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Democrats united, Republicans divided on health care

While Republicans are openly feuding over how to defund the bill, it's Democrats who are showing a united front to push Obamacare to the public.
/ Source: The Daily Rundown

While Republicans are openly feuding over how to defund the bill, it's Democrats who are showing a united front to push Obamacare to the public.

In just one week on Oct. 1—unless Republicans defy long odds to block its implementation—the president’s health care plan will take effect. But while Republicans are openly feuding over how to defund the bill, it’s Democrats who are showing a united front to push Obamacare to the public.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama sat back down with his self-described “Secretary of Explaining Stuff” Bill Clinton, who helped Obama debunk myths on health care reform. Their chat at the Clinton Global Initiative event also drove home the point that Democrats are united when it comes to making health care implementation a success.

From USA Today:

If “Obamacare” is so great, President Obama asked Tuesday, why do polls show it is so unpopular?In a nearly hour-long pitch for his signature legislative achievement, Obama and his health care ally, former president Bill Clinton, said that mandated health insurance would improve the economy and torpedo the budget deficit, all for the cost, Obama said, of a monthly cellphone bill.Obama conceded that the health care overhaul remains controversial four years after it was passed. “Let’s face it, it’s been a little political, this whole Obamacare thing,” he said.An intense effort by Republicans opposed to the health insurance mandate, including “wacky” TV ads — one featuring an Uncle Sam character interfering in a woman’s gynecological checkup — has scared potential customers, Obama said.

The Republican fight over whether to shut down the federal government if a stop gap spending bill that includes a measure to defund the Affordable Care Act doesn’t pass may put Democrats out ahead.

“When it comes to policy and budget disputes, the party that is united and always beats the party that isn’t,” said The Daily Rundown host and NBC Political Director Chuck Todd on Wednesday’s show. “It’s hard to look at the GOP and view them as a party that is united.”

Watch Chuck’s full First Read analysis from this morning’s The Daily Rundown in the above clip.