WILLIAM B. PLOWMAN/NBC/NBC NEWSWIRE/GETTY IMAGES
Enter
actual job is a terrible chore. And if
he gives too much attention to the
national political press, they start
to write pieces about how he’s risking “overexposure.”
“He’s talking to us all the time,”
is a real complaint made by a
real national political reporter in
Obama’s sixth week in office! It’s
hard to not take a hint.
Politico takes this “going to the
local media” phenomenon and casts
a lot of weird aspersions on it (It’s
“unusually aggressive!” It’s “desperate!”) before noting something
very obvious: It’s the “local press”
where “far more people who Obama
wants to target get their news.”
Naturally, the political goal here
is to challenge the governors of
states that have neither opened up
Medicaid expansion nor created a
state insurance exchange. In that
case, the aggression is noteworthy
in a way not suggested in the Politico piece: At a time when the White
House’s signature piece of legislation is enduring such storm and
stress, the Obama administration
isn’t running away from it. This is
in keeping with what I’ve been saying about “the Obamacare bet.” At
this point, if you’ve supported the
bill or fought for its repeal, you’ve
gone “all in.” (Though Rep. Jack
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
12.08.13
Chuck Todd, speaking on
behalf of the national media,
basically implied that providing
nuts and bolts information
to the public about Obamacare
wasn’t their job.”
Kingston (R-Ga.) seems to want
backsies on that all of the sudden.)
So if your electoral fortunes are tied
to Obamacare’s success, heck, you
might as well fight for it.
But let’s think about something
else, here. The White House is targeting “the top 10 cities with the
highest concentration of the uninsured?” Well, another reason you
might want to do that is because
you can actually inform people
who are uninsured about what
they can do to avail themselves of
health care using the Affordable
Care Act, through reporters who
still feel a sense of responsibility
to their neighbors. (And local re-
NBC News
Political
Director
Chuck Todd
on Meet
the Press in
Washington,
D.C., in
August.