Obama Signs Up For Obamacare
BASH: Welcome back to THE LEAD. Another day, another huge Obamacare deadline delay. You needed to sign up by the end of today on the federal exchange in order to have coverage by January 1st, but now it looks like tomorrow works, too. A spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs the site, said quote, "Anticipating the high demand and the fact that consumers may be enrolling from multiple time zones, we have taken steps to make sure that those who select a plan through tomorrow will get coverage for January 1st." Now, an administration official told CNN that the deadline is technically today, but it's sort of like Election Day when you're in line and the polls close, you still get to vote. The White House also announced today that the president signed up himself for Obamacare through the D.C. exchange, but then they clarified that, telling CNN, the president's staff signed him up in person through the D.C. exchange over the weekend. Like some Americans, the complicated nature of the president's case required an in-person signup. Let's bring in our political panel to talk about all this, CNN political commentator and Democratic strategist, Maria Cardona, CNN political commentator and Republican strategist, Kevin Madden and CNN political commentator and Washington correspondent for "The New Yorker" Ryan Lizza. I just have to share, I checked with her, an e-mail that Candy Crowley sent which said it all. I'm confused, talking about the president. He signs up for the health insurance he doesn't need, but he can't do it because he has to do it in person, and he's not in person, and then they send an unknown staffer there to verify it because it's not really him. The White House thought this was a good idea? Maria, sorry, you're on the hot seat since you're the Democrat here.</s>MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I figured. They didn't need to do that. Obviously it was symbolic. But the fact that you just read that e-mail I think signifies that the story's not what they would have wanted.</s>BASH: You think?</s>CARDONA: They just shouldn't have done that. They should have focused on there is some good news today about Obamacare. They had over a million visits to the web site just over the weekend and they had more than 200,000 calls to the call centers. There is massive interest in this. They have now over a million people who have actually signed up, 500,000 have gotten coverage in less than three weeks. So those are the numbers they should focus on and they should focus on the benefits that all of the uninsured are starting to get because of this. They didn't need to do this.</s>BASH: Is that penetrating?</s>RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I don't think so. I think people are still hung up more on the problems and if the goal today with Obama doing this was a symbolic sort of to tell people that you should be able to sign up and it's not confusing, it seems to have had the opposite impact. Frankly, the president doesn't need Obamacare. He has a sort of special set of doctors and health care providers. Maybe in 2017, he can sign up. I think even after you served your term you get pretty good health care as an ex-president. So it had the opposite effect instead of sending a message --</s>BASH: But to be fair --</s>KEVIN MADDEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Let's not forget, the interest has been mandated by the government. The government is making you do this. This is an individual mandate that President Obama and the Democrats wrote into law so this is not some sort of, you know, an interest that is at its genesis people wanting to find out more about their health coverage. They have to buy it. The government is now making them.</s>CARDONA: Let's be clear about something here, too. A lot of people are saying the uninsured isn't going to sign up. That's not true. Most people who don't have coverage --</s>MADDEN: The problem is --</s>CARDONA: -- want coverage.</s>MADDEN: More people are losing it because of this law than are actually signing up for it.</s>CARDONA: No, that's a small amount of people.</s>MADDEN: Millions of people.</s>CARDONA: Millions of people.</s>MADDEN: That's not a small amount.</s>CARDONA: It's 5 percent of the American population, very important, which is why the administration did the fix that they did. Let me -- but the uninsured want to get coverage.</s>LIZZA: One thing, there's no doubt this has been a mess of a rollout but what happens, Kevin, for Republicans next year, what if the technical issues, because they are technical issues, what happens if those get solved and the debate comes back to Washington? Is there an onus on Republicans to say OK, we got to make this better, or is the debate in the Republican Party simply we got to repeal it all together? It seems like this debate has sucked a lot of Republicans who hated Obamacare into a conversation of how to fix it.</s>MADDEN: One of the problems is I don't think any of these technical issues, doesn't seem there's a plan right now to actually fix them. I think the other big problem for this law is that a number of the mileposts, for example, the small business mandate that's coming up, how the rates are going to be affected for 2015 because of a lot of the disruptions in the markets. I think that's going to make people even -- continue -- people are going to continue to have a very bad experience with this law. I think Republicans, when they recognize the best way to go about this, the best way to go about fixing the law is to repeal it and start over, having more patient-centric care. There are a number of plans out there by folks like Senator Coburn and Paul Ryan as well as Congressman Tom Price, that focus on their solution. I think that's a much better political play for Republicans is that they can actually be reminded of the fact that health care is a value- centric issue, where people have to go out and talk about what would I do differently. We haven't done that as well in the past. I think we will continue to do more of that in 2014.</s>BASH: I want to change topics to the Twitterverse. As we all know, Washington is empty of its members of Congress, most of them, in fact, Rand Paul was leaving, he got in his own car, drove away. I watched him do it on Friday along with other senators. He's driving his own car. But guess what, he can't leave Washington even though he doesn't like it. On Twitter, he had a Twitter war with Cory Booker, the new senator from New Jersey. One more festivous grievance about bipartisanship, Cory Booker doesn't retweet me enough. Are we all in seventh grade? Booker responded, you, me and feats of strength, Senate floor, name the time. Responding, it then turned into a conversation about reforming drug sentencing laws. Booker tweeted here's to a 2014 where we take on the failed war on drugs. Now, first of all, I don't even know where to start with this. But let's just try to be positive and say that these -- this is one of the most liberal Democrats, one of the most conservative Republicans, having a conversation Twitter or not, 140 characters or not.</s>LIZZA: Look, Rand Paul is one of these younger members of the Senate. He understands the new media universe. Cory booker, same thing, younger generation. A lot of the colleagues are 30 and 40 years older than these guys. This is a great way for them to get an issue that is not high profile on the radar. Here we are talking about it. Mandatory minimum in sentencing needs to be fixed.</s>CARDONA: I think it's the beginning of a budding bipartisan bromance. I actually --</s>BASH: Maybe</s>TMI. CARDONA: I think Chris Christie might be getting a little jealous because he used to be the go-to bipartisan bromance partner for Cory Booker.</s>MADDEN: I hate to be not an idealist on this, but I just think it's because they have way too much time on their hands. I'm sorry.</s>BASH: Like go on vacation, guys. Put your iPhones down. No more Twitter. We don't want to hear from you. Maria, Ryan, Kevin, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Coming up next on THE LEAD, Will Ferrell's months-long PR push wasn't enough to pull in Box Office gold this weekend for "Anchorman 2," the other sequel that did come out on top next.