Patrick Appel asks:
Why is Obamacare so offensive to some liberals?
Well, I can’t answer for “some liberals”, but I can answer for myself. There’s a general reason, and a specific one. First the general reason.
Not to get all Sorkin, but I don’t use “Obamacare” because I don’t use “Obama”. It’s “President Obama”. And that’s not a partisan affectation. It’s also “Senator Grassley”, “Rep. Boehner”, “Rep. Cantor”, and so on. It may be old-fashioned, but that’s the way I do things here. Respect the office.
The more specific reason I don’t use “Obamacare” is that it implies that the law is the work of one man. It wasn’t passed by fiat. It was created by three committees in the House, two more in the Senate, was voted on by a majority of Representatives and a heck of a lot of Senators before being altered in reconciliation. Then it was signed by the President. President Obama neither gets all the blame nor all the credit. It’s not his and his alone. It’s the Affordable Care Act, the ACA, or the PPACA.
Yes, it “gets tiresome” to write that out every time, but it helps to respect the office and the players. So I take the time.
