2:0 EDT The President announces the nomination of Jeh Johnson to be the next secretary of homeland security.
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Salon: GOP’s nightmare come true: Obamacare more popular than ever
A new poll reveals just how spectacularly the shutdown has backfired on the Republican Party
The GOP-led federal government shutdown over Obamacare has dramatically backfired on Republicans. Nearly two-thirds of active voters, the largest share yet, support the health insurance reform law and want it to work, new nationwide polling has found.
“A new national survey conducted for Democracy Corps and the Women’s Voices Women’s Vote Action Fund shows an intense new majority for implementing and improving the Affordable Care Act,” the report begins. “A minority of voters want to repeal or replace ‘Obamacare,’ which has been the core demand of the Republicans in Congress who have shut down the government.”
Contrary to mainstream media, Obamacare is not unpopular, the survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found. Instead, 62 percent of 2012 voters polled a week into the House’s shutdown strongly supported the law. That is an increase from late September, when a New York Times/CBS poll found that 56 percent of voters wanted it upheld and fixed. The share of people fervertly opposing the law is fixed at 38 percent, both surveys found, showing that support for the Affordable Care Act is growing.
ThinkProgress: Thanks To Obamacare, Oregon Cut Its Unsinsured Population By 10 Percent Over The Past Two Weeks
Over the past two weeks, Oregon has signed up so many low-income residents for health coverage that the state has cut its uninsured population by 10 percent, according to state health officials. The majority of those people are newly eligible for public insurance plans thanks to Obamacare’s expansion of the Medicaid program.
The Oregon Health Plan — which is what the state calls its Medicaid-funded program for poor residents — has enrolled 56,000 new people this month. State officials credit those high numbers to a fast-track enrollment system that allows people to easily sign up. More than 250,000 food stamp recipients in the state received a notice informing them that they’ve become eligible for the Oregon Health Plan, and explaining that they can either make a phone call or fill out a form in order to complete the enrollment process.
“This is tremendous news for the thousands of Oregonians anxious to get access to quality, affordable health care,” Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) said in a statement.
Daily Beast: Obamacare Is Winning in Kentucky, Thanks to Steve Beshear
Kentucky, a bastion of anti-government ire, is the top state for Obamacare enrollment. Jonathan Miller on the governor responsible for the unlikely red-state enthusiasm.
….. in a delicious irony, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul’s home state may ultimately serve as the proving ground of Obamacare’s success. That’s due to the political chutzpah of one man: Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear.
Over the past several months, Beshear used his broad executive powers to bypass resistance from the GOP-controlled state Senate to ensure that the Commonwealth is the only Southern state that both expanded its Medicaid rolls and opened up a health benefit exchange, providing access to affordable health care to our more than 640,000 uninsured citizens ….. in its first day, 10,766 applications for health coverage were initiated, 6,909 completed and 2,989 families were enrolled.
ThinkProgress: Rick Perry Is Actually Encouraging Texans To Enroll In Obamacare
After years of trying to undermine the Affordable Care Act, Texas lawmakers are suddenly embracing President Obama’s signature domestic policy accomplishment. On Thursday, the Texas Tribune reported that the state is shuttering a state-based health care program and encouraging Texans to sign-up for coverage in the federally-run health care exchange.
Texas’ high risk pool program, which opened in 1998, provides coverage to individuals and families with pre-existing conditions who couldn’t find insurance in the individual health care market. But since the ACA’s exchanges began enrolling beneficiaries, the state deemed the program obsolete, arguing that Texans could find a better deal in the federally-run exchange….
ThinkProgress: Obama Pollster Warns Republicans: Oppose Obamacare At Your Own Risk
Despite claiming that the shutdown fight represented their last best chance to undermine the Affordable Care Act, Republicans in Congress insist that they will continue to chip away at the health care reform law — even as uninsured Americans begin to sign up for coverage in the law’s new marketplaces. But poll numbers from Obama campaign pollster Joel Benenson suggest that the effort has little public support — even among Republican voters.
“Each time Republicans ratchet up their efforts to delay or defund the ACA instead of focusing on what should be their No. 1 priority — strengthening our economic recovery and creating jobs — they suffer,” Benenson wrote in a memo initially obtained by Politico. The document presents an “array of public polling from a wide variety of outlets” to show that the legislative effort to undermine the law has hurt the party “on every front”…
Ohio Gov. John Kasich is using one of the nation’s best known hospitals to make a final public push for Medicaid expansion before next week’s vote by a legislative panel.
The Republican governor is set to visit the Cleveland Clinic on Friday. He will be joined by advocates who support extending Medicaid coverage to more Ohioans under the federal health care law.
The government is reopening, and we didn’t default on our debt. Happy days are here again, right?
Well, no. For one thing, Congress has only voted in a temporary fix, and we could find ourselves going through it all over again in a few months. You may say that Republicans would be crazy to provoke another confrontation. But they were crazy to provoke this one, so why assume that they’ve learned their lesson?
Beyond that, however, it’s important to recognize that the economic damage from obstruction and extortion didn’t start when the G.O.P. shut down the government. On the contrary, it has been an ongoing process, dating back to the Republican takeover of the House in 2010. And the damage is large: Unemployment in America would be far lower than it is if the House majority hadn’t done so much to undermine recovery.
Steve Benen: Remember the pundits who urged Obama to cave?
Even as the American mainstream turned against congressional Republicans during the recent crises, there were quite a few Beltway pundits who urged President Obama to give in to GOP demands. We talked earlier about what lessons Republicans may have learned from this fiasco, but I can’t help but feel curious about what, if anything, commentators learned, too.
Let’s take National Journal’s Ron Fournier, for example, who argued just last week that Obama “must negotiate” with GOP leaders. He said it was necessary as a “matter of optics,” adding that Republican “obstinacy” is “no excuse.” (Remember, in context, “negotiating” with Republicans meant exploring what concessions the president was prepared to offer – in exchange for nothing – because GOP lawmakers said it was a precondition to their willingness to complete their basic responsibilities.)
Obama ignored the advice, showed some real leadership, and prevailed. A week later, with the benefit of hindsight, Fournier’s advice appears rather misguided.
Reuters: Obama picks attorney Jeh Johnson for Homeland Security chief
President Barack Obama will nominate former Pentagon attorney Jeh Johnson, a national security expert who had a role in ending the military’s ban on gays in the military, to be Homeland Security chief, a White House official said on Thursday.
Johnson, who served as general counsel in the Department of Defense during Obama’s first term, would succeed Janet Napolitano, who stepped down earlier this year. His nomination requires Senate confirmation.
…. “The president is selecting Johnson because he is one (of) the most highly qualified and respected national security leaders, having served as the senior lawyer for the largest government agency in the world,” the official said.
…. managing editor of TheGrio.com and on-air contributor Joy-Ann Reid was also the subject of a tantalizing bit of information from a senior source at the network.
Joy has been a frequent fill-in host this year, and has impressive new media chops, with extensive reporting experience, and a point of view that meshes well with the network’s fastest-growing demographic. She’s also the subject of copious social media demand that she be given her own show on MSNBC, an idea which I floated in these pages several months ago. Asked “When is Joy Reid getting her own show,” a senior MSNBC source replied “Stay tuned.”
Pete Souza: “This photo was taken about 4AM after the President made an unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base to pay respects to fallen troops coming back from Afghanistan. After meeting privately with the families, the President walked alone up the ramp of the cargo plane carrying the 18 caskets, all draped in American flags. I could see the emotion on his face as he walked from casket to casket, leaving a Presidential coin on each. When he was done, he paused for a few minutes, head bowed in prayer. I heard him tell others later how that was the most difficult moment of his Presidency thus far. Out of respect for the families, not all of who wanted their ceremony photographed, we can’t show those pictures (but they will become part of Presidential archive). Oct. 29, 2009
Pete Souza: “The President ties his white tie before the Alfred E. Smith dinner in New York. Although the dinner is an annual event, every four years, the two presidential nominees attend the dinner only a few weeks before the election.” Oct. 18, 2012
The Obama Diary 
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