Weiner: We Were Right on Obamacare

Politico, in full attack mode against Republicans on the eve of the Supreme Court’s likely decision to overturn all or part of Obamacare, sought out former Rep. Anthony Weiner to offer his insights on the law. Weiner claims that Democrats were right to pass the law, but that the public is simply too stupid to understand its benefits, and that the party should have done a better job of defending its members from public outrage over the issue.

Passing the law was the good thing to do and the right thing to do, but the campaign for it kind of stopped the moment it was passed. It was an article of faith that once people understood the benefits of the law, they would like it,” he said. “We were right on the substance, and right on the politics in the long term. But we have not done nearly as good a job fighting for it, communicating it, and defending it….

We didn’t give a lot of air cover to the people who did hang in there and fight. In that awful August of 2009, I thought the only way to fight things is to run into the heat of it. I got my butt handed to me a lot of time. But there was a sense among the Democrats to just hang on and weather things, and that same philosophy applied to the court. There was no real run up strategy.

Left-wing conspiracy theorists wondered if Weiner’s own political troubles had been calculated to prevent him from attacking Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Weiner insisted ought to have recused himself from the Obamacare decision because of his wife’s advocacy activities. However, Weiner’s messaging problems–including lying outright to the media–were entirely independent of his party’s communication deficiencies.