Chowing Down on Pres. Obama's Entrails: The Sloppy Obamacare Rollout

It's December 1st, and yesterday, November 30th, was the day that Pres. Obama promised to have Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, fixed and ready for business. Jeffrey D. Zients, formerly of the Office of Management and Budgets, was the Fixer-in-Chief. He said the rollout debacle was a mixture of "slow decision-making and diffuse or unclear accountability."

The rollout October 1st, of course, was a disaster. Heads should have rolled, but had Pres. Obama fired Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose job it was to roll out the Obamacare website, would Republicans have confirmed Obama's next appointment for that post? Of course not.

I resent the fact that in his Obamacare rollout, Obama figuratively gave himself an amateur appendectomy and forgot to sew himself up. He left his entrails wide open for Republicans to munch on. He -- I doubt Kathleen Sebelius had anything to do with the choice -- hired CGI Federal to create the HealthCare.gov website despite the fact that the company had a history of previous screw-ups. 

That aside, was no one keeping track of the company's progress? Was the sloppy, terrible rollout really so unpredictable?

The issue is competence, or the lack thereof. Competence was lacking at every level: the computer company's, HHS', and that of the president himself. People talk about Pres. Obama's ability to recover from this fiasco, which has cost $600 million so far in the original creation of the website ($400 mill) and the fix ($200 mill).

 I resent the fact that such incompetence occurred in the first place because Democrats who supported the Affordable Health Care Act in Congress are suffering as a result.

After the three-week government shutdown, which cost the American economy $24 billion and killed many small businesses, Democrats could have had the Republicans for lunch in the 2014 Congressional elections. The tilt was definitely in the Democrats' favor prior to the sloppy rollout of Obamacare. Now Democrats are running scared of Obama and Obamacare. 

Will Democrats survive their fling with the master of "change"? Obama's promise of change was a mirage the entire time, and don't say I didn't warn you.

The one piece of good news I think that Democrats can be sure of is that Republicans won't be smart enough to nominate a candidate who could actually win in 2016: Chris Christie. Republicans will never forgive Christie for his "bromance" with Obama following Hurricane Sandy's devastation of Christie's state of New Jersey. 

Bipartisanship in the face of a natural disaster or for any other reason is the one unpardonable sin Republicans find themselves incapable of forgiving. I think that single fact bodes well for another Democratic president in 2016 despite the disappointments of the current president.