Companies slashing worker hours "because of Obamacare"

[Savannahmann]

23. The time period you're talking about would not be painful initially

You're talking about a decade, or more, probably more.

We'll spend the first four or five years highlighting the success stories, and the RW will spend the same period highlighting the disasters from people who have trouble paying, or lose houses or whatever because they claim it's the fault of the ACA.

These battling meme's will go on for at least five years. The whole time the extreme RW will be proposing abolishing the law, the more moderate (I use that term to describe those who are more corporatist than radical, but still on the RW end of the spectrum) will be proposing changes to "improve" the law.

In the meantime, the more progressive elements on our side will be pushing single payer, all the while the news will keep giving stories of single payer disasters in Europe and Canada as well as other nations with the law. Stories of incompetence etc. as though this is the norm. The more moderate factions in the Democratic Party (Read the same as the Moderate definition for Rethugs except they are corporatist Democrats) will be working with their "friends" across the aisle and trying to "fix" the law. The Rethugs will want tort reform, the Democrats will want more taxes to pay for it, and more affordable coverage. They won't agree on anything substantial.

In the end, which of these factions wins depends on several factors. Public perception of the law and implementation. The nature of stories of success and failure. The ability to build public perception to suit your side. Merely screaming that the Republicans are evil bastards who want the poor to die isn't going to do it anymore than their screaming that Democrats are socialist's who want to take over every industry in the nation. But we'll keep screaming, and they'll keep screaming anyway because the base loves to hear the other side blasted like that. That it actually hurts our and their own positions doesn't matter. We volunteer and donate when our representatives are blasting the Republicans, and the RW does the same thing.

But here's a prediction. The end result will be that the law is weakened, and support for single payer diminishes to less than ten percent. My reason is simple, the news organizations may do success stories now and then, but mostly they do stories of disaster because that's what people want to watch, and ratings drives the advertising revenue, and advertising revenue is what drives the news.