If this is how he’s acting during the campaign, what will Bill Clinton say if his wife is elected president? Notwithstanding his legendary and well-earned reputation as a master politician, the 42nd president has often proved to be a liability to the former First Lady in both 2008 and 2016. His loose mouth and greater propensity to show anger have gotten him (and her) into trouble before, but Monday’s comment in which he referred to ObamaCare as “this crazy system” was frankly pretty crazy, even for him. But what is really interesting about Clinton’s latest gaffe is how his inarguably true remark demonstrates how out of touch he is with current Democratic orthodoxy.
What Clinton said deserves to be properly understood because the man Obama once dubbed the “explainer-in-chief” actually got to the heart of the flaws in the law as well to the reason why it remains so unpopular.
The people who are getting killed on this deal are small business people and individuals who make just a little too much to get any of these subsidies because they’re not organized. They don’t have any bargaining power with insurance companies so they’re getting whacked. So you’ve got this crazy system where all of a sudden 25 million more people have health care and then the people who are out there busting it, sometimes 60 hours a week, wind up with their premiums doubled and their coverage cut in half. It’s the craziest thing in the world.
Clinton tried to walk this critique back later by saying he supported the law and just wanted, as his wife says, to fix any problems. But what he’s describing is a fundamental flaw. Unlike other massive entitlement programs like Social Security or Medicare, ObamaCare is set to create winners like the people who now have insurance for the first time and losers like the millions that Clinton described. Contrary to Obama’s oft-repeated broken promise, they couldn’t keep their doctor or coverage if they wanted to and are now, thanks to the collapse of the exchanges, paying far more than they used to for policies they don’t like. The middle class got it in the neck. As the prices continue to go up and as the mandates are applied to businesses, the tally of ObamaCare losers will to continue to grow.
Democrats absolutely refuse to acknowledge the basic facts Bill Clinton mentioned in his rant. While they pay lip service to the notion that Obamacare needs some fixing, their attitude to the basic contradiction at its heart is to deny that it exists. The obvious alternatives to this disaster—the market-based ideas of the House Republicans or the left’s preferred single payer option—are matters the Hillary Clinton campaign will contemplate. Which is why the only Democrat willing to say this is the man who is currently playing the role of the party’s crazy old uncle.
All this presents us with a fascinating question about what the nation’s potential “First Gentleman” will do if Hillary Clinton wins next month. As Politico notes, his wife’s Brooklyn campaign headquarters staff has spent the year trying to marginalize him. But no matter what they do, he continues to refight the political battles of the 1990s such as defending his crime bill or state obvious facts about today’s issues that savvier Democrats understand may not be mentioned. But if the Brooklyn crowd can’t ride herd on him now, what will they be able to do to stop him when he’s back in the White House?
Clinton is right that the “craziest” thing Democrats rammed down the country’s throat during the last eight years is a train wreck. If he continues to utter such inconvenient truths the devil’s bargain the Clintons have clearly made with each other to stick together into a second presidency may wind up costing Hillary dearly.
