If life were but a metaphor, the headlines would now be reading: "Train Does Not Wreck, Pulls Into Station 7 Minutes Early." Of course, I am speaking of Obamacare, a subject which Republicans have all but reduced (in their own minds, at least) to a mumbling mantra: "trainwreck... trainwreck... trainwreck." But as more and more good news appears, the real story (with apologies to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of course) is "the train which did not wreck in the night."

Read Complete Article »

This was a big deal. It is worth remembering. Johnson used the popularity he inherited after John F. Kennedy was assassinated to get this crucial law passed. Back then, it wasn't a clear "Democrats versus Republicans" split on the issue of civil rights, it was more geographic. Southern Democrats were the ones fighting the hardest against such legislation. Johnson is reported to have said after signing the bill that he had "lost the South for a generation" for the Democrats by doing so.

Read Complete Article »

Congress is now doing what it normally does, in an election year. This is not intended to sound cynical, as I actually think it is a good thing for a divided Congress to stand up for its divided beliefs -- even while knowing that almost none of the bills it now votes on have a prayer of becoming law before the election. But these bills do serve an important purpose, and that is to define the two parties' differing agendas and priorities for the campaign. The clearer the picture that emerges between Democrats and Republicans, the better idea the citizenry has of what it is supporting in the ballot box, come November. So I actually welcome all the posturing which is now happening in both houses.

Read Complete Article »

I say all this as a preface to commenting on a television program I watched (well, most of it) last night. Needless to say, commenting on pop culture isn't my strong point, and is in fact a rare occurrence in these pages. But I was so struck by what I saw that I felt it merited mentioning.

Read Complete Article »

We are in the midst of a political battle over the Obamacare numbers right now, so it seemed like a good time to examine what they all mean, in an attempt to interject some clarity into a very confusing debate. The numbers will change over time, as will (no doubt) the claims made from both sides of the debate; but without a little context the numbers by themselves don't actually say much. And as time goes by, one particular number will become the most important of all the data -- and this number just got better today (more on this at the end).

Read Complete Article »

Today we're turning over the whole talking points section to the president, because he certainly deserves a victory lap after announcing this week that -- against all odds, and against all the slings and arrows of misfortune -- 7.1 million people signed up for health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges.

Read Complete Article »

The reason for this recycling is our version of President Obama's "spiking the football" this week, in his announcement that Obamacare had astoundingly met the original Congressional Budget Office goal of signing up over seven million people in the first open enrollment period. Call it Obama bragging about Obamacare's "vital statistics." What we're going to do today is review the last nine months of our own predictions on not just Obamacare but the politics of Obamacare, heading into the 2014 midterm election season. If you don't want to read all these excerpts, here's a short version that could fit on Twitter: The politics of Obamacare are now going to pivot to real data instead of Republican doom-and-gloom horror stories.

Read Complete Article »

President Obama's job approval polling was down a bit last month, ending three months of positive news. He didn't slip back much, but the reversal does bring up a serious question: is Obama stuck in a "new normal" of job approval numbers in the low-40s range? We'll take a look at possible answers to this in a moment, but first let's take a look at the new monthly chart.

Read Complete Article »

Everyone's talking about Obamacare today, since it is the deadline for signing up for health insurance in the first "open enrollment" period for the marketplace exchanges. The final numbers aren't in yet (and won't be for at least another few weeks), but from the numbers already released, the Obamacare website seems to have made an impressive turnaround from its ignoble beginnings. What will be interesting about the final numbers is that since Obama announced late last week that they had already hit the 6 million mark, we'll be able to see exactly how big the wave of last-minute signups has been for the final four days of the official signup period. If the final number comes in at, say, 6.5 million, then half a million people will have successfully signed up in four days. That is a small miracle in and of itself, since on the first day the website went live, it only managed to sign up a total of six people.

Read Complete Article »

The Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases where corporations are requiring certain women to wear a scarlet "A" on their uniforms... um, no wait... that can't be right... let me check my notes....

Read Complete Article »