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Hot Air » Blog Archive » WH putting health-care off until … February?.

The longer that debate drags, the further Obama drops in the polls, which is why this move only makes sense if the White House sees weeks more futility in the health-care overhaul debate.  Even liberal commentators like the Seattle Times editorial board want Democrats to shelve ObamaCare and start paying attention to the fact that unemployment has spun out of control on their watch.  Deficits are even more wild, as Obama’s OMB Director Peter Orszag was forced to acknowledge when he admitted that he had underestimated deficits over the next ten years by 22%, or $2,200,000,000,000.

Unfortunately for Democrats in Congress, that move tosses them under a very big bus.  They wanted to close this debate as early as possible in order to allow anger over the unpopular measure to ebb in time for their re-election campaigns.  Under the new timing, Congress would have to consider ObamaCare and cap-and-trade in rapid succession, just in time for the summer and fundraising time.  Unlike last year, Democrats won’t be able to avoid appearing in public and being surrounded by Tea Party protests, and those two agenda items will provoke them to even more fury than last year.

The other term for “hard pivot” is “dithering.”  The more Obama dithers, the less likely ObamaCare becomes.