Subtext to the WaPo healthcare.gov disaster narrative: Sabotage works

The Washington Post's tick-tock by Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin on the decisions leading to the dysfunctional launch of healthcare.gov is cast in a familiar genre: an anatomy of politicized administrative incompetence. And the piece does capture some likely bad decisions.

But the narrative documents a more basic fact, not hidden but acknowledged only secondarily: sabotage works. More specifically: in a two-party system, if one party gives itself over with fanatic single-mindedness to sabotaging the enactment of a major reform, it will succeed in some degree.