An Alternate History of the Government Shutdown

Rick Klein: “Imagine a world where the shutdown never happened, and the debt limit was never approached. We’d now be three weeks into constant coverage of a flawed website that might be part of a flawed broader health-insurance marketplace — if only the administration would release real details of who’s signing up and how. Secret government contracts would be handed out to anonymous techies to rush fixes into the system. The Obama White House would be hard-pressed to guarantee that everything would be working in time for the Jan. 1 start of the individual mandate.”

“If, in that context, Republicans were pushing a year-long delay to the individual mandate, now we’re talking about some tough votes for Democrats. Sen. Marco Rubio is making that push now, and he may make some progress. But – recalling that Rubio joined Sen. Ted Cruz and the tea party in pressing the de-fund strategy that led to the shutdown – this is what picking moments is all about. For opponents of the Obama health care law, the events of the last few weeks have made the fight harder, when it should have been a whole lot easier.”