2.

If it’s 1, we lose something forever.

Update: From the comments: “So, their big argument for why they should be re-elelected is that they promise to fix the horrible legislation they lied to us about and passed over the public’s very vocal objections. Good luck with that.”

Update: I’ve given you the “Waterloo” video a dozen times so let’s try this one instead.