In an address from the White House Rose Garden Monday on the less-than-stellar launch of the Obamacare online exchanges, President Obama sought to ease a worried nation. But he didn’t even succeed in assuaging the concerns of his liberal supporters in the media.
Here are five liberals who weren’t particularly impressed with the Great Orator’s Monday oration:
Ezra Klein
The liberal Washington Post blogger criticized the launch of the Obamacare exchanges last week as a total failure. Judging by his tweets, he wasn’t particularly heartened by the president’s Rose Garden speech:
“http://t.co/iJrBCjFhBY hasn’t worked as smoothly as it was supposed to work.” That’s an understatement.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) October 21, 2013
So far, this seems weirdly similar to the speech Obama would’ve given if the exchanges were working fine
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) October 21, 2013
This speech would work if Obamacare really was just a bit glitchy. But it’s not. Signing up, for most people, is basically impossible.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) October 21, 2013
Andrew Sullivan
The liberal blogger, who at one time insisted he was actually a conservative, is one of President Obama’s biggest proponents. But he too was underwhelmed by Obama’s speech.
“I have to say I found his remarks far less contrite than they should have been,” he wrote on his blog. “Where is the unqualified apology? Where is the commitment to basic accountability for this clusterfuck? Instead, we have all these positive rationalizations and excuses in a confusing technical lecture”
“Obama needs to get ahead of this, and stop being as defensive as he was this morning,” he added. “He does not have the credibility to sell us on the ACA when he does not cop more aggressively to his own failure to stay on top of this most important domestic initiative.”
In another blog post, Sullivan linked to several articles demonstrating that the Obamcare call centers were not operating efficiently either.
Krystal Ball
Ball, one of the liberal hosts on MSNBC’s “The Cycle,” didn’t quite criticize President Obama’s speech Monday, but she was highly critical of the Obamacare roll out.
“I was prepared for some glitches but this is a catastrophe,” Ball said, before suggesting Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should possibly resign.
Benjy Sarlin
The MSNBC.com reporter, who used to work at the liberal website Talking Points Memo, also took to Twitter to bash the president’s speech:
So little to no detail on A) What’s wrong with site. B) What’s being done to fix. C) Timetable to fix. Hoping to get more answers later. — Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) October 21, 2013
Matt Yglesias
Even liberal Slate blogger Matt Yglesias, who predicted Obamacare’s implementation would be a “huge political success,” was critical of the assurances in President Obama’s speech:
Problem with these reassurances from Obama is the administration also had reassurances four weeks ago. — Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 21, 2013
In retrospect the coverup of the fact that this system was basically untested was pretty impressive.
— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 21, 2013