HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's botched Obamacare rollout cost Democrats dearly.
But the trends are still in their favor.
My working theory is that by November, Obamacare will be a net positive for Democrats. Republicans have made much hay about people losing their health care plans because of the ACA, which is worse than Hitler. So how can they then turn around and run on taking away health care for millions more?
That is why Republicans are now forced to come up with a replacement plan, because repeal is no longer good enough. Even Arkansas's heavily Republican legislature faced that reality yesterday.
And while the law's botched roll out—still no one fired for that disaster!—did Democrats no favor, the polls have been slowly but steadily been moving off that nadir. Majorities of Americans want to see the law improved, not repealed. Individual elements of the law poll strongly, meaning that people like what's in the law. Conservatives are still finding it hecka hard to find any true Obamacare horror stories. And despite the tens of millions that the Koch brothers are spending trying to undermine the law, this is happening:
Support for candidates who voted for the health-care law has improved dramatically in recent months, a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Tuesday shows.
The survey found respondents almost exactly split on the question of whether they would be more or less likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supports the Affordable Care Act, with 34% saying they would be more likely to vote for the candidate and 36% saying they would be less likely to do so. Some 27% said it would not make a difference.
That’s a significant jump in support levels from November—a month after the troubled launch of HealthCare.gov, the federal insurance exchange that serves 36 states—when just 21% said a candidate’s support for the law would make them more likely to vote for them, compared to 37% who said it would make them less likely to do so. A much larger percentage—40%—were indifferent.
In November, there was a 16-point gap against candidates who supported the ACA. Today, it's just a 2-point gap, or a 14-point net swing in just four months. And thus far, nothing suggests that trend is plateauing. The more people get insurance, the more people know people who are benefiting, the more time passes without genuine horror stories, the more people like it.
Republicans are betting everything on Obamacare opposition. So far, that's looking like a shaky proposition, at best.