The O'Bongo admin has decided that the absolutely best possible way forward for DumbassCare (now that healthcare.gov is fixed) is to do
a PR blitz.Which is to say, a high profile turd polishing dog and pony show.
This is their only course of action because 1) O'Bongo has sworn that there is zero chance of DumbassCare being repealed while he is president and 2) the law, as written, is unworkable and staggeringly unpopular.
This is, actually, great news for the opposition because it will only make matters worse for the Democrats. They will not do the one thing necessary to reverse their fortunes, repeal it.
So, why bring this up? Well, it turns out that there is
an interesting article with a tie in to this situation. The article cites this example of the phenomenon:
One example that Prof. Ferguson cited was that of a man approaching a hostile dog chained to a post. The dog growls but does not bark until the man gets within a certain distance — say, 10 feet. At that point, the dog shifts suddenly from mere warning to outright attack. However, if the man takes one step back, the dog does not suddenly settle back down into warning behavior. Instead, the dog continues in attack mode — active barking and snarling — until the man has retreated a substantial distance farther than the point at which the attack mode commenced — say, 20 feet.
The dog’s behavior is not a smooth, contiguous function of the man’s distance. Instead, it is catastrophic and asymmetric.
In the case of DumbassCare, the tipping point (the author uses the term, "splitting factor") came on or about October 1st when the individual health insurance policy cancellations came and the new rates were revealed. You could throw in the non-functional healthcare.gov thing and other issues, too. I think that the website and the other issues (if you like your plan you can keep your plan lie, losing the doctor/hospital of your choice, the potential (likelihood) of being a victim of identity theft), some not yet having even occurred (actual denial of care and the subsequent bankruptcies and/or loss of life), make the tipping point worse...i.e., harder to overcome.
But anyway, getting back to the illustration...
The growling/barking dog part started the moment that DumbassCare was proposed and culminated when the Democrats lost the House in 2010. The dog went into attack mode on or around October 1st. However, instead of backing off, the man in this scenario is continuing to walk toward the clearly berserk dog and the PR blitz is the man trying to play with the dog as if it isn't in "crazed and foaming at the mouth attack mode". The longer that the man puts off the inevitable and only solution, backing off (repeal), the further away he will have to go to get the dog to stop attacking, stop barking and growling and go back to sleep.
The author of the article puts it thusly:
Now, Obama has tried to minimize these splitting factors by delaying or changing implementation of certain aspects of Obamacare. But short of delaying the entire ACA for a year or two, there isn’t that much more he can do to reduce these splitting factors — hence the abrupt shift in Americans’ reactions and opinions. If anything, these combined splitting factors are going to increase over the next 12 months, widening the opinion gap between the prior state and the current one (i.e., even greater dissatisfaction) and widening the back-tracking required for a shift back to more passive tolerance of Obamacare.
In light of that, Obama’s planned “PR blitz” for Obamacare is like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. It will do little to move the electorate far enough “away” from Obamacare’s actual impact to cause a reverse catastrophe back to the merely dissatisfied acceptance. Furthermore, his announced decision that “We’re not repealing it as long as I’m president” shows an unwillingness to reduce any of the splitting factors.
In short, things are likely to get worse for Obamacare, for Obama, and for the Democratic Party as a whole.
I think that the author is mostly correct in his theory but I take issue with the notion that it is possible to go back to a "more passive tolerance" of the law because that "passive tolerance" was of a law that was unimplemented. BO sez that he will never allow the law to be repealed so I don't see how passive tolerance can be ever be regained. And really, what we are talking about here is passive tolerance of Democrat policies. Because the thing is...as long as Democrat policies are theoretical or, at best, not affecting very many people directly (e.g. "the rich") then passive tolerance is the default mode. Now, however, for a substantial number of voters (with many more to join their ranks shortly), passive tolerance is a luxury they can no longer afford. Literally.
So, good article. I recommend giving it a look.
