No Need To Monkey Around

There are few experiences more frustrating than when some idiot purposely monkeys around and tries to sabotage something you care about at the same time you're trying to fix that item. We know that many of the people in both the White House and HHS empathize with that frustrating feeling right now, even as they continue rushing to fix the problems with the federal health insurance enrollment website, Healthcare.gov.

That frustration was also evident at Thursday's mostly pointless hearing in the House - or as Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey called it, a "monkey court." Multiple software contractors for the new federal health insurance system spent hours ducking responsibility, even while some Republican House members seemed to almost revel in the problems of the Obamacare website.

Even as reliable reports of repairs to the healthcare website pop up daily, more people continue to enroll, and the positive opinion of Obamacare continues to grow. That hasn't kept the right-wing media or extremist Republican politicians from acting like a bunch of crazed monkeys about the Obamacare website problems.

Unfortunately, as Ed Kilgore noted in Washington Monthly on Thursday, the insane right-wing reaction to the health insurance rollout has begun to spread like a disease. Now, some of our colleagues in the left-leaning media have even begun to get caught up in the metaphorical poo-throwing - which is actually the most dysfunctional thing anyone on the left could do.

To paraphrase Napoleon, "Never interfere with the opposition when they're in the process of destroying themselves."

That is, in fact, exactly what the GOP has been doing over the last few weeks. Greg Sargent pointed that out brilliantly on Thursday, in a chart based on polling from the Washington Post and ABC News. As Sargent noted, "unfavorable ratings [for Republicans] have jumped 19 points among seniors, to 65 percent; 17 points among independents, to 67 percent; and 10 points among women, to 63 percent. Those are all key constituencies in midterm elections."

You don't just have to take Greg's word for it, though.

Larry Sabato, a well-known political prognosticator changed his take on key races this week in both Virginia and North Carolina to significantly favor the Democratic candidates, based in large part on Republicans not only turning voters off, but actually driving them to the Democratic Party. Sabato's predictions mirror multiple polls in the Virginia governor's race which have Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe up solidly in most cases over his GOP rival, Virginia's current Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

There are even growing signs that Republicans may lose control of the House in next year's elections, as their hopes to regain the Senate have almost been snuffed out.

Of course, that's the time historically when members of the left-leaning media being throwing crap at each other, while Democratic politicians begin doing really stupid things, as Maryland Democratic Attorney General Douglas Gansler did this week.

We simply don't have either the time or the inclination to slap all of our left-leaning media colleagues and every important Democratic politician we know, while at the same time giving our best impersonation of Cher saying "Snap out of it!" So we'll simply say our piece here, and hope both groups of people are paying attention:

Stop trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Stop it. Now.

There's no need for Democrats and those of us on the left to monkey around like the idiots in the GOP are doing. Leave that kind of stupid maneuver up to the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.