Gail Collins, "Who’s Sorry Now?": When Obama Loses Collins, It's "Game Over"

Less than a year into his second term, Obama is already finished. Yesterday, he lost uber-liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, who concluded in an opinion piece entitled "Obama’s political malpractice" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ruth-marcus-political-malpractice-of-the-highest-order/2013/11/14/e6b95abe-4d69-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html):

"Belatedly, with congressional Republicans pouncing and Democrats threatening to bolt, Obama on Thursday proffered a supposed (it depends on the kindness of insurers and state insurance commissioners) and temporary (one-year) fix. By then, the exchanges should be functional, but will premiums climb higher as healthier people stick with existing plans?

Listening to the president Thursday was painful. He acknowledged the need 'to win back some credibility.' He 'fumbled the rollout' of health care. He is 'letting . . . down' congressional Democrats who took the risk of supporting Obamacare. Although he’s sometimes been 'slapped around a little bit unjustly,' the president said, 'This one’s deserved, all right? It’s on us.'

Can he recover? I’m sorry to say: I’m not at all confident."

Well, bad has become worse. Today, he also lost Gail Collins. In a New York Times op-ed entitled "Who’s Sorry Now?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/opinion/collins-whos-sorry-now.html?_r=0), Collins writes in inimitable bonbon style:

"The chaos surrounding the rollout of health care reform is a terrible blow to people who’ve been standing behind the president through thin and thin. They had already come to grips with the fact that the guy who once taught constitutional law wasn’t going to protect their privacy from government snoops. That their old peace candidate really loved the idea of shooting people down with drones. That he was probably never going to be able to deliver on serious immigration reform, or gun control or even expanded preschool.

But there was still affordable health care, a goal that had been eluding presidents since Teddy Roosevelt, which had required so many breathtaking leaps of political faith to pass and protect. One achievement so big it was pretty much enough.

And then the website didn’t work and longstanding promises were broken and the whole thing was turning into a joke on the Country Music Association Awards."

Fast forward to Collins's conclusion:

"At his press conference, the president noted — kind of bragged, really — that the Obama campaign had been spot-on when it came to information technology. Then he complained that the way the federal government purchases I.T. 'is cumbersome, complicated and outdated.'

Since he already knew 'that the federal government has not been good at this stuff in the past,' Obama continued, his crack advisers should have prepared to go around that problem 'two years ago' when planning for the rollout began.

Yes!

'... But that doesn’t help us now. We’ve got to move forward.'

Sigh."

Obama's "crack advisers"? Does this include Kerry, Hagel, Sebelius? The president is better off with a team of crack addicts.

Of course, Obama still has die-hard loyalists, lending support, at his request, to his imbecilic foreign policy: Thomas Friedman (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/thomas-friedman-what-about-us-is-thomas.html), David Ignatius (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/david-ignatius-stakes-of-iranian-deal.html), and the editorial board of The New York Times (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/16/opinion/not-the-time-to-squeeze-iran.html?hpw&rref=opinion). But when Obama loses Collins, it's truly "game over."