Sebelius to resign as secretary of HHS

So they hit their target of seven million sign-ups and she’s still out the door before the dust settles, eh? Seems … not so triumphant.

Allegedly she jumped rather than waiting to be pushed, but the Times catches something I missed last week. She wasn’t at the Rose Garden ceremony where O declared Mission Accomplished after they hit seven million. Hard to believe she wouldn’t want to be there to join the victory lap after taking so much grief from so many sides for so long over the website. Was she not invited?

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Officials said Ms. Sebelius, 65, made the decision to resign and was not forced out. But the frustration at the White House over her performance had become increasingly clear, as administration aides worried that the crippling problems at HealthCare.gov, the website set up to enroll Americans in insurance exchanges, would result in lasting damage to the president’s legacy…

Last month, Ms. Sebelius approached Mr. Obama and began a series of conversations about her future, Mr. McDonough said. The secretary told the president that the March 31 deadline for sign-ups under the health care law — and rising enrollment numbers — provided an opportunity for change, and that he would be best served by someone who was not the target of so much political ire, Mr. McDonough said.

“What was clear is that she thought that it was time to transition the leadership to somebody else,” he said. “She’s made clear in other comments publicly that she recognizes that she takes a lot of the incoming. She does hope — all of us hope — that we can get beyond the partisan sniping.”

Her replacement is Sylvia Mathews Burwell, currently head of Obama’s OMB and someone whom, says the Times, O thinks will bring “an intense focus and management acumen to the department” in contrast to the now departing supervisor of the Healthcare.gov Chernobyl. The confirmation hearings will, I trust, be zesty.

As for Sebelius, I’m nominating her right now to replace Brendan Eich as Mozilla CEO. She’s got plenty of website expertise. I’m sure we’d all be glad to see Firefox “benefit” from it.

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Update: Touche.

Update: For old time’s sake:

Update: Sorry, my mistake. Sebelius *was* at the Rose Garden ceremony with Obama but apparently ended up being snubbed anyway. He didn’t mention her when he thanked various pols from the podium for making ObamaCare possible.

Update: Here you go, guys — the rapidly congealing leftist conventional wisdom courtesy of the Voxsplainer-in-chief.

https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/454401345462603776

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