How Halbig demonstrates that they’re not very good at their jobs:
For a movement that so prides itself on being the vanguard of wonky wonkery on wonkiness, Cohn’s admissions are rather stunning. It’s one thing to believe event X is more likely than event Y, but to write off event Y as unimaginable? To ignore entirely a specific provision of law that says event Y is eminently possible? That’s a special kind of wonkery right there.
“But his 2010 comments didn’t really address the subsidy issue that was central to Halbig,” you might say, “so what’s your point?” That’s a fair question, and I don’t mean to pick on Cohn, who has regularly contributed very helpful information for many years now.
His remarks are important, though, because they reveal the massive gap between what self-styled progressives wonks think they know and what they actually know. That gap becomes increasingly relevant when these same wonks claim that their unparalleled coverage of the bill in 2009 and 2010 magically grants them intimate knowledge of not just the bill’s text, but also the innermost thoughts of the bill’s authors and supporters.
It’s not the only example, but it’s more glaring than most.
I would say the gap between what they think they know and what they actually know is the defining characteristic between Progressives and others. From the “anti-science” invective against what-is-modernly-called-Right-Wing when we said that the Theory of Evolution doesn’t give license to eugenics, to global warming today, over-confidence in one’s cleverness is pretty thematic.
If you agree that central control is NP-Hard, it’s easy to see why. Not just “why it is currently”, but “why it is necessarily true.”
It’s also a good example of group think. If they didn’t see the problems in the bill, then obviously such problems don’t really exist. These so called problems must be the product of some mysterious right wing conspiracy. When reality kicks them in the teeth, they are genuinely surprised because the thought that they were wrong really never occurred to them.