By David Catron on 5.15.12 @ 6:10AM
The president’s re-election campaign makes it clear that he believes the voters are idiots.
Last week Obama's re-election team released a television ad in a variety of battleground states listing the president's "accomplishments." A shameless knockoff of Ronald Reagan's famous "morning in America" spot, this preposterous piece of propaganda begins with the administration's standard complaint about the economic crisis Obama "inherited" and goes on to claim that he somehow saved the country because, "He believed in us. Fought for us." What he really believes about us, however, is better illustrated by what is missing from the ad. It contains no mention whatsoever of Obamacare, the health care "reform" law that Obama and his supporters have, until the beginning of the current election cycle, referred to as a "historic" piece of legislation and his "most important domestic achievement."
Such a glaring omission suggests the president and his advisors believe the voters are too dumb to remember that he and his congressional accomplices wasted a year cobbling together their unconstitutional health care boondoggle while unemployment raged out of control. It isn't simply that Obama did nothing about the jobs problem while expending an enormous amount of time and no small amount of taxpayer money on backroom deals like the "Cornhusker kickback." He ignored the pleas of the voters to set health reform aside until he had done something about an unemployment rate that was skyrocketing. At the time, even progressive bastions like the Huffington Post lamented that Obama "forced a health care bill at the expense of vitally needed focus on job creation."
The absence of Obamacare from the president's new campaign ad does not mean, however, that the White House itself has forgotten about the ironically titled Affordable Care Act. Obama's reelection team is still trying to exploit it via low-profile initiatives intended to spread the good news without making the president or his surrogates actually talk about it. Thus, on Mother's Day, the White House web site featured special e-cards ostensibly designed to help people "show some appreciation for the mom in your life," including one that begins, "Happy Mother's Day from the Affordable Care Act," and proceeds to point out that, "Being a mom isn't a pre-existing condition. It's a joy." Can you imagine the "joy" your mother would have experienced had you sent something like this to her on Sunday?
I'm not sure that even the most glassy-eyed Obamazombie is stupid enough to give his mom an Obamacare e-card on Mother's Day, but it's clear that Obama and his minions believe such people exist. It's also obvious that the president's men think voters are clueless enough to believe the phony statistics listed on the e-card about how women have already benefited from "reform," and how these alleged goodies are somehow free of charge. And the contempt with which the Obama crew views the electorate naturally precludes any fear that some recipient of the Obamacare missive will know that the Supreme Court is about to strike down the guaranteed issue provision of the law and thus render the e-card's claims about pre-existing conditions as empty as the president's 2008 promises.
Ironically, the president's empty promises will be the undoing of the Obamacare provision that forbids discrimination pursuant to pre-existing conditions. In 2008, Obama promised not to support an individual mandate. The president's failure to keep his word, combined with the unconstitutionality of the mandate, is what landed Obamacare in the Supreme Court and forced his solicitor general to tell the justices that the guaranteed issue and community rating provisions of the law must be invalidated if the mandate is struck down. But the president's re-election team no doubt believes the voters have forgotten his brazen flip-flop on the individual mandate, just as they believe we have forgotten his various flip-flops on gay marriage.
Obama and his accomplices certainly believe the voters are too clueless to remember his promises that Obamacare would reduce health insurance premiums, or to notice that our health care costs are still increasing at twice the rate of inflation. Likewise, they believe the public is too dumb to remember the president's promise that his economic policies would prevent unemployment from reaching 8 percent, or to notice that average unemployment during his first term has exceeded 9 percent. And they obviously believe that the voters don't have enough sense to remember how badly they wanted Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress to give up their health care obsession and focus on the most serious issue facing the country then and now.
The president and his men are wrong. The voters want lower unemployment, lower gas prices, lower federal deficits, and genuine health reform. And public opinion surveys suggest that red herrings are not going to change these priorities. Nor will slick ads that claim Obama "fought for us." The reality is that he has fought against us on health reform and any number of other issues. And attempts to shove disasters like Obamacare down the memory hole aren't going to work. The voters are smarter than the president and his minions think.
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