A president whose credibility is disappearing faster than a Hershey bar snuck into a weekend weight-loss retreat threatens to veto the Keep Your Plan Bill passed by the Republican House on Friday.
Good luck with that. In case the president hasn’t noticed, his big problem with ObamaCare is no longer Republicans. It’s Democrats, specifically those who fear their ObamaCare votes may cost them their jobs come the 2014 mid-term elections. Which explains why 39 House Democrats voted with Republicans here.
Remember, these defecting Democratic votes are exactly what Obama’s press conference Thursday was supposed to prevent. Meanwhile, over in the Senate, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu is also making her lack of faith in President Obama known by pushing her own ObamaCare repair legislation.
Assuming the Democratic Senate passes her bill and it goes to conference with the House bill, will the president really veto it? Is Majority Leader Harry Reid willing to risk the Democrats losing the Senate by doing the president’s bidding? Will Obama’s new promises bring Democrats back to the fold — or make even more of them conclude it’s now every man for himself?
The president has no good options. Even delay has its price. Previous delays succeeded in hiding the worst aspects of the new law from the public. In this case the American people know just what’s in store for them when the mid-terms are over.
Here’s the other irony: In contrast to ObamaCare, which was passed without a single Republican vote, the legislative reforms the president hates will be the only truly bipartisan votes on ObamaCare.
And that brings us full circle. When the Affordable Care Act was rammed through Congress, it happened because Obama persuaded the swing Democrats he needed. Three-and-a-half years later, the whole future of ObamaCare has now been thrown into peril because the Democrats no longer trust their own president.