Health Care Regret

Hoo boy! President Obama capitulated to political realities and apologized for individuals and families who  are losing their health insurance due to canceled policies that don't conform with the requirements of the health care law.  It's becoming obvious that he's losing the messaging (there's that uniquely and insufferably American habit of turning nouns into verbs again) battle with Republicans and other opponents of the Affordable Care Act. It doesn't matter that these policies are junk policies that should never have even been conceived.  It doesn't matter that these people with junk policies will be able to buy new and better policies in the national health care exchange (assuming the Web site ever works).  It doesn't even matter that the President didn't technically lie but unwittingly misrepresented how the law is supposed to work.  As long as the Republicans drown him out about how many people are losing these junk policies without mentioning how junky they are, they have the upper hand.  

If there's a bright side to Obama having to apologize through an interview with Chuck Todd for all this (and I have to make a stretch even Gummo the Rubber Man wouldn't attempt in order to find it), it's that the President realizes that a single health care speech in Boston or Dallas isn't going to turn things around for him.  Ed Schultz said that Obama hit one out of the park when he spoke in Boston, and he did; trouble is, he hit one over the foul line, and so it didn't count.  So Obama is now working to get ahead of an issue he's been behind for too long.  But it may already be too late.  The 2014 midterm elections are in sight, and the GOP is getting ready to lock and load.