N&R editorial following up on Sen. Kay Hagan’s deer in the headlights conference call with reporters calling for an investigation (ooh scary scary) into the Obamacare disaster:
Hagan didn’t address the origin of the misinformation Tuesday but said she supports a bill introduced by Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., called the “Keeping the Affordable Care Act Promise Act.” Landrieu owns up to the promise gone awry and now wants to require insurers to continue current policies.
Next to the dysfunctional online enrollment system, protecting existing plans is the most urgently needed fix. And urgency borders on desperation for Democratic senators like Landrieu and Hagan who strongly supported the Affordable Care Act and now have to carry it into 2014 campaigns.
If the best Hagan can do is support Landrieu’s joke of a bill, then she’s definitely on the ropes. By the same token it’s fair to question the level of Hagan’s competition in ’14, as none other than JLF president John Hood points out:
The challenge for Republicans will be to choose an acceptable replacement. The party faces a crowded and potentially contentious primary, even after many prominent lawmakers declined to enter the race. Whoever wins the GOP nomination — North Carolina house speaker Thom Tillis is the early frontrunner — would do well to make Obamacare the central issue in the campaign. Hood says that Democrats may ultimately be right to say that the long-term political consequences of the Obamacare-exchange debacle might turn out to be relatively mild, but hastens to add: “I don’t think ‘long term’ is November 2014.”
What a mess. You think such supposedly intelligent and thoughtful people would see this coming.
