WHY THE DEMS CAN’T TAKE KENNY ROGERS’ ADVICE

The secret to surviving, The Gambler told Kenny Rogers, is to "know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run."

It’s time for her fellow Democrats to fold their Obamacare cards, says pollster Celinda Lake.

"In terms of Obamacare, don’t defend it, say it was flawed from the beginning, and we’re going to fix it," Ms. Lake said at a poll briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor March 25.

This "mend it don’t end it" strategy was followed by Alex Sink in the special election for a House seat in Florida March 11. Ms. Sink had carried the district in her losing campaign for governor in 2010, wasn’t burdened with having voted to impose Obamacare in the first place.

But she lost to an underfunded Republican nobody had heard of in a district President Obama carried in 2012, despite the presence in the race of a Libertarian who took nearly five percent of the vote.

The problem with this strategy is that it’s just a "messaging" strategy. Americans are very, very upset about Obamacare, Ms. Lake’s poll indicate. So Democrats must say something to mollify them. But they don’t have to mean what they say.

The Obamacare rollout was a "disaster;" the president "failed us," Ms. Sink told voters. There must be changes in the law, she said, but was vague about what they might be. She criticized Republican David Jolly for advocating repeal. "We cannot go back to where we were before," she  said.

That should have worked, according to Ms. Lake’s polls, and others. They indicate a plurality of Americans want Obamacare fixed, but not repealed.

The strategy didn’t work, because enough voters sensed Ms. Sink was just saying what she thought they wanted to hear.

"Alex Sink didn’t propose a single fix," said Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal. "Nor has any Democrat anywhere really proposed a serious fix, other than delaying the mandates and so forth, which isn’t really a solution."

The best that can be said for it is Democrats in swing states and districts who follow Ms. Lake’s strategy aren’t likely to lose as badly as they would if they proudly embrace Obamacare, as House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi recommends, or if they attack the seriously ill victims of Obamacare, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, has done.

Ms. Lake’s strategy would work better if, instead of a gambit, it were a sincere admission of error.

It’s clear, now, every promise Democrats made about Obamacare was false. You can’t keep your doctor if you want to. Health insurance premiums have gone way up, not down as promised. So has government spending on health care. Most of the uninsured don’t like Obamacare and don’t plan to buy it.

And it’s clear, also, this administration couldn’t organize a two car funeral.

The assumption Democrats made that once implemented, Obamacare would be popular ranks up there with Custer’s assumption there were only a few Indians in that village on the Little Big Horn. In an AP/GFK poll March 28 in which 30 percent of respondents were Democrats, Obamacare drew support from just 26 percent.

Soon, Democrats may look back wistfully on that poll as a high water mark. When they wrote the Obamacare law, they frontloaded what they thought were the goodies, postponed the pain. So they should know better than anyone what’s coming down the pike.

I understand why, despite this, President Obama won’t let go of his "signature legislative achievement."

But — if Democrats had believed the promises they made to get Obamacare passed — why won’t they admit they made a terrible mistake, try sincerely to make amends?

If it’s party loyalty that keeps them out of the lifeboats, it’s been a one way street. Mr. Obama never did much for other Democrats when he was popular. Now, for those who must run this year, he’s a pair of cement overshoes:

*President Obama got 63 percent of the vote in San Diego in 2012. Though he’d been heavily outspent, a Republican won the mayoral election there by 10 percentage points Feb. 11.

*In a special election for the Virginia legislature Feb. 27, in a district Barack Obama won by 10 percentage points in 2012, the Republican got 60 percent of the vote.

*On March 11, Sink sank in Fla. 13.

*Last week in a special election for a state senate seat in California, Democrats mustered barely half the vote Mr. Obama had won in 2012.

A tsunami is building. You don’t have to look very far out to sea to notice it. But Democrats still huddle on the beach. Why?

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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