You knew this was coming. After their self-congratulatory announcement that ObamaCare had in fact managed to reach seven million enrollees two weeks ago (whatever the heck “enrollment” is even supposed to mean these days), the numbers after the deadline extension grace period (for people already “in line” for the exchanges when the March 31st deadline hit, you see) that ended on April 15th were only going to get better. ObamaCare has now hit an even more triumphant eight million “enrollees” — well beyond the seven-million projection goal that, only a few short months ago, they were trying to claim they had never actually made in the first place:

President Obama on Thursday announced that 8 million people enrolled in private health plans on ObamaCare’s exchanges so far, surpassing the most optimistic projections for the program’s first year. …

“The point is, the repeal debate is and should be over. The Affordable Care Act is working. I know the American people don’t want us to spend the next two-and-a-half years fighting settled battles,” Obama told reporters in the White House briefing room. …

Obama specifically targeted Republican critics of the healthcare law, saying they “still can’t bring themselves to admit that the Affordable Care Act is working.”

“It’s well past time to move on as a country,” Obama said. “These endless, fruitless repeal efforts come at a cost.”

Still no definite word on exactly how many of these “enrollees” have actually enrolled by paying for their selected plans, nor how many were previously uninsured. The president did reveal some demographics, however, informing us that 35 percent of the signups were from people under the age of 35. That figure is much more encouraging for reaching the hoped-for 40 percent roughly necessary for avoiding the ever-dreaded deaths spiral scenario, if true — but only 28 percent of those were actually signups from individuals between the ages of 18 and 34 (which, as the White House tells us, is virtually the same youth percentage that signed up in Massachusetts in the first year of their healthcare overhaul, so no worries!).

The eight million in the system does make the “debate about repeal” that much more difficult, but I wonder if President Obama will still be speaking quite so confidently about how definitively “ObamaCare is working” when they finally get around to allowing the employer mandate to really kick in — which, for some super mysterious reason, they have unilaterally decided to delay until well after the midterm elections, among other things. So odd.