Any hope the media and Obama had that the endless trumpeting of the phony 8 million enrollment number would turn public opinion around for ObamaCare has just evaporated with this latest round of polling. The Washington Post has now been forced to concede that media’s propaganda campaign failed. ObamaCare is unpopular and is likely to stay that way:
In just one week, a barrage of national polling has reached the same verdict: Obamacare’s Rocky Balboa-esque announcement that 8 million people have signed up for health care has done absolutely nothing to reverse the law’s basic and long-standing unpopularity. …
The stagnant numbers would seem to fly in the face of the strong publicity the law earned by passing 7 million and then 8 million sign-ups. For a law that had experienced almost nothing but bad news for months, one would think a little good news would lead to at least a little recovery.
And some polls initially suggested that might be the case. But whatever momentum the law carried from the sign-ups announcement — and a later projection that it will actually cost less than previously thought — has gone by the wayside.
The stark numbers are bad news for Democrats, but they also shouldn’t be surprising. Attitudes on the law have not fluctuated much since its passage in 2010 and are deeply entwined with long-held partisan loyalties, helped along by a highly political public debate.
It is not just that 55% oppose the law, according to Pew. WaPo fails to mention that only 41% approve. WaPo also repeats the 8 million number without bothering to point out that it’s a phony, made-up number created by a dishonest administration.
The 8 million number isn’t enrollees. It is the number of people who put a healthcare plan in a shopping cart. By some counts, up to 30% of that 8 million never went as far as to pay for a plan. That brings that magic 8 million number down to a pathetic 5.5 million, far short of what is being reported by our Palace Guard media and government.
Furthermore, of that 5.5 million, how many of those had their insurance plans cancelled by Obama and therefore had no choice but to sign up through the federal exchanges?
The whole idea of ObamaCare was to decrease the number of uninsured. The reality, however, is that ObamaCare is nothing more than a giant wealth transfer system that forces people to buy plans and coverage they neither need nor want.
ObamaCare isn’t gaining in popularity because the American people know that the media has no idea what the real ObamaCare enrollment numbers are. The people also know that the media don’t want to know the real numbers. All the media want is to dutifully repeat whatever Obama tells them to repeat.
The barrage of polls WaPo mentions was really a barrage of media hopes and dreams that the dishonest propaganda campaign had worked. Oh, how they wanted to write stories celebrating the fact that Americans were starting to accept ObamaCare.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the people are not as stupid as some would like.
If nothing else, these polls also prove that New Media is getting stronger by the day, which makes it harder for the media and government to get away with these dishonest campaigns.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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