Lessons Learned: 2014 Midterm Post-Mortem

At the end of every Godfather movie there was a point when Michael Corleone's enemies, wrongly believing that the Corleone power was destroyed, learned the hard way that Michael's reach was long and that he had no use for mercy. Michael's antagonists never saw the purge coming. Although unlike the Corleone rivals, the White House and Democratic elected officials knew that a midterm defeat was likely, I don't think that they fully anticipated the depth and breadth of what went down. In fact, this was beyond even Corleone capacities. This was some Breaking Bad stuff. Across the country Democrats were shanked in the shower, thrown off balconies and beaten in the head with barbells. And only a few lived to tell the tale. This was a loss of historic, almost biblical proportions. The Republicans almost swept the field. There are more Republicans in the House of Representatives than any time since the 1920s. There will be 31 Republican governors. Republicans took back most of the South with a vengeance and made electoral gains in Midwest or Eastern states previously considered to be solid blue. Although Senator Landrieu of Louisiana survived to fight another day, the fact that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is pulling funding for Louisiana political commercials suggests that they don't think her chances for reelection in a runoff are very good.

Whether you win or lose a contest you always reveal something about yourself. You should learn something that you didn't know before. What do I think that the Democrats should learn from this debacle? Well there are a number of things that ought to be, if not taken for gospel, given greater consideration by current or would be elected Democratic politicians.

Men vote too. Their worldview matters. A Democratic party that can't figure out how to win the male vote or a Democratic party that snarks that an election is not legitimate because the opposition did really well among men is not a party that will do well in midterms. And it may not even do that well in a Presidential election, given skillful enough opposition candidates.  The gender gap cuts both ways. If we can criticize Republicans for not appealing enough to women then we should also ding Democrats for not appealing enough to men, especially white men. The gender gap is also a gap in perspectives between white and non-white women and married and single women. The "war on women" rhetoric plays well to the feminist or single women base in Democratic primaries. It's extremely useful when a Republican says something stupid about rape, women, abortion or sexism. But feminists or single women are not the only voters. Women are not single issue voters any more than men are. In a year when Republicans were disciplined enough to avoid saying too many overtly sexist things and co-opted some Democratic talking points on contraception, suggesting that every Republican is a misogynist who wants to return to the year 1954 didn't work. Don't believe me? Ask Wendy Davis or Mark Udall. Wendy Davis lost the female vote while Udall won it but badly lost the male vote.
It is possible to have many liberal views on economic and social issues and win election without utterly alienating the male voter. In Michigan Gary Peters did this in his victorious campaign for the open US Senate seat. He won 50% of all men and 44% of white men. Other Democrats might want to see if his tactics can be copied and adapted to other locations. The Democratic Party must stop the bleeding among men, primarily white men, if it wants to regain Congress.


Nothing is inevitable. We heard a lot about the browning of the electorate and how this would mean permanent Democratic majorities. Not so fast. All politics is local. Some Republicans (John Kasich) won enough non-white voters to build convincing majorities. Kasich won 26% of the black vote. Non-white Republicans like Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Mia Long won election with electorates that were overwhelmingly white. And overall Republicans did better than expected with Asian, Hispanic and to a lesser extent Black voters. Nationally about 50% of Asian Americans voted Republican. Sam Brownback won 47% of the Hispanic vote in Kansas while in Texas Greg Abbott won 44% of the Hispanic vote, an improvement over Rick Perry's performance of 38% in 2010. Overall about 10% of Black voters voted for Republicans. This would suggest that, with the exception of clinically insane conservatives like Kamau Bakari, who lost, there may be effective Republican or conservative competition for non-white voters, who still preferred Democrats, but appeared to be open to some Republican messages. Younger voters did not support Democratic candidates as much as they did previously. This could be a blip, a ghost in the machine. But it could presage some trouble for Democrats in 2016. It depends on how elected Republicans govern and legislate. If Republicans find that the masks of respectability and responsibility are bad fits and go crazy trying to shut the government down or make women seeking abortion get vaginal probes, then we could see a Democrat win convincingly in 2016.

President Obama's coattails were short. Because President Obama's approval ratings were so low among likely voters in the midterm elections, many Republican candidates did everything they could to link their opponents to President Obama while many of their Democratic counterparts did everything they could to distance themselves from President Obama. The President was evidently peeved about this Democratic strategy, saying that although he was not on the ballot, his policies certainly were. His former adviser David Axelrod said that this statement was a mistake. The election results agree. Some argue that if Democratic candidates had fully embraced President Obama then they would have won. It's possible, though counterfactuals are hard to prove. Democratic candidates in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Maryland appeared with the President or First Lady. And they lost. So if candidates in what were blue states went down to defeat why would anyone expect Democrats in red states to lovingly embrace the President? If they had done so they might have lost by even greater margins. Framing this as solely Democratic cowardice or incompetence doesn't give us the whole answer. Plenty of people were upset with the direction of the nation, with President Obama and with Democrats. And they voted.

Labor continues losing. What remains of organized labor in this country made it a priority to go after anti-labor Republicans like Scott Walker, (Wisconsin), Nathan Deal (Georgia), Rick Scott (Florida),  Sam Brownback (Kansas), and Bruce Rauer (Illinois). Labor lost all of those fights. This was disappointing if you support organized labor. When people openly hostile to the very idea of unions are getting elected or re-elected in places like Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan(!!!!) there is to put it mildly a very serious problem. What is frustrating is that labor's tactics and organizing skills should be a template for reviving the progressive movement in this country. At its best the labor movement focuses on workers' commonalities. I have a friend who's a New York Italian Catholic. Culturally I would say he's conservative though he would protest that. He voted for Reagan as a young man but voted for Obama in 2008. I think one reason he's at least open to Democratic messages is because he worked in unionized industries and was a union leader. So even though he definitely won't co-sign all of the Democratic talking points about evil white patriarchs who are oppressing transgendered women who want taxpayer funded abortions and contraception, he votes Democratic more often than not because his union experiences predisposed him to look out for the working man. But if Democrats continue to make him think that his very identity is illegitimate, well eventually New York City will have another reliably Republican voter. Unions (and Democrats) need to rebuild and rebrand their core economic message of helping the working man and woman. Show and tell. I think Democrats and unions lost in part because of the economy which is the last point.


The economy is not good. It's all very well to point to lower unemployment, a higher stock market and higher corporate profits. But wages are stagnant or dropping and labor force participation remains low, though it recently rose slightly. Many people do not feel secure in their jobs, businesses or income. The NYT belatedly recognized this fact. Democrats had no overarching economic message which could simultaneously point to a bad (Republican) past and a good (Democratic) future. I'm not a huge fan of the PPACA. I think the results so far have been mixed. But because conservatives and Republicans were so vociferously against it, Democrats were unable to talk about any good that was done by the law, even in places like Kentucky, where some portions of the law have been so popular that even Senator McConnell backed off the "kill it" mantra. Voters did not believe that Democratic candidates had any good ideas. Abortion, birth control and pay equity are important issues. But overall economic policy is also an important issue. Democrats lost sight of that and paid the price. Even now, the President is talking about legalizing millions of illegal immigrants. I don't think this is the right thing to do. But whether it is or isn't the President and Congressional Democrats have not made the argument on how this would work to American citizens' economic benefit. People vote their pocketbook. Democratic candidates for 2016 would be wise to take heed of this.

None of this should be construed as to downplay the fact that a significant proportion of Republicans are strongly motivated by racial hatred. That's never going to change. It's America. Politics is the art of convincing people that you will best represent their interests. I know for a fact that in 2008 and even in 2012 some racists voted for Obama. They thought, their racial issues aside, that the other guy was worse. Can a Democratic candidate get their vote in 2016?
Exit Polls

What are your thoughts?

The Nov 4 Election US Senate: Democratic Disaster or Republican Rout?

According to Nate Silver's  538 forecast it appears that the Democrats are due for a solid thumping in the elections this Tuesday. The forecast currently predicts a 68.3% chance of Republicans winning the Senate. Most other forecasts I've seen suggest that it's a done deal that the Republicans keep the House and possibly even extend their majority there. A lot of the Republican likely electorate is said to be mad as hell and ready to grab the nearest baseball bat and (figuratively) beat the doggie doo out of any Democratic elected officials that they can find. Conservatives and perhaps Republicans are allegedly fired up to vote against the entire Democratic agenda. This could be why so many Democratic Senatorial candidates have done their best to keep President Obama at arm's length, with some even going to far as to refuse to confirm they voted for the man. Possibly having gotten all they can get out of the "war on women" rhetoric, the Democrats could be belatedly realizing that men also vote.  
Tuesday’s results, Mr. McInturff added, would tell “whether it is possible that the single-minded focus that most Democratic candidates attached to the ‘war on women’ meant they never conveyed an economic and jobs message that might have led a higher chunk of the persuadable male vote to vote Democrat.”

Republicans increasingly make that argument that Democrats miscalculated in their zeal to galvanize women who otherwise would not vote in a midterm election. Democrats counter that Republicans use the phrase “Republicans’ war on women” more than Democrats to stoke a backlash among older and married women who reject partisan, feminist-sounding rhetoric and lean Republican. Ms. Greenberg said Republicans were “deliberately misconstruing” Democrats’ legitimate attacks. Yet she and other Democratic strategists complain their party has not effectively espoused a broader economic agenda, when women tell pollsters their top concern is jobs and the economy.
However, worried Democrats should know that the early voting numbers from some contested Senate races appear to be from younger and nonwhite voters who did not vote in 2010. Such people tend to lean Democratic.So there could be an unpleasant surprise for some Republicans. It depends on who shows up. I think that the Republicans will take the Senate. We will have a very interesting next two years. This election cycle was fascinating because President Obama, despite his popularity with some elements of the Democratic base, was sufficiently toxic with independents, Republicans, and Democratic leaning independents that almost no Democratic Senate candidate wanted to be seen with him, possibly causing an enthusiasm gap. Additionally some races could be a test of Hillary Clinton's or former President Clinton's coattails. We shall see.

So what's your call?

Will the Democrats lose the Senate?

If so what does this mean for the final two years of the Obama Presidency?

Bill Clinton tells President Obama to man up

Reality is a funny thing. It exists independently of our perceptions yet our perceptions are the only way in which we know reality. Our perceptions can color our "version" of reality. There are literally an infinite number of ways by which to generate the number 4. 2+2 = 4 is likely the first one that came to your mind. But let's say you work for a boss who who was taught to express the number 4 as the square root of 16. And let's say that is the only way which he permits anyone who works for him to express the number 4. His version of reality is accurate but it's not accurate to suggest that that is the ONLY version of reality. So just as in mathematics, in politics there are a number of competing and complementary narratives which all might describe reality yet look very different from each other. I suppose if someone had soundly beaten my wife, sister or other close female relative for something which she wanted very badly and yet asked for my help or her help shortly after doing so, my feelings for that man might best be described as complex. There is a Ben Harper song "Roses from my friends" which has the chorus "The stones from my enemies, these wounds will mend, but I cannot survive the roses from my friends". Former President Clinton may have shown how his version of reality differs from President Obama's while handing the President a thorn covered rose. Both in 2012 and in a recent interview with PBS, former President Clinton said that as far as personal attacks go, he's had it worse than President Obama even as he concedes that the partisan gridlock is worse today.
"Nobody's accused him [President Obama] of murder yet, as far as I know. I mean it was pretty rough back then. I think that most people underappreciate the level of extreme partisanship that took hold in '94."

President Obama heads into midterm elections in which he may face crushing losses. He has been spurned by his own party, whose candidates do not even want to be seen with him. The president’s supporters say the toxic atmosphere in Washington has made it impossible for Mr. Obama to succeed. Whatever Mr. Clinton’s motivations, his comments, which his former aides frequently refer to when the topic comes up, do not permit Mr. Obama to excuse his legislative setbacks by simply citing hyper-partisanship. As one former White House aide to Mr. Clinton put it: “They impeached our guy." 

Even Mr. Clinton’s old rival, Newt Gingrich, a former Republican speaker of the House, said people had a gauzy view of the Clinton years. “Everyone is doing the, ‘Gee, Newt and Bill got things done, why can’t Obama get anything done?’ routine,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Maybe it’s driving Bill nuts.” The underlying implication is that Mr. Obama does not have it so rough. Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Clinton criticize the current president for being less able or willing than his Democratic predecessor to woo congressional Republicans. 

Some of the venom directed at Mr. Obama has a racial component that Mr. Clinton, a relatable white Southerner, never had to deal with, said Douglas G. Brinkley, a presidential historian and professor at Rice University. “The Clintons created huge problems of their own making,” Mr. Brinkley added, while “Obama’s problem is that he bullheadedly pushed Obamacare, and he happens to be African-American.” “You can’t get more personal than questioning a person’s veracity for where he was born,” said Mr. Galston, the former Clinton aide, referring to the “birther” conspiracy theories about Mr. Obama’s birth certificate."

LINK (Please read this entire article as it's actually quite good)

It's true that as of this writing President Obama has not been impeached. Of course as far as I know he's not getting intern provided oral sex in the White House and lying about it under oath either. So there's that. Should that happen and President Obama not be impeached then we have a better "apples to apples" comparison. Still it can be true both that President Obama has had to deal with a level of opposition which other Presidents didn't face and that President Obama has had rose colored glasses about the fact that the opposing party doesn't like him and is not in fact, required to work with him. In my opinion he's only belatedly arriving at that realization. I disagree with former President Clinton about the nature of the attacks that President Obama has faced. Conservatives and Republicans have attacked President Obama's religion, race, citizenship, intelligence and sexuality in a way that they didn't do to President Clinton. I don't say that Clinton had it easy. Right wingers compared his daughter's looks to that of a dog, called his wife a lesbian and suggested he and she murdered people. Nevertheless they were willing to work with President Clinton in a way which they have generally refused to do with President Obama. IIRC no mainstream conservative intellectual called President Clinton's mother a fat whore with a fetish for non-white men. 

It's difficult to walk in someone else's shoes. Empathy only goes so far, especially with someone who has a completely different personality than you and who came out of nowhere to defeat your wife. Apparently that still rankles.

What do you think?

Did President Clinton have it worse than President Obama?

Is President Clinton making inaccurate and self-centered comments?

Will President Clinton's comments help his wife if she runs again for President?

Why Black Conservatives Stay Losing: The Cliven Bundy Edition

As you should know from living in 2014 and interacting with a variety of people or if nothing else, just from occasionally reading the various ramblings that show up in this space, Black Americans, and for that matter black people from across the diaspora are as politically, class, and increasingly ethnically diverse as anyone else. There are black people who are adamantly opposed to gay marriage and black people who strongly support gay marriage. There are black people who are feminists and those who are not. There are black people who support a strong aggressive military and black people who want to eliminate the military and smash the state. There are black people who are pro-union and who spend all their time organizing workers. There are black people who couldn't care less about unions and who spend all their time organizing corporate mergers. There are black people who are neutral or positive about immigration reform and black people who are vociferously against it. Blah, blah, blah. Yet despite all of this political diversity, when it comes to major elections black people generally vote Democratic by percentages that are usually over 90%. These days, a Republican or conservative candidate who receives more than 10% of the black vote is doing shockingly well. Black (and other) conservatives occasionally bitterly complain about this. But they generally have no solutions. One big reason that conservative leaning candidates do so poorly with the black electorate is that the conservative segment of the American political spectrum is filled with people of all races pledging fealty to white supremacy whether they be genial white racists like Cliven Bundy or apparently insane black conservatives like Kamau Bakari. Check out the bizarre campaign ad video below. 



Nevada's Congressional District 1 is about 10% Black, 40% Hispanic and about 9% Asian. Somehow I don't think that this ad is going to do particularly well in those communities, especially the black community there. But who knows? I could be wrong. Maybe the black community, like Kamau Bakari, is chomping at the bit to ally itself with a bigoted welfare rancher and call out Attorney General Holder. Maybe. But probably not. Black conservatives can have some good ideas sometimes. But when they run with racists and show no self-respect or self-regard they shouldn't be surprised when they get low support from the black community. Conservatives, black or otherwise, who want to appeal to the black community will have to stop making commercials like this. Of course if your primary appeal is to a different set of voters, then maybe this ad is just fine...

Is President Obama a lame duck?

Good morning. Unfortunately this is another day when it looks like the overseer at my salt mine employment wants to know in exact detail how much salt I've mined over the past month, where are the records and why didn't I mine more salt. So as a result this will be a short post but it is something that has been on my mind lately. Is President Obama a lame duck? Usually, lame duck status only accrues to a President in the final two years or less remaining of his term, after the November midterms, when his party has usually lost seats in the House or Senate or even if they haven't done so are looking forward, often for reasons of self-preservation, to the next political cycle, which by definition won't include the current President. Much like the lag period between a corporate boss announcing that they're retiring and the time at which they actually do so, people who used to toady to the boss or at least grudgingly offer respect to the position, may suddenly discover heretofore unknown independence of thought and action. The boss' requests may be ignored or slow-walked. If the boss was never much liked in the first place, open insubordination is not out of the realm of possibility. This is particularly true when the boss was not well plugged into the power structures of the company. Other power brokers can even subtly or not so subtly encourage such behavior, especially if your workplace is a real dog-eat-dog kind of environment. I've heard that Washington D.C. is such a place where the weak are killed and eaten, politically speaking.

Now as far as some more right-wing citizens were concerned of course the President lacked legitimacy in the first place so they saw him as a lame duck from the start despite being elected twice by comfortable margins. But some recent events and data should give the President and his supporters, if not fits, cause for serious concern.

President Obama hit a new low in support, according to an NBC/WSJ poll. President Obama’s job approval rating sank to a new low of 41 percent in a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Tuesday, forecasting political headwinds for the Democratic Party in the months leading up to November’s midterm elections.

Forty-eight percent of respondents in the survey said that they are less likely to vote for a candidate who is a solid supporter of of Obama, versus 26 percent who said they are more likely to support a candidate that supports the president. More than a third of respondents remained neutral, with 41 percent saying that their vote will have nothing to do with the president.

LINK

Now from a purely selfish standpoint this may not matter too much to the President. We don't have a parliamentary system with votes of confidence or party leaders being removed by their party. Short of impeachment and conviction President Obama will serve out his term. But this matters a great deal to Senate and House Democrats, who are starting to see less of a downside to opposing the President. This was made clear in the successful (and shameful) disposal of the nomination of Debo Adegbile to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the similar ominous storm clouds gathering around the nomination of Vivek Murthy to be the Surgeon General. Now regardless of whether you think that either man would have been good at his job the point remains that it is Senate Democrats who either wavered or led the charge against both men. Those aren't the actions of people who think that President Obama is popular or that they need to worry about opposing the President. There is no price to pay for opposing President Obama. He talks tough but seems to be at a loss how to deal with determined opposition. Again, it is a little early to be having these sorts of problems with your own party. Part of this may be coming from a long held belief among some Democrats that President Obama has short coattails and so they have to look out for themselves, politically speaking. 

WASHINGTON — Democrats are becoming increasingly alarmed about their midterm election fortunes amid President Obama’s sinking approval ratings, a loss in a special House election in Florida last week, and millions of dollars spent by Republican-aligned groups attacking the new health law. The combination has led to uncharacteristic criticism of Mr. Obama and bitter complaints that his vaunted political organization has done little to help the party’s vulnerable congressional candidates. Interviews with more than two dozen Democratic members of Congress, state party officials and strategists revealed a new urgency about the need to address the party’s prospects. One Democratic lawmaker, who asked not to be identified, said Mr. Obama was becoming “poisonous” to the party’s candidates. 

At the same time, Democrats are pressing senior aides to Mr. Obama for help from the political network. When two senior White House officials — Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director, and Phil Schiliro, the health care adviser — went to the Capitol late last month to address Senate Democrats about the Affordable Care Act, they were met with angry questions about why Mr. Obama’s well-funded advocacy group, Organizing for Action, was not airing commercials offering them cover on the health law....

Surprise, surprise the PPACA has been driving some of the Democratic problems. Well I can't see the future but you may remember that I predicted that it would not work as designed, which is apparently why the President has been making so many changes to it. Time will tell if I'm wrong or not but if it was such a great plan there wouldn't have to be so many unilateral changes to it. Similar past changes to the REAL ID act and some deep discussions with our very own The Janitor have grudgingly convinced me that the President is probably still within his legal rights though he may be pushing up against the extreme limits. Different topic, different day. But anyway I don't think that pro-PPACA voters will be a serious factor in the midterm elections. Democrats know this which is why they are about two minutes away from hitting the abandon ship button. Still, as we've seen in the past, oftentimes the evil overlord plans don't work out. President Obama wasn't supposed to win in 2008 or 2012. But he did. Every time his rivals cackle that they've got him now he seems to thrive and win. So Democratic panic may be real but it also may be overstated. I can't call it. Well I could but I'd rather know what you think.

Is President Obama a premature lame duck?

Are some Democrats correct to distance themselves from the President?

Do you think Republicans can retake the Senate?

How can the President keep Senate Democrats moving in his direction?

ObamaCare Employer Mandate/Fines Delayed

In case you missed the news the Obama Administration announced that by the authority vested in it from (I'm not sure exactly since the implementation date was specifically written in law) it was delaying the requirement of the employer mandate to provide health insurance or face fines until January 1st, 2015. It thus gave something of a victory to conservative and business groups who had argued that the employer mandate would cost jobs, lower wages and make the cost of doing business more expensive. Because most large companies already offer health insurance coverage for their workers the impact on worker coverage is not expected to be that great.  

Of course, many people who were against the law popularly known as ObamaCare had already pointed this out and claimed that the employer mandate was a tremendous interference in the private marketplace which was largely unnecessary. The Administration had previously ignored these complaints but for some reason recently changed its mind.

Employers who don't provide health insurance will be spared penalties of up to $3,000 per worker until 2015, a one-year delay of a major component of President Barack Obama's health care reform law, the Treasury Department announced Tuesday. Under Obamacare, companies with at least 50 full-time employees are required to provide qualifying health benefits to workers or face financial penalties called "shared responsibility payments." The provision of the law aims to shore up and strengthen the system that provides health benefits to most covered Americans. Under regulatory guidance to be published next week, the Obama administration will free companies from this mandate and from rules that they report information about their health benefits to the federal government next year.

"During this 2014 transition period, we strongly encourage employers to maintain or expand health coverage," Mark Mazur, assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department, said in a statement. The change does not affect people who will buy health insurance on their own or small businesses that will buy coverage through the law's health insurance exchanges.

More than half of Americans, 170 million people, are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance, according the census data. Of companies with at least 50 workers, 94 percent already offer health benefits, a survey by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation shows. The one-year delay of the penalties won't have a meaningful effect on jobs being the leading source of health care coverage, said Paul Fronstin, a senior research associate with the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

"The fact is, employers have been offering coverage voluntarily for how many years now. They didn't drop it before the law was passed. They offered it for business reasons," Fronstin said. "I don't think you'll see a mass exodus because of this."

LINK

I am among other things an IT project manager, albeit a relatively low ranking one. Missing the implementation date is usually a very bad thing. It normally means that the project manager, team leaders and other project sponsors proceeded on bad information or that somebody at a higher level withdrew their support. It is definitely the kind of thing which gets you dinged on your performance review. Make a habit of it and you can expect to see a few "did not meet expectations" in your 360 degree comments. Pick up a number of those and you can forget about staying on track for your next promotion or salary increase. You might not get a good project the next time and/or be exiled to an undesirable area of your company. But I digress.  

The Administration and supporters will probably wish to spin this as no big deal. And they may well be right. Things get delayed and pushed back all the time, (remember Bush's Medicaid Modernization Act ?) especially in an organization as huge as the US government. Trying to enforce employer mandates may have been a small section of ObamaCare and some supporters are arguing it wasn't even that important anyway.  And for now anyway the mandate for individuals to purchase insurance is still planned to proceed on time.  But this is at least the second time this year that the Administration has decided that what the law required wouldn't actually work and either delayed implementation or gave people a pass. In April the Administration admitted that workers at small businesses wouldn't actually be able to choose their own health care and would instead need to accept what their employers offered. I was not and am not a supporter of ObamaCare. I do not like the individual mandate. I do not think that premiums will drop for most people. But what really interests me about this latest move are two things.

1. What gives any President and/or his Administration to suspend implementation of a law. The fact that other Presidents have done this is of little interest to me. If President Obama can say well we aren't going to require this until 2015 what if anything prevents a future conservative President, as unlikely as that seems now, from saying we won't require it until 2175? So it's not technically a repeal, it's just a refusal to enforce the law. I'm not sure I'm fond of executives deciding which laws to enforce. Yes I know it may be necessary sometimes but this particular law had a hard date written into it. So let's stick to that date.
2. Am I being somewhat cynical in noticing that the new planned date for employer mandates just happens to be after midterm Congressional elections? To me that means that in the short term at least the Administration does not expect the benefits of employer mandates to be immediately obvious to voters. Because if they did they would be moving up the implementation date, not delaying it by a year. 

But who knows. Perhaps I am just a dead-ender on this issue. I don't say no to that. I do find it somewhat humorous that people who waved bloody shirts and told us that any delay to this law in its entirety would make people DIE and opponents would be responsible, are now seemingly ok with a year long delay for, what looks like to me, primarily political reasons. I think, my feelings about this law aside, the Administration is setting a bad precedent by seemingly giving in to constant criticism. Because I can absolutely guarantee that now that the employer mandate has been delayed, people opposed to other sections of the law will now gleefully ask, why don't we delay these parts as well.

What's your take?