Chuck Schumer: Obamacare Was a Mistake, But Only in the Timing!

Today on NRO

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: Russell Brand wants the world to know that beneath the clown makeup is the face of a Serious Man. Brand Unawareness.

JONAH GOLDBERG: The president’s real goal with his immigration executive order was to enrage Republicans. Barack Obama, Troll.

BEN CARSON: Illegal executive orders reward illegal immigration. The President Who Would Be King.

W. BRADFORD WILCOX: Calling in the cops is not enough to address rape on campus. The Right and Campus Rape.

SLIDESHOW: White House Turkeys.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

November 26, 2014

Chuck Schumer: Obamacare Was a Mistake, But Only in the Timing!

Let’s take a story like this and figure out what the real angle is:

Sen. Chuck Schumer upbraided his own party Tuesday for pushing the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010.

While Schumer emphasized during a speech at the National Press Club that he supports the law and that its policies "are and will continue to be positive changes," he argued that the Democrats acted wrongly in using their new mandate after the 2008 election to focus on the issue rather than the economy at the height of a terrible recession.

There’s some truth to Schumer’s theory, of course. Obamacare never polled well. Deep-rooted national economic anxiety exploded in late 2008 and never dissipated completely.

Remember that thing called “the stimulus”? Schumer’s theory of “How It All Went Wrong” requires us to think the stimulus was a success, and Obamacare was a success, and that the problem for the Democrats was just the order of things:

"After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle-class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus, but unfortunately Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them," Schumer said. "We took their mandate and put all of our focus on the wrong problem — health care reform."

If Americans continue to feel such widespread, deep-rooted economic anxiety, just how much of a success was that “partial success” of the stimulus?

Most Democrats — following the lead of their president — passed the stimulus and believed they had fixed the economy. Do not forget this stimulus anecdote from New York magazine, November 29, 2009:

But the most damaging consequence of all may have been inside the White House, where bullishness about how rapidly the stimulus would kick in led to foolish projections that unemployment would peak at 8 percent — and where the bill’s passage bred a certain cockiness and complacency about the need to drive a sustained economic message in the months thereafter. “I recently talked to a very senior friend of mine in the White House, and I said, ‘How did we not spend a year talking about the economy?’ ” a Democratic think-tank maven recalls. “And he said, ‘Look, I think Barack did the stimulus and he thought he checked the box and he moved on.’ I said, ‘That’s not governing, dude. That’s some other thing.’ ”

The ailments of the American economy are too big, interconnected, and complicated for any one giant Keynesian spending spree to fix -- particularly one that that ends up as the usual crony-capitalist, special-interest giveaway. Do enough of our workers really have the skills to compete against foreign competition? How can we expect wages to increase when we’re importing workers — particularly low-skilled and unskilled workers — from other countries? Are great ideas being born in some big dreamer’s garage? Haven’t underwater mortgages made it harder for workers to move to areas of the country with job growth? Are our universities churning out too many sociology majors and not enough engineers? Aren’t too many schools at every level failing to prepare students for the workforce?

Schumer needs an explanation for two consecutive blowout losses in the midterms that indicate Democrats have a difficult time winning without Obama’s personality on the ballot. He’s in the right neighborhood, by recognizing that economic fears are still strong, but he can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge that neither the stimulus nor Obamacare lived up to the hype for the average American.

May Your Thanksgiving Travel Not Pass Through America’s Worst Airport

In preparation for the busiest travel day of the year, Gizmodo polled its readers on their choice for the country’s worst airport, and their top eight include:

8) Kansas City International Airport
7) Dulles International Airport
6) Philadelphia International Airport
5) Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport
4) Newark Liberty International Airport
3) O'Hare International Airport
2) Los Angeles International Airport
1) LaGuardia Airport

The first observation: Are bookstores dying in airports? Do people on planes not read anymore? If so, this strikes me as a strikingly depressing development for our society. It’s one of the few places where you can get relative peace and quiet, you’re out of cell-phone range, and you probably don’t have Internet access (and if you do, it’s pretty slow). Heck, reading is one of the few things you can do comfortably in an airline seat. Yes, perhaps everything has shifted to e-readers and Nooks, but there’s something so inviting about seeing an actual bookstore, as opposed to a newsstand, near your gate with time to kill.

The second observation: I realize dining in an airport is rarely going to be good. The frequent traveler’s best hope is that it be not bad. A variety of options is nice. I seem to recall perfectly acceptable burger-and-a-beer dining experiences in Raleigh, Charlotte, Miami, and Savannah.

In my experience, Dulles is very hit-and-miss. For some trips the TSA line moves pretty smoothly (particularly on mornings and weekdays), other times it’s an interminably slow-moving ordeal. Some corners of Dulles have a decent selection of eateries and at least one small bookstore, but other far-off gates leave you with a Dunkin’ Donuts and that’s it. My new home in Authenticity Woods is roughly equidistant from Dulles and Reagan National Airport, and Reagan always seems to offer a much smoother departure.

Fort Lauderdale is strikingly bad for departures, considering how busy it is (at least when a cruise ship arrives). Somebody needed to turn up the air conditioning, every gate seemed crowded, the dining options were pretty limited, and each gate area just seemed too small for the amount of passengers waiting for their flight.

Leaving from Orlando is a mess every time — lots of families with a ton of carry-on luggage taking forever to get through the TSA scanners. There are a lot of shopping and dining options before the security lines, but I figure most travelers — particularly if they’ve experienced Orlando’s tedious lines — just want to get through security and then grab a bite or browse the stores. Of course, on the other side, the pickings are a lot slimmer.

Houston seemed to work fine on my recent business trips, although I recall one family trip there a couple years ago when we decided, “we’ll eat after we get our luggage.” Surprise! No food options after the luggage carousels. That led to a long drive through Houston’s labyrinthine highway system, at night, with two very cranky boys.

Denver seems to have a pretty decent selection of eateries and stores. Dallas seems laid out oddly, in that giant ring form, but it has worked okay, and it still has a decent bookstore. Both Portland and Seattle had smaller airports than I expected, but I got in and out pretty easily both times.

It’s Thanksgiving. Be Thankful. And Happy.

Moe Lane offers short, succinct advice on “How to talk politics with liberal family members at Thanksgiving this year.”

You’ll recall that last year Organizing for Action urged its members to talk up Obamacare at the dinner table. My assessment still stands:

Here’s a crazy idea: Treat your family members as people you love and appreciate — or at least tolerate — instead of targets for political conversion. You only get one or two families in this life — the one you’re born into, and the one you marry into. Maybe if you’re lucky, you become “like a son” or “like a sister” to another. There’s a lot to talk about in this world beyond politics, and chances are you’re not going to persuade disagreeing relatives, anyway.

From one of my favorite, and most personal essays, from 2008:

By midday, the first round of relatives will start showing up at your door. From California to Maine, families will begin the complicated logistics of who parks where, and who will box in whom in the driveway. Does this need to be put in the oven? Is there room for this in the fridge? Have you basted recently? Has anyone seen the gravy boat?

Down the hall from the kitchen, Americans across the country will check in to Detroit to see if its NFL team has gotten any better. The early afternoon game of the Lions against the Team That Isn’t the Lions has had little meaning or playoff implications — at least since Barry Sanders retired. But that means football fans are able to watch objectively, just to appreciate the game as it is played — and there’s a good chance that a player you’ve never heard of will have an unexpectedly good day, claiming a Turkey-related award from a network color commentator. A few hours later — having established that, no, Detroit has not gotten any better — football fans will bid farewell to the Motor City for another year.

Later in the day, Dallas plays Not Dallas in a game that often matters — but by that time, America’s Team is competing with America’s Feast. Those who care about the game’s outcome will drop utensils conspicuously in order to dart into the den and check the score before returning to the table with their third or fourth clean fork.

By early evening at my house, my father-in-law will offer to continue our bizarre tradition of a shot of Thanksgiving tequila. There will be toasts, laughter, prayers.

You can probably guess the topics of conversation and points of contention around your table already, as every family has its hardy perennials. If you’re reading this site, you might be discussing the election. In my case, I’ll rejoin my efforts to trigger a reenactment of the Titanic brawl of a few years’ back over whether Philadelphia is a dead city.

ADDENDA: No Jolt tomorrow. Black Friday edition coming in two days. Today’s edition of the Three Martini Lunch podcast will feature what Greg Corombus and I are thankful for, and Friday’s edition will feature our tongue-in-cheek Black Friday “gifts” for various political figures.

This week’s edition of “The Jim and Mickey Show” is all about Thanksgiving traditions, difficult dinner table conversations, “tofurky” and vegan guests, and whether or not it’s crazy to camp out outside Best Buy or other big box stores to get the Black Friday special sales.

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