Artist Perfectly Illustrates What Happens To Democrats Who Assume Voters Are Stupid

There’s no denying that the midterms were a referendum on President Barack Obama. The president prefers to say they were a referendum on his policies, which is perhaps an easier pill to swallow. But Obama is his policies, which happen to rub many Republicans (and at least a few Democrats) the wrong way.

Moreover, people don’t like being insulted and misled, as many feel they have been by this administration. This is not just a feeling but a demonstrable fact, especially vis-a-vis the Affordable Care Act. And it’s not just the far-right fringe who object to the strategic misrepresentations along the way.

These obfuscations include telling the American people that they could keep the insurance they had if they liked it and also writing the law in such a way that the ACA’s mandate to purchase government-approved insurance was not a “tax,” despite the Internal Revenue Service’s role in policing its compliance.

The keep-your-insurance ruse is history now, but the memory still lingers in the minds of voters, who, contrary to what the Obama White House thinks, are not stupid. There’s no dishonor — and it certainly isn’t stupid — to not understand the ACA. The then-Democratic-controlled Congress that passed the thing didn’t even understand it. I’d wager that most members still don’t.

Punditry aside, there’s no mystery to the midterm shellacking. It was a loud, clear shoutout to Congress to Just Stop It. Not only stop Obamacare, which more likely will end up being tweaked, but to stop executive overreach and disinformation to sway votes while betraying voters.

Those who feel defrauded by their own government got third-party confirmation this week when remarks by one of the ACA’s chief architects, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber — invoking the stupidity of voters and lauding the political advantage of a lack of transparency in government — went viral.