Former White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) - On the eve of the sign-up deadline for Obamacare, no one from the Obama administration went on the Sunday talk shows to urge enrollment.
Instead, the discussion was left to previous administration officials and pundits.
The Affordable Care Act was a "seminal achievement" and the "politics" will improve over time, said David Plouffe, the former campaign manager and top adviser to President Obama.
"The law's working," Plouffe told ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. "You're going to have -- by the way, if you count people who are going directly to private insurance companies, Medicaid, children's health care, we're talking well more than 10 million people have health care, tens of millions more have security...This law is working," he repeated.
"And I think the Republican playbook of just 'repeal Obamacare, repeal Obamacare, repeal Obamacare' gets tougher as more and more people get health care. I think smart Republicans understand that."
"No actual Democratic senator running for reelection sounds like David Plouffe," said Bill Kristol of "The Weekly Standard."
"They are not saying this law is working. They're saying, 'Oh my God, we can fix it. Here's some new proposals.' Senator Mark Warner, Mark Begich is out there, unveiled a whole bunch of proposals to, quote, 'fix Obamacare' this week."
But the Republican-led House will not vote to fix Obamacare, Stephanopoulos told his assembled "Roundtable."
"I don't think the Democrat Senate will do it," Kristol responded. "I don't think the Obama administration supports those proposals. They've resisted every attempt to do minor fixes and delays in Obamacare except for the ones they unilaterally decide on."
Kristol added that it would be better for Republicans to run on "replace and repeal" rather than "repeal and replace." "You can't just throw people out," he said.
Kristol also said the polling goes up for Republicans when they talk about keeping Obamacare's tax credits and coverage for pre-existing conditions."
ABC's political analyst Matthew Dowd said the 2014 election won't be about Obamacare at all:
"I think in the end, the 2014 election, if you look at the fundamentals of the election, it's not going to be about Obamacare. There's flaws in it, there's successes in it. I think everybody can debate that...But 2014 is about the direction of the country, the economy, and how people feel in their lives. It's not going to be about Obamacare."
"I disagree with Matthew on that," Kristol said. "I think it will be a referendum on Obamacare and will be good for Republicans."