Panicked Senate Democrats To Obama: Get Your Act Together (Or ObamaCare Gets It)

by JASmius

You know how I've been talking quite a bit lately about how the Obamedia has begun detaching the "Ob"?  Looks like vulnerable Senate Democrats, seeing O-Care run their political lives right before their eyes, are headed towards the exits as well:

Panic is growing among Senate Democrats facing re-election next year that the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare could prove to be the final nail in the coffin of their Washington careers.

Sixteen senators met with President Barack Obama this week with a simple message: Get your act together or your healthcare reform could lose our support.

And they made it clear they are not prepared to be the sacrificial lambs on the altar of Obama's troubled healthcare agenda. [emphases added]

Other reports described this closed-door "intervention" as "tense" and "testy".

You know how I've also been talking quite a bit lately about how O-Care's "Overton window" is hurtling back in our direction like a cruise missile?  Here you go.

Ah, what a difference three and a half years make.  Democrats knew, of course, that after they railroaded the ACA down the public's collective gullet against its collective will in the most corrupt, tyrannical legislative atrocity ever perpetrated in the history of American politics, they were going to pay a short-term political price for it.  And they did, losing the House by the biggest margin in sixty-four years and coming within three foolish Tea Party primary choices of falling to 50-50 in the Senate.  But they also understood those losses to be only short-term.  Once False Messiah was couped re-elected to another term and his namesake actually took effect, everything would work like, um, magic, the American people would lie back and enjoy it realize that their bright, shiny new policies were waaaaaaaaaay better than the "substandard" "bad apple" health insurance they had been laboring under, and everybody would live happily ever after in a one-party Donktopia.

Fast-forward three and a half years.  Nothing works, the bright, shiny new policies suck Chris Christie's ass after a long, hard night at the Mexican buffet, turns out Americans really did like their old policies - and some literally can't live without them - but are having them imperiously taken away from them anyway, after having been bluntly and unequivocally promised oppositely, and now that Donktopia is receding faster than the poor bastard who ventured to use the rest room Chris Christie just hindenberged after a long, hard night at the Mexican buffet.

Or, as Jonah Goldberg put it this morning:

On Wednesday, 15 Senate Democrats trekked up to the White House to express their dismay over the impending calamity before them. Not since I felt the first gastrointestinal rumblings after eating a burrito at Newark airport has bowel-stewing panic been so palpable. Whatever the bobbleheads at MSNBC may say, they saw Terry McAuliffe's double-digit lead evaporate like so much Mr. Pibb on the engine block on an overheated Chevy. Obama's weaselly apology last night was almost certainly the result of that meeting.

Like that's going to be enough.

Put another way, Democrats are willing to pay a short-term political price for long-term political gain; they are not nearly as willing to pay for a long-term political cataclysm with their own political careers.  And that may make them belatedly amenable to dealing, even in the neighborhood of Senator Cruz's terms:

Already, Senators Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, both of whom are up for re-election in 2014, have separately proposed legislation they believe will curb the public's anger at the healthcare reforms....

"I am very frustrated with the rollout of the exchanges," said Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon,  who also faces a 2014 re-election, in a statement. "The dysfunction and delays are unacceptable.

"After meeting with the president, I remain deeply convinced that this is a 'show-me' moment."....

The warnings are already there. The Democrats "are going to get slaughtered" unless the Affordable Care Act makes a "miraculous recovery," syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News, pointing to Terry McAuliffe's narrow victory in the election for Virginia governor, which, he said, went from "almost landslide to cliffhanger," as ObamaCare dominated the news in the final few days....

"If we can't pivot off this by the new year, then we're in trouble," the senior aide told Politico.

Harry Reid, who of course has no plans to bring any anti-ObamaCare measure to the Senate floor for consideration, no matter how tiny, just might just find himself with a gen-u-ine rebellion on his hands.  And the more stubborn he and his Popeil "god" get, the more indelible the ink on those Senate Democrat death warrants will become - and the "testier" and "tenser" the next "interventions" will get.

Exit question: Funny how Senator Cruz is looking more and more reasonable with each passing day, huh?