John Cassidy, Ryan Lizza, and Amy Davidson on Obama and Obamacare.

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Episode: John Cassidy, Ryan Lizza, and Amy Davidson on Obama and Obamacare
Date: October 25, 2013
Host: Dorothy Wickenden
Guests: John Cassidy, Ryan Lizza, Amy Davidson

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Overview

This episode offers a deep dive into President Barack Obama’s political challenges in the aftermath of the government shutdown and the troubled launch of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). The panel—New Yorker writers and editors John Cassidy, Ryan Lizza, and Amy Davidson—analyze the immediate fallout from these events, Obama’s governing prospects, the Republican Party’s infighting, the prospects for other major reforms, and how these dynamics might shape the lead-up to the 2014 midterm elections.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Fallout from the Government Shutdown and Debt Ceiling Battle

• Obama's Victory: Obama successfully faced down House Republicans during the budget standoff and government shutdown, but the political narrative quickly shifted to the disastrous rollout of Obamacare.
• Signature Policy Under Fire: "Job one’s Obamacare, right? ... The fate of the presidency is now tied up with Obamacare and the glitchy rollout."
  — John Cassidy [01:59]

2. Obamacare’s Rocky Launch and Political Risks

• Website Problems Dominate: The panel agrees both parties—and the public—now focus on the failures of the ACA website.
• White House Response: Obama acknowledged the technological problems but defended the policy and expressed determination.
  "He wasn't really apologizing. He acknowledged the problems. He said nobody was more angry than he was. But he basically said the product is good."
  — Amy Davidson [03:38]
• Republican Strategy: The GOP shifts from repeal/defund rhetoric to ACA oversight, creating a nuanced challenge for the administration.

3. The Critical Role and Vulnerability of the Individual Mandate

• Mandate Extension and Political Division:
  "There's now signs on parts of the Democratic Party backing away from the individual mandate… That's an important breach in the Democratic coalition."
  — John Cassidy [06:16]
• The administration extends the mandate deadline, attempting to quell dissent within Democratic ranks and prevent further erosion of support for the ACA.

4. Prospects for More Showdowns and Divided Government

• Future Fights Unresolved:
  "We are going to go from stalemate to stalemate. The question is… will the Republicans think it's in their interest to cause another shutdown or a breach of the debt ceiling?" — John Cassidy [07:14]
• Election-year realities might reduce brinkmanship but won’t end deep governmental paralysis.

5. The Roadblocks for Immigration Reform

• Republican Politics and Path to Citizenship: The panelists argue that given Republican resistance, any bill with a path to citizenship—non-negotiable for Obama—is practically dead in the House.
  "The Republican Party is just completely turned against this idea of a pathway to citizenship."
  — Ryan Lizza [08:28]
• Rubio’s Shift as Cautionary Tale:
  "Marco Rubio learned… it was disastrous. His poll numbers among conservatives just completely dropped, and he very quickly moved on from the immigration reform bill to the defund Obamacare issue."
  — Ryan Lizza [09:14]

6. Midterm Elections: Implications and Strategies

• Immigration and the GOP’s Long-Term Challenges: Anti-immigration stands may help Republicans in the short-term but hurt them long-term, especially with demographic shifts.
  "If the Republicans run on a national message opposing immigration reform, right, in 2014… we all know long term ... is a loser for the party in the long term."
  — Ryan Lizza [12:07]
• Gerrymandering and House Control:
  "The gerrymandering argument seems pretty convincing that it’s basically impossible [for Democrats] to win back the House unless there’s some sort of enormous scandal involving the House Republicans."
  — John Cassidy [13:17]
• Quality commentary suggests the shutdown slightly improved Democratic prospects, but a House majority remains unlikely.

7. Obama’s Governing Strategy: Bipartisanship vs. Realpolitik

• Obama’s Tone vs. Political Reality: While his rhetoric remains bipartisan, his strategy has shifted, learning from past intransigence.
  "When you hear that rhetoric of bipartisanship… it's not expressed in the sort of naive way that maybe it was in the early days of his presidency, he realized that he just completed an almost complete victory over the Republicans by refusing to negotiate with them."
  — Ryan Lizza [15:18]
• Obamacare as a Core Democratic Achievement: Obama is less willing to compromise on the ACA, potentially making it a legacy not of bipartisanship but of Democratic resolve.

8. Stubborn Economic Hurdles and Limited Levers

• Slow Job Growth and High Unemployment:
  "We appear to be stuck in this new normal economic situation, where the economy grows at sort of 2 to 3% a year... but isn’t enough to bring down the unemployment."
  — John Cassidy [17:44]
• Little can be done without congressional cooperation, which remains unlikely.

9. The Outlook for Obama’s Second Term: The Lame Duck Question

• Turn to Foreign Policy Likely:
  "Second-term presidents do tend to become lame ducks or near lame ducks… they tend to focus more on foreign policy because that’s where the president’s got some power and can actually do something without Congress."
  — John Cassidy [19:15]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the ACA Rollout:
  "Even the White House would privately agree that it’s been a disaster so far."
  — John Cassidy [02:35]

• On Intraparty Division:
  "Senator Joe Manchin ... and a few others have talked about delaying [the mandate] or dropping it. That’s an important breach in the Democratic coalition."
  — John Cassidy [06:16]

• On the GOP and Immigration:
  "All the Republicans who are thinking about running for president just no longer think it’s in their interest to tackle this issue."
  — Ryan Lizza [09:14]

• On Governing Prospects:
  "We are going to go from stalemate to stalemate."
  — John Cassidy [07:14]

• A Theory of Party Change:
  "My sort of pet theory that it takes three defeats to turn a party around seems to be playing out well here. Two is not enough."
  — John Cassidy [12:25]

• On Obama’s Evolving Approach:
  "There’s a way in which Obama’s kind of done with the idea that everything has to be bipartisan and that there’s a virtue in bipartisanship in and of itself."
  — Amy Davidson [16:33]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:15 – Episode overview, Obama’s recent political wins and start of ACA crisis
• 01:59 – 06:16 – Troubles with Obamacare rollout, individual mandate debates
• 07:02 – 08:21 – Prospects for future shutdowns and ongoing government gridlock
• 08:21 – 12:47 – Immigration reform’s prospects and the Republican Party’s internal politics
• 13:10 – 14:25 – Midterms preview, House majority, and gerrymandering
• 14:25 – 16:33 – Obama’s bipartisan messaging vs. realities of hyper-partisanship
• 17:33 – 18:32 – U.S. economic doldrums and political constraints on jobs policy
• 18:44 – 19:33 – Likelihood of Obama pivoting to foreign policy

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Tone and Style

The discussion is analytical but conversational, with a blend of realism and dry wit, especially about the intractability of D.C. politics and the futility of certain policy hopes. The tone alternates between sober and slightly sardonic, reflecting the panel’s expertise and skepticism regarding short-term optimism for major legislative progress.

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This summary captures the essential flow, key arguments, and memorable commentary from the conversation, giving readers a comprehensive understanding of the episode’s substance and mood.

Transcript

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[Dorothy Wickenden]

This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Thursday, October 24th. I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. Last Thursday, President Obama finally defeated House Republicans in the battle debt ceiling and the government shutdown.

[Brian Lizza]

So passing a budget, immigration reform, farm bill, those are three specific things that would make a huge difference in our economy right now. And we could get them done by the end of the year if our focus is on what's good for the American people.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Brian Lizza, Amy Davidson and John Cassidy are here to talk about Obama's strategies in the coming weeks. So, John, what now as far as the president is concerned?

[John Cassidy]

Well, I think job one's Obamacare, right? I mean, that seems to be dominated everything. The president wants to talk about farm bills and immigration. But with the debt ceiling out of the way, I think, you know, the fate of the presidency is now tied up with Obamacare and the glitchy rollout. We've had a bunch of hearings in the House starting Thursday. You know, it's big embarrassment for the Government. There's no doubt about it. Obama has already admitted that it's been a troublesome rollout. Everybody knows that. Question is, how quick can they fix it and who's going to take the blame?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And are Republicans succeeding, for the moment at least, in shifting the political embarrassment from their catastrophic performance of recent weeks to the computer crash?

[John Cassidy]

I don't think they have to shift it, do it. It's a big story. I mean, you know, Obamacare is the signature policy of the administration. Whether you agree with it, whether you don't agree with it, a lot hinges on how it works. Even the White House would privately agree that it's been a disaster so far. I don't mean that it's not going to work in the long term. I wrote a post this week saying it probably will work in the long term, but. But nobody, I don't think, could argue that the rollout so far has been anything but trouble for the president. And, you know, I think people in the White House admit that. You see David Axelrod saying, Robert Gibbs, former administration official, saying that the communications strategy has been a problem as well. They're still grappling with this. And now things are moving to Capitol Hill, where the Republicans may well rescue the president by being too partisan about it and, you know, turning it into another Benghazi. But. But before we get onto anything else, this thing has to be resolved and it's going to dominate the politics for the next few weeks or so Anyway.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Amy, you've written about how Obama so far handled the meltdown, and you sort of drew a parallel between that and the way he handled the debt ceiling fights. Talk a little bit about that.

[Amy Davidson]

Well, when he came out last week and talked about the computer problems with the rollout of this part of Obamacare, people thought in advance of it that he was going to be much more apologetic than he was. He wasn't really apologizing. He acknowledged the problems. He said nobody was more angry than he was. But he basically said the product is good and this means of delivery. He kept talking about the website as the cash register, as the sort of point of where you got the product, not the product itself. He kept saying that that's going to be fixed. I know what I'm doing. This is a good thing. And people are going to realize that. He had this sort of air of stubbornness about him that also sort of characterized the end of the debt ceiling crisis, where the Republicans thought that they could really make him compromise in the end, and they were wrong. We'll see how well, that works for him. It's only going to work for him if indeed this gets fixed. But one other important thing he used the problems with the website to talk about was, you know, a lot of Obamacare has already rolled out the end on restrictions on pre existing conditions, on keeping young people on their parents health insurance until they're 26.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And it's working quite well in a number of states.

[Amy Davidson]

Yeah.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Ryan, do you agree with what Amy is saying and thinking about what John has been talking about, about how this is going to be front and center every single day for the next couple of weeks as these hearings go forward? How's Obama going to deal with that?

[Amy Davidson]

Yeah.

[Ryan Lizza]

Although Republicans are in an interesting position now because now they're focusing on the problems with the rollouts. Right. They're not really talking in Congress at least about defunding Obamacare, although there's still a little bit of talk about delaying the mandate, the individual mandate. And it puts Republicans in an interesting position here. Right. Because if you're, if technically what they're doing now is oversight of the ACA and they're trying to get to the bottom of why the rollout was such a disaster. The question you have to ask then is what is the point of that oversight, if not can it fixed and what's the path to fixing it? And sort of brings them into that conversation a little bit more than the pie in the sky. Let's just defund the whole thing. It could help the administration slightly. The one thing that the administration is going to have to wrestle with is the individual mandate and delay of the individual mandate. They've sort of extended it by a few weeks. Just last night they're giving people six extra weeks. That was partly because of a confusing deadline for when if you don't have health care, when you have to have it or pay this fine, which is very modest, I think it's like $95. Right.

[John Cassidy]

$95 to start with and then goes up sharply. I mean it is a big deal. This individual mandate. A lot hinges on it. The way Obamacare works, the sort of economics of it, the risk pool gets a lot better if you have a lot of younger healthy people signing up. And the only way you can get young healthy people to sign up is to, you know, give them a mandate to do it. There's now signs on parts of the Democratic Party backing away from the individual mandate. Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia and a few others have talked about delaying it or dropping it. That's an important breach in the Democratic coalition, if we go that way, because the whole reform really doesn't cohere if we end up dropping the individual mandate. So I think the White House, I think what they've done is put this quick extension in place to try and stamp on that movement. They really can't allow that to develop.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

I want to get beyond this a little bit and look down the road. One's heart sinks when we think we're going to have to go through yet another possible shutdown and debt ceiling fiasco in a few months. How likely is that?

[John Cassidy]

Well, Senator Mitch McConnell has said there, you know, that it's not going to happen again, but he's one of these conservatives who's actually a moderate now. We'll have to wait and see. Looks like Ted Cruz and people like that are going to try and force a showdown. I just can't say at this point. What we can say is that, look, this is just a semi permanent state of divided government, at least until, well, until next year's midterms. And most analysts think that that's not going to make a big difference to the representation in the House or the Senate. So it looks like we're going to have divided government three years, and I'm afraid it looks like, you know, we are going to go from stalemate to stalemate. The question is, on a tactical basis, will the Republicans think it's in their interest to cause another shutdown or a breach of the debt ceiling? I tend to think that this time round they might not because we'll be getting into an election year and they've already decimated their ratings. Do they really want to push it down from 15% to 7% or whatever when you're trying to raise money for elections? So I think we might get through that one, but that's only sort of qualified good news. If the Republicans get reelected next year and run the House, the first thing they'll do once they're re elected, I would imagine, is, you know, start it all over again.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And Ryan, what about some of Obama's other initiatives which we heard at the beginning of the program? What about immigration reform?

[Ryan Lizza]

It's really hard to see the path by which the House passes a bill that can be reconciled with the bill that the Senate already passed in June. The Republican Party is just completely turned against this idea of a pathway to citizenship. Obama's not going to sign any immigration reform bill that doesn't have a pathway to citizenship. So I think they're just absolutely at loggerheads over that big issue.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

But, Ryan, this is one of the things that I just don't understand, and maybe you can explain it. So Marco Rubio said this weekend that Republicans will stonewall because of the way the president has behaved over the last three weeks. It just seems like the politics of pique taken to a completely new level. I mean, the Republican Party needs immigration, immigration reform more than the administration does, right?

[Ryan Lizza]

Yeah. I mean, and Marco Rubio is a sort of. He's a cautionary tale for all of these Republicans who right after the election thought that it was in the party's interest to tackle this issue. And at least if you're thinking about running for president, what Marco Rubio learned is that it was disastrous. His poll numbers among conservatives just completely dropped, and he very quickly moved on from the immigration reform bill to the defund Obamacare issue. People forget this, but it was Rubio who was the leading senator earlier this summer in calling for the defund movement. The whole thing got taken over by Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, but Rubio was on that bandwagon before they were. And all the Republicans who are thinking about running for president just no longer think it's in their interest to tackle this issue. And in the House, you have one of the leading Tea Party conservatives, Raoul Labrador, who was actually talking about some kind of compromise bill with Democrats. But this week, he's saying that you just can't trust Obama. We can't enter into negotiations with Obama over immigration reform, and there's no way he's willing to craft a compromise that has a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, because Republicans, or at least the base of the Republican Party, is just absolutely against it. So I'm sure Obama still wants a bill, but I think this is going to start to move in to the realm of more of a political issue for Democrats in the run up to the midterms.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Well, and that's the next question. Will Republicans be hurt in the midterms if they're seen as being against immigration reform? They need those Hispanic voters.

[Ryan Lizza]

I think only, you know, you have to look district by district, but only in a few districts will it matter. And remember the difference between the.08 electorate and the 2010 electorate and the differences between the 2012 electorate, where a lot more Democrats and people that are important to the Democratic coalition come out, and the 2014 electorate, which, you know, generally midterms are a referendum on the incumbent president. And so the Democrats need to, you know, do their best to change that fact and make it more of a referendum on the House. Republicans Which I think is part of this, you know, strategy. And maybe then it's a matter of turning out Democratic voters who would vote in a presidential election but wouldn't vote in a midterm. I think that's the dynamic that's sort of gradually taking shape here as we move from the end of governing to the beginning of the politics of the midterms.

[Amy Davidson]

Ryan, just a question for you. How much do you think the way the Republican primaries go will play specifically into the immigration issue? I mean, if that goes in a certain direction where there are some who are really against immigration reform or really on the more Tea Party fringes, does that hurt the whole Republican brand in that election? Even in districts where those people aren't running, does it just contribute to the picture of what the Republican Party is across the country in some way?

[Ryan Lizza]

Yeah, I think. Look, if the Republicans run on a national message opposing immigration reform, right, in 2014, well, maybe that helps them retain the House. That overall message, we all know long term, and as most smart Republicans know, is a loser for the party in the long term.

[John Cassidy]

My sort of pet theory that it takes three defeats to turn a party around seems to be playing out well here. Two is not enough.

[Ryan Lizza]

I agree with you.

[John Cassidy]

They lost in 2008, lost in 2012. They're gonna have to lose in 2016 again, I think, to sort of seriously.

[Ryan Lizza]

And think about every loss the Republicans have suffered since 2008. The lessons of conservatives have been, well, we lost that because we were not conservative enough.

[John Cassidy]

Right. I mean, if you look at this used to work on the left. If you look back in Britain in the 1980s, it took labor three defeats at the hands of Mrs. Thatcher to, you know, decide that actually they might need to move a bit to the right. If you look at Democrats as Well in the 80s when Reagan beat them twice and Judge H.W. bush won again, so they took then the response to that was the New Democrat movement.

[Amy Davidson]

John, are you saying you think there's a plausible chance that the Democrats are going to take back the House next fall?

[John Cassidy]

No, not really. I mean, I defer to Ryan on this. He knows a lot more about the sort of boundaries than me. But the gerrymandering argument seems pretty convincing that it's basically impossible to win back the House unless there's some sort of enormous scandal involving the House Republicans. And I don't just mean scandalous sort of behavior or been extremists. I mean, even if they were caught sort of with their finger in the till or something, you need some sort of big scandal. I think to break that Republican stranglehold, I think we're going to have another, as I said, another three years of divided government, and then everything's going to hinge on what happens in 2016. That's depressing. Depressing for journalists. Depressing for.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Okay, just to depress us even more, John.

[Ryan Lizza]

But wait, can I just add one thing on the House?

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Go ahead.

[Ryan Lizza]

You know, the guys that really pay attention to this, like Charlie Cook and Stu Rothenberg, they argue that the shutdown did, it did change the landscape. And they're arguing now that it's for the first time, it's theoretically possible, there are enough seats in play that it's theoretically possible for Democrats to take back the House if the election were today. But, you know, we're over a year away and a lot could happen and memories of the shutdown could fade pretty quickly.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Ryan and Amy, I want to ask you both about just another little bit from Obama's speech last week. He still sounded carefully bipartisan, like the president we've known throughout.

[Brian Lizza]

And sometimes we'll be just too far apart to forge an agreement. But that should not hold back our efforts in areas where we do agree. We shouldn't fail to act on areas that we do agree or could agree just because we don't think it's good politics, just because the extremes in our party don't like the word compromise.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

So, Ryan, given what Obama has just been through, is he going to govern differently now? It doesn't sound like he's speaking a different political language.

[Ryan Lizza]

Well, I think he's. Look, one of the threads of his presidency has been realizing that there really is a blue America and there really is a red America. He's pretty much experienced that firsthand, hasn't he?

[Amy Davidson]

Yeah.

[Ryan Lizza]

And he didn't predict and didn't expect the conservative backlash against his presidency. And just how far right the Republicans have moved in the Obama years, I think he gets that now. And so I think when he's, when you hear that rhetoric of bipartisanship and that rhetoric of let's, you know, see if we can come up with a deal, it's not expressed in the sort of naive way that maybe it was in the early days of his presidency, he realized that he just completed an almost complete victory over the Republicans by refusing to negotiate with them and forcing them to capitulate without any policy concessions. So in a moment like that, he can come out and rise above it all and talk about bipartisanship. And look, he's got this budget deal on the table. That is, frankly, a compromise that a lot of Democrats don't like. And I think he would love for the Republicans to accept it. I think that's part of that rhetoric, is after completely defeating them, he's trying to strike a budget compromise here. I think that's the of all the things he's got on his agenda, some kind of budget compromise is still the most, you know, even if it's a modest one, is the most likely thing more likely than, say, immigration reform at this point.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

What about that?

[Amy Davidson]

AMY Well, I think that Ryan's right. I think that there's a way in which Obama's kind of done with the idea that everything has to be bipartisan and that there's a virtue in bipartisanship in and of itself. You know, he's going to be happy to do it some with immigration reform, the farm bill, some of these things you need to get other votes for. I think that Obamacare is the one thing that he, at this moment, is really not ready to walk away from, to compromise on, to be too bipartisan about beyond just trying to make it work. He also, in the speech, blamed the Republicans for shutting, you know, say they shut down the government to try to make this not happen. And that's a bet he's making. And I think it might be a decent one if they get all of the technical things working, that this is a legacy that he can claim not as a bipartisan achievement, but as a Democratic achievement. And if that works, something will have been accomplished for him, too.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

JOHN a final question about job growth, which is still slow and unemployment is still high. Is there anything that Obama can do without Congress to change this?

[John Cassidy]

It's very difficult. I mean, just as we're sort of stuck in this new normal political situation where it's basically deadlock, we appear to be stuck in this new normal economic situation, where the economy grows at sort of 2 to 3% a year, which is enough to, you know, keep the stock market up and prevent any talk of recession or whatever, but isn't enough to bring down the unemployment. The unemployment rate itself, the official one, has ticked down a bit, but that's almost wholly accounted for by a decline in the participation rate, the number of people in the labour force. And actually the number of jobs that have been created has fallen a bit in the last few months. At start of the year, it was about 175,000amonth. Last three months, it's been about 150,000amonth. But there just doesn't seem to be any way that Obama's going to be able to get what effectively would amount to another mini stimulus through Congress.

[Ryan Lizza]

So if we can just summarize the conversation, the politics isn't working, the economy's not working, and there's likely to be no change after the midterms.

[Amy Davidson]

But is healthcare.gov's website.

[John Cassidy]

I mean, one thing I think is worth, which we haven't mentioned at all, is foreign policy. I mean, it seems to me, you know, when there's big issues in foreign policy, a lot of Obama's, the rest of Obama's presidency, I think, you know, if he can't do much at home, he's going to be wrapped up with these big foreign questions. Syria, the weather, where the talks there are going to work. Then there's the Iran question. Then there's John Kerry's Palestinian, Israeli peace effort.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Okay, that's the subject for next week or future weeks.

[Ryan Lizza]

That's a whole, you know, it's bad in America when the bright spots are Iran and is an Israeli Palestinian peace.

[John Cassidy]

But it's, I mean, I think, you know, there's, but just, just to bring it back to Obama, there is a history. Second term presidents do tend to become lame ducks or near lame ducks. And I think if you look back to Reagan or you look back to Clinton in the second term, they do tend to focus more on foreign policy because that's where the president's got some power and can actually do something without Congress, you know, stopping him doing it.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

Okay, thank you all. Ryan Lissa and John Cassidy are staff writers. John blogs frequently on the New Yorker's website, as does Amy Davidson, who's a senior editor. This has been the political scene from the New Yorker. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.

[Ryan Lizza]

You can subscribe to this and other free New Yorker podcasts in the itunes store. The weekly audio edition of the magazine is available at audible.com Subscribers can read the magazine online at new yorker.com and also in the tablet edition on the iPad and the Kindle Fire.

[Katie Drummond]

I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial Director.

[Ryan Lizza]

I'm Michael Colory, Wired's Director of consumer Tech and Culture.

[Dorothy Wickenden]

And I'm Lauren Good.

[Amy Davidson]

I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show Uncanny Valley is about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley.

[Katie Drummond]

And right now, Silicon Valley and Washington have never been more intertwined. So each week we get together to talk about a big story, often at the intersection of tech and politics.

[Amy Davidson]

Right.

[Ryan Lizza]

So whether we're talking about Trump, Coin Doge or Elon Musk, we will always explain how these Silicon Valley forces are.

[Amy Davidson]

Affecting Washington and how they affect you.

[Katie Drummond]

Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.

[Ryan Lizza]

From prx.