Two key Senate Democrats appeared to distance themselves rapidly from the White House over ObamaCare on the Sunday talk shows, as the networks focused on the disaster unfolding at HHS.  One might have expected the White House to get its allies to circle wagons over the weekend, after appointing Jeffrey Zients to take over the train wreck and promising fixes by the end of November.  Instead, Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) told Bob Schieffer on CBS’ Face the Nation that this doesn’t change anything, and that the mandate should still be delayed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BDSN1NOVho

At one point, Schieffer almost laughs out loud in resignation when trying to get Shaheen to confirm that she has little confidence in the changes made by Obama this past week.

Meanwhile, Joe Manchin (D-WV) told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on This Week that no one should have to spend more money on a worse deal, which seems to be the end result for most Americans buying insurance through ObamaCare exchanges (via Allahpundit in the QOTD and TWS):

“Senator Manchin, you get the last word,” said the ABC host this morning. “Are you seeing any indication from anyone in the administration that they are willing to go along with some sort of a delay?”

“I’m not sure,” said Manchin. “I haven’t spoken in detail with them. But I can tell you: if we have a bipartisan group, which we’ve had before … George, nobody should be forced to buy a policy that costs more than what they had and is inferior to what they had. Those things have to be worked out.”

That goes a long way beyond a bad website.  Manchin’s hammering the real problem for consumers, and the Democrats who will be held accountable by them for ruining the insurance marketplace.  If anything, the repair of the website has the potential to make the situation much worse for those Democrats running in the next two elections, and possibly for a generation.

It’s not just Senate Democrats refusing to go along with the White House’s happy talk.  Try to guess who wrote this response to Sarah Palin on Friday:

If Team Obama had been plotting Canadian-style socialized medicine all along, they wouldn’t have floated all those dumb “heckuva job, Barry”-style excuses that turned healthcare.gov into the president’s Katrina moment:

• Too much volume. But corporate websites routinely handle more than the ACA sites. Besides, the feds knew that, in a nation with tens of millions of uninsured people, tens of millions of people were going to check out the website. The truth, as any idiot could plainly see, was that volume wasn’t the issue. Lousy coding was.

• ACA is “more than a website” — and anyway, why don’t people use the phone? Actually, that’s not true. For most people, the ACA are the websites. That’s how Obamacare was promoted. People were told to go online. So they did. As for those who threw up their hands and tried calling — I was one of them — there was no way to buy a plan by phone.

• Everyone knew there would be glitches. The problem with that Democratic talking point is that while Americans may suffer from short memories, they’re not totally retarded. We still recall September 2013. It’s not like anyone in the White House announced before the launch: “Hey, don’t freak if you can’t access the websites right away. Chillax, wait a month or two. We’re expecting a lot of glitches, and things could be less than cromulent for a while.”

No, Governor Palin, the truth behind the ACA mess is that Obama and his gang of golfing buddies are idiots.

It’s not Erick Erickson, I can assure you.