Will the Obamacare Website Be Fixed in 12 Days?

First Read: “Health care isn’t today’s most intriguing political story of the day (that honor goes to the spat inside the Cheney family), but it remains the most important political story — given all the stakes for President Obama and congressional Democrats up in 2014. When the going gets tough in politics, the first human instinct is to flee. And that’s particularly true for the always-antsy Democrats (just see 1994 and 2010). But the problem when politicians start jumping ship from their party and president, they only make things worse.”

“Strikingly for Democrats, Friday’s House vote on the Upton bill could have been much worse. While 39 Democrats broke ranks and supported the GOP bill, that was a far smaller number than the White House had been bracing for. More than anything else, that party unity — as fragile as it might be — bought the White House additional time to get to that self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline to fix the website. But as we’ve said a million times these last few weeks, it all comes down to that website. In fact, going forward, there’s little point in covering the bits and pieces regarding the health-care law until Nov. 30. Everything right now comes down to meeting that deadline. Fail to meet that deadline and the survival-of-the-fittest instinct that every politician feels when they run for office will kick in, even if it’s bad national politics.”

Wonk Wire: Website fixes make good progress