Dana Milbank expresses the conventional wisdom that Obamacare will never be repealed. He makes several arguments to this effect, some of which deserve (and will get, mark my words!) a more extended treatment. His major point, less deserving of extended consideration, is that Alf Landon campaigned in 1936 on repealing Social Security and we all know how that turned out.

I think there are a lot of problems with this parallel. For now I’ll just mention two. The cost/benefit ratio for Obamacare’s early years seems likely to be much higher than that for Social Security’s early years, because of the way the legislation was structured. Also, Landon lost, and lost big, which rather reduced his ability to implement his platform. I’m guessing that a lot of people running on repeal this year are going to win.