Today's column is going to consist of what television sitcoms call a "clip show." This is when they present some thin uber-storyline in the plot which allows them to fill most of the show with "clips from the past," thereby avoiding having to write, act, shoot, and produce a full version of their show for that particular week. So, to put this another way: you have been warned.

The reason for this recycling is our version of President Obama's "spiking the football" this week, in his announcement that Obamacare had astoundingly met the original Congressional Budget Office goal of signing up over seven million people in the first open enrollment period. Call it Obama bragging about Obamacare's "vital statistics." What we're going to do today is review the last nine months of our own predictions on not just Obamacare but the politics of Obamacare, heading into the 2014 midterm election season. If you don't want to read all these excerpts, here's a short version that could fit on Twitter: The politics of Obamacare are now going to pivot to real data instead of Republican doom-and-gloom horror stories.

For those of you who prefer more than 140 characters, let's take a trip in the Wayback Machine, shall we? One of the earliest columns I wrote on the subject (from last July) turned out to be pretty accurate all-around, as it examined the politics of Obamacare for the 2014 election. The excerpt (a long one, sorry, but the article did make some very early points that are now playing out) begins after I had asked the question whether the 2014 elections would turn out more like 2012 or more like 2010.

That may be an impossible-to-answer question. It's always tough to figure out what the public "meant" or "was saying" in any given election. Facile answers aren't always the right ones, even if the media gloms onto an unsubstantiated storyline and repeats it ad nauseam. But Republicans running full-out anti-Obamacare this time around is going to be radically different, because voters will soon be able to compare Republican rhetoric to actual reality. How this influences both the Republicans' strategy and the vote itself may be surprising.

In the Republican right-wing echo chamber, there is absolute and unequivocal certainty on the issue of Obamacare. It will be a train wreck. The entire thing is unworkable and will be a disaster of unparalleled proportions, and the American people will hate it with a white-hot fury. Ask any true conservative, they will give you chapter and verse on the subject. Republicans have convinced themselves that this outcome is preordained and cannot be avoided.

But what if they're wrong?

I really don't think many Republicans have even considered this possibility. They are convinced it so far-fetched that it's not even worth even their minimal consideration. Obamacare will fail, people will hate it, end of story. Or perhaps, projecting into the future: "...and once Obamacare fails, more Republicans will be elected and the damn thing will be repealed."

But what if it works reasonably well? What if (gasp!) people actually like it?

This is all speculative, of course. But any prognostications of future elections is nothing more than making such guesses, so it's a subject worth considering. What if Obamacare works? How will Republicans react?

. . .

From now until (at the very least) next summer, Republican consultants will be combing the country for stories of what a rampant failure Obamacare truly is. Every person paying more for their premium will be appearing in a political ad on your local television screen, along with every case where someone scraped their knee and didn't get a bandage. Every possible story of dysfunction will be spotlighted and exaggerated beyond comprehension. That's what making a whole election hinge on one issue is all about, after all. They'll trot out some weepy family members who are fully convinced that Grandma died because Barack Obama killed her. Think I am just using hyperbole to make a point? Just wait and see. The "Mediscare" ads will look tame by comparison, that's my guess.

But the public (or the portion thereof who decide elections) always weighs partisan political claims against their own experience. And this means not just their own personal experiences, but also secondhand ones communicated to them by extended family members, neighbors, friends, coworkers, and everyone else they meet. So if a politician tells them something which runs absolutely counter to their own experience, they won't believe it. And if Obamacare turns out well for a huge majority, then there will be a whole lot of people who just won't buy the claims Republicans are making. "Well, that's not what happened to me/my child/my friend" rules over partisan rhetoric, to put this another way.

. . .

Transitions are always messy. There will probably be enough scare stories for Republicans to mine for political ads. Not everything is going to work out perfectly right out of the box. But even having said all of that, what if Obamacare does indeed succeed? What happens if a whole lot of people are happy with the changes? "My brother was finally able to buy real insurance even with his pre-existing condition" is going to change a lot of hearts and minds out there. The Obamacare exchanges are going to start this October. That is over one year before the 2014 elections. By the time we vote next year, Obamacare will be fully up and running and people will be making their choices for their second year, at the exchanges. This is plenty of time for the American public to weigh the reality of Obamacare against the distorted picture that its opponents have been painting for four years now. The Republicans so overplayed their "it's never gonna work!" hand that it has actually lowered the bar for what could be considered Obamacare's success. People have such low expectations for the program that if it meets or exceeds them, they'll be reasonably satisfied. Which is a huge danger for the Republican Party's expressed 2014 anti-Obamacare strategy -- and one that they likely don't even see right now.

The real irony will be if Republicans realize this before it's too late, and make a much larger pivot before the election. If they start actually addressing the issue and putting forth real solutions to fix whatever problems crop up (campaigning, perhaps, on: "We're going to fix it so it works"), then it will signal the ultimate defeat of the anti-Obamacare strategy. It'll actually be very easy to tell when this happens (if it does). It will be precisely the point that every single Republican candidate stops calling it "Obamacare." If you hear multiple Republicans -- within the same week -- use the phrase "Affordable Care Act" then you know that they're waving the white flag on the issue.

Because if this scenario does indeed play out, that's going to be the bitterest pill for Republicans to swallow. They were the ones, after all, who insisted upon calling it "Obamacare" in the first place. And if people like it, it will forevermore be to Obama's credit, due to this Republican branding effort. So if they actually stop using the term, it'll be because they know they've lost the battle for good.

By August, the upcoming Republican circular firing squad (otherwise known as the "government shutdown") was visible on the horizon. While most of this article details the shutdown trap the Republicans were creating for themselves, before I did so I identified another self-inflicted trap -- one that the political chattering class has yet to realize even now.

Conservatives know full well that this is the last bite they're ever going to get at the "repeal!" apple. Because if they fail this time around (as virtually everyone is predicting), then Obamacare will be fully implemented, and there simply will be no turning back.

Conservatives would dispute that, of course. But realistically, even if there are implementation problems with Obamacare's state exchanges (and there will be, nothing this big launches perfectly smoothly), from October onwards Republicans are never going to be able to propose simple elimination of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the official name of "Obamacare"). People will be seeing too many benefits of the law for the Republican "repeal!" position to ever work again. Instead, Republicans will be all but forced to offer a viable alternative to Obamacare -- which they have not been able to do, as of yet. Their original cry, remember, was "repeal and replace!" but they've never been all that interested in replacing Obamacare with anything. They've tried a few halfhearted attempts at providing the good things in Obamacare and stripping out the bad things (by their definitions, of course), but these proposals just didn't add up -- literally, the math didn't work out. But after October (or January, when Obamacare fully kicks in), "repeal!" is going to be a dead issue without any sort of "replace!" proposal as well. Which means that the September budget bargaining is indeed the last chance for "repeal!" to work. Even Republican proponents of a government shutdown will tell you this -- it is, in fact, what lends their cause a sense of urgency among their base.

. . .

Since long before Obamacare ever passed into law, Republicans have been in full-on demonization mode. Their message was simple: not only will Obamacare not work, it will be the worst thing ever imaginable. The best example of this was Sarah Palin turning an idea to fund patients' discussions with their doctors about end-of-life issues into "death panels" who would convene with the stupendous power to decide which Americans should live and which should be killed off because they weren't productive members of society. That's a pretty nightmarish idea, made even more poignant by Palin's insistence that Obamacare would have meant her own baby boy would have faced such a Draconian panel, with the power of life or death for her baby. That would shock anyone's conscience. Of course, nothing even remotely resembling such a thing was in the law. But that didn't stop the Demonization Express train. Republicans almost fell over themselves to portray each and every (sometimes fictional) defect in the proposed law, in cartoonish fashion.

Republicans largely succeeded in this demonization, it should be noted. Millions of Americans are going to be downright shocked when Obamacare is fully implemented and nothing changes for them. Millions of other Americans will also be pleasantly surprised that things have gotten better for their own healthcare choices. In fact, Republicans' insistence on the "train wreck" that is coming means that anything short of an utter disaster can now be called a success by President Obama and the Democrats. The Republicans have thus lowered the bar for the success of Obamacare -- which they are not yet really even aware of, to hear them talk.

This will become more evident as time goes by. Republicans have offered up many frightening scenarios since the website's initial disastrous launch, but none of them have come true yet. There was no tidal wave of people who thought they had signed up on the exchange who were then denied health care because the insurance company didn't have the paperwork, for instance. That's just one example of many. Now, the Republicans are reduced to quibbling about the numbers -- "not everyone has paid yet!" -- but they're soon going to realize that, over time, the numbers are just going to get bigger and better, and minor quibbles are going to soon be seen as nothing short of whiny by the public at large. To put it another way, the public is going to tell Republicans: "You said there'd be a horrific train wreck, but none of your predictions came true." This week -- this particular moment in time -- is truly the turning point on scaremongering versus actual performance data in the real world.

I'll skip over the government shutdown itself, as this is already running long. I'll also skip over most of the rollout disaster, because those columns were technical rather than political, for the most part. One I wrote in November was pretty idiotic (the idiotic subject matter was to blame: "Is this Obama's Katrina?!?"), so I'll only pull one small quote from it:

Once the website is fixed, the discussion will shift to individual aspects of Obamacare itself (rather than the website). The impacts of Obamacare will cause some economic disruption, but if the overall plan works the way it was designed, then after the initial period the benefits will become obvious and the numbers of people getting insurance for the first time will climb.

Half of the article I wrote in early December, when the "version 1.1" website fixes were unveiled, was a technical look at the signup numbers (I revisited this at the end of December, another technical article that essentially made the same points as this one). I, like everyone else, never imagined at this point that they'd actually hit the C.B.O. target of seven million. But the second half of the article took another look at the politics:

On the other hand, if the website starts working well, then the conversation is going to pivot in a big way. Because if they don't have the website troubles to kick around any more, then Republicans are going to move on to picking apart individual aspects of the law itself (they've already shown indications of making this pivot). The stories of people "getting kicked off their insurance" are going to fade (as the same people will now be able to actually see their choices on the website, debunking a lot of the horror stories which have been circulating). But they will be replaced. Republicans have already been actively seeking stories of woe from people unsatisfied with some piece of Obamacare or another, and they will continue these efforts with a passion, well into 2014. They have doubled down on the "Obamacare cannot succeed" position, to be blunt.

But Democrats should take heart -- if the website works well in December -- because this will shift the entire debate onto political ground which isn't just more friendly to them but actually is tilted heavily in their direction. Because this will be the turning point to the discussion about what is actually in Obamacare, as opposed to the boogeyman stories Republicans have been telling for years. Republicans will no longer be able to get away with sweeping statements about how Obamacare will "end civilization as we know it" (or whatever strawman they're peddling), because hard data will soon exist to show this to be the nonsense it always was. Sarah Palin won't get much traction talking about how a "death panel" is going to vote on whether her baby is worthy enough to live or not, because Americans will be able to look around and see that this is nothing short of moose poop.

Republicans will adapt, of course. But they'll be adapting to reality this time. They'll bring up this aspect or that of Obamacare which is not working, and they'll demand it be changed. But they likely won't be talking about a "full repeal" of Obamacare any more, because that would mean denying health insurance to millions who have already signed up for the first time ever. "Repeal" will be replaced with "reform."

Which should be just fine with Democrats. Because there isn't a Democrat alive who would argue the position that "Obamacare is perfect, not a single thing can ever be changed in it." Democrats have always been open to the concept of making Obamacare work better, in fact. They may not agree with Republicans (or even among themselves) what "making Obamacare work better" means, exactly, but the hardline position of "it can't be changed, ever" doesn't even exist within the Democratic Party.

This is why the playing field will shift to one which favors Democrats. Democrats will be able to force Republicans to finally admit that there are good things contained within Obamacare. They've already shown signs of backing down on things like "pre-existing conditions" and children staying on their parents' insurance longer. One by one, the other positive aspects of Obamacare will become non-controversial for the sole reason that Republicans will see how popular they are, and then abruptly stop talking about them. Republicans will be reduced to nitpicking around the edges. Democrats can then feel free to speak of the good things which Obamacare has delivered (with plenty of their own examples to back such statements up), while showing flexibility on serious proposals for positive reform of the law. And if they're feeling feisty, Democrats can compile a list of talking points of all the evil things Republicans have fear-mongered upon in the past few years which have not come to pass.

This shift is precisely where we find ourselves right now. Scaremongering ads have already appeared (mostly financed by the Koch brothers), but the interesting thing is that one after another of them (I would say "virtually all" but I don't have hard numbers to prove it) have been thoroughly debunked. These "I lost my insurance" sob stories have been shown to be inaccurate, as diligent reporters show that the people in them could actually get cheaper insurance from the hated Obamacare exchanges. Because the debunking has been so complete, the ads are now noticeably shy of verifiable facts and instead you hear people vaguely complaining about "being confused." While at the same time, Democratic ads are starting to appear which pinpoint what the Republican "Repeal!" stance would now mean (like the one from West Virginia which berated a Republican candidate for wanting to take away benefits for miners suffering from black-lung disease).

Republicans have still -- after over half a decade's time -- not come up with their own viable plan to replace Obamacare. They have not sent a single bill to the C.B.O. to be "scored" because they are caught in a rather ironic Catch-22. Republicans are increasingly aware that they have to support the good and beneficial aspects of Obamacare (such as not denying people health insurance who have pre-existing conditions, for instance), but without what they consider the bad parts (the individual mandate, for instance) their numbers just do not add up. To equal the numbers in Obamacare, Republicans essentially have to duplicate Obamacare. Or, to be more blunt: in order to replace Obamacare, the Republican plan has to become Obamacare. Catch-22. Which is why no "Republicancare" bill has ever even made it to the floor of the GOP-controlled House (or "will make it this year," even). To even come close to what Obamacare achieves, they'd have to include many things that their base would hate -- so it's easier not to even hold a vote on any plan.

Democrats still have to defend their own position, as I wrote this Monday. But they do so from a much better position now than previously. That seven million figure is a game-changer in the Obamacare debate, to put this another way. What is also changing -- slowly -- is the public's perception of Obamacare, which will also help Democrats in the long run (although it may arrive too slowly for the midterms). The poll numbers for supporting Obamacare are slowly beginning to rise (one poll this week actually showed a 49-48 plurality of support). But the most interesting poll number I've seen is one that could have the biggest implications for the fall elections: over half of Americans are now sick of the entire Obamacare debate. They want Congress to move on. This sentiment could grow considerably, considering that Republicans' entire campaign is still planned on centering solely -- to the exclusion of all other issues -- on ending Obamacare.

The best news for Democrats is that we are now beyond the turning point described in the articles above. There are real numbers on Obamacare now, and all year long we will get much better analysis in ever-greater detail. Over ten million people have benefited directly from Obamacare now, and that number is only going to grow. Full repeal of Obamacare is now not a matter of ideology alone, but a matter of taking away health insurance from millions of Americans. That is a much harder case to make, obviously. Republicans will be left squabbling over shreds of data ("The difference between 7.1 million and 6.4 million proves Obamacare is a giant train wreck!" for instance), but as more complete data arrives these complaints will sound increasingly shrill and out-of-touch.

President Obama is right. What the seven million number just did was to kill off "Repeal!" as a viable political position to take. To return to our titular metaphor: the Obamacare patient is healthy, and the stats and vital signs look good. Republicans may be slow to realize this, but sooner or later it will become obvious even to them.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant