Missouri vote shows how badly Obamacare is ailing

Obamacare faced voters for the first time Tuesday and was diagnosed as seriously ill.

By a margin of 71 percent to 29 percent, Missouri voters approved a referendum to invalidate any Obamacare mandate to purchase health insurance or any penalty for not doing so.

Proposition C reflects growing momentum to repeal Obamacare, an increasingly unpopular federal sinkhole that the American people do not want and numerous state and federal officials are working sedulously to reverse.

Obamacare's latest defeat did not occur in Mississippi, Utah or some other right-wing bastion. Instead, this happened in Missouri, a swing state in which President Barack Obama narrowly lost (by just 3,903 votes) to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential election.

Rather than accept responsibility for Tuesday's setback, Democrats typically are faulting Republicans.

"The numbers are totally distorted because of the lopsided turnout," Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told The Associated Press, blaming heavy GOP voter participation. Of course, this coin's flip side features Democrats so ho-hum about Obamacare that they failed to defend it.

Federal Judge Henry Hudson ruled Monday that Virginia may proceed with its lawsuit to overturn Obamacare's individual mandate to acquire medical coverage.

"While this case raises a host of complex constitutional issues," Hudson wrote, "all seem to distill to the single question of whether or not Congress has the power to regulate — and tax — a citizen's decision not to participate in interstate commerce."

As Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli observed, "The government cannot draft an unwilling citizen into commerce just so it can regulate him under the Commerce Clause."

Obamacare's mandate redefines the individual's relationship to Washington, D.C. If it can compel Americans to buy health insurance, why can't it force each American to join a gym or eat a bran muffin every morning?

A constituent of Rep. Peter Stark, D-Calif., asked him at a June town hall meeting, "If this legislation is constitutional, what limitations are there on the federal government's ability to tell us how to run our private lives?"

Stark's answer encapsulated Obamacare's underlying statist philosophy: "The federal government can, yes, do most anything in this country."

Twenty different state attorneys general are in court battling Obamacare's defining ideology, as embodied in the individual mandate.