
In what could be the latest move toward a 2016 presidential bid, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) offered a wide-ranging critique of President Obama's domestic and foreign policies. Speaking to reporters at the National Governors Association on Saturday, Christie labeled Obamacare, the administration's signature legislation, a "failure on a whole number of levels" and said it should be repealed.
You might ask why, if health reform is going so well, it continues to poll badly. It's crucial, I'd argue, to realize that Obamacare, by design, by and large doesn't affect Americans who already have good insurance. As a result, many peoples' views are shaped by the mainly negative coverage in the news media. Still, the latest tracking survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that a rising number of Americans are hearing about reform from family and friends, which means that they're starting to hear from the program's beneficiaries. And as I suggested earlier, people in the media -- especially elite pundits -- may be the last to hear the good news, simply because they're in a socioeconomic bracket in which people generally have good coverage. For the less fortunate, however, the Affordable Care Act has already made a big positive difference. The usual suspects will keep crying failure, but the truth is that health reform is -- gasp! -- working.