As we know from its many apologists, Obamacare is always on the verge of becoming popular with the general public. And yet, for some reason, it never actually gets there. Today, Politico reports on a remarkable Gallup poll:
Support for Obamacare continues to decline, with the law hitting a new low in approval, and a new high in disapproval, as the second enrollment period has opened for Americans, according to Gallup.
Just 37 percent approve of the Affordable Care Act, 1 percentage point less than the previous low recorded in January, Gallup found in a new survey released Monday.
The pollster notes the approval results are a “new numerical low” for Obamacare.
We’ve now been through the sales process, the drafting process, and the process by which an actual bill was introduced, passed in Congress, and signed by the president. We’ve experienced a gradual, if occasionally chaotic, implementation; we’ve voted in two elections, during which the law was debated at length; and we’ve watched a Supreme Court challenge that resulted in the individual mandate’s being upheld and Medicaid expansion’s being somewhat checked. We’ve endured speech after speech from the president and we’ve suffered endless entreaties to “move on,” to acknowledge that “Obama won,” and to treat the measure as if it were settled law that could — and should — never, ever be repealed. In Congress, in newspapers, and in the culture at large, the Left has made its case over and over and over again – to the extent that those who oppose the law have been accused of being murderers and wreckers and enemies of government itself. Elsewhere, The goalposts have been moved and the dissenters have been lambasted. More recently, victory has been declared repeatedly, with even its failures being sold as successes. All in all, we have talked about little else for the last four years.
And yet, despite all of this, the damn thing is still extremely unpopular. Conservatives who are told that their “obsession with Obamacare” puts them on the fringe should make sure that they recognize the truth and that they remind the American public of it whenever they get the chance: That, almost half a decade since its passage, those who refuse to give up on the issue are not witches; they’re you.