In an attempt to get as many people as possible signed up for Obamacare ahead of the March 31 deadline, President Obama has been on a borderline desperate media blitz to get the word out on how ‘successful’ his signature healthcare law has been. Forget the fact that only 5 million people have signed up and only a fraction of those signups are in the key 18 to 34 demographic – Obamacare is simply fabulous! Ellen DeGeneres played right into the President’s hand when he appeared on her talk show this week.
On radio this morning, Glenn actually praised President Obama for understanding the “power” of the daytime and late-night TV circuit he seems to be so fond of.
After allowing the President to run through the myriad of reasons why young people in particular should signup for healthcare, Ellen added that the law is “doing very, very well” and she thinks “everyone’s very grateful that [he] did this.”
“I know you said this yesterday when we were talking about him going on [Ellen], but look at the power of these shows,” Glenn said. “Because that's all he's going on. And he knows: I don't need Fox News. I don't need even MSNBC. I don't even need CNN. He's not doing interviews there because they'll ask him tough questions. So what does he do? He just goes on to these shows.”
Earlier this month, President Obama made major headlines for his appearance on comedian Zach Galifianakis’ outrageous Funny or Die parody interview show, “Between Two Ferns”:
The skit actually succeeded in at least driving traffic to Healthcare.gov. Just hours after the video was posted, White House spokeswoman Tara McGuinness tweeted that it was the number one referrer to healthcare website:
http://t.co/FrO24hdvcA is the #1 source of referrals to http://t.co/0r93BavlrV right now.
— Tara McGuinness (@HealthCareTara) March 11, 2014
Regardless of what you think of President Obama, he certainly understands the best ways to reach his target audience. Viewers of the cable and network news channels could probably call the President’s bluff when he touts the so-called successes of Obamacare, but the people he has reached through Ellen and Funny or Die probably don’t.
“This is why he's smart and why he wins elections. If you're here you know this stuff,” Stu concluded. “If you're watching Ellen, you don't know any of it. You might have thought about it at the time, but you don't remember he said it.”