Obamacare goes fully into effect on Jan. 1, 2014, and the people who imposed it on a reluctant country — President Obama and congressional Democrats — are no longer celebrating their handiwork. The first prominent Democrat to wring his hands in public was Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., who two weeks ago voiced his fear that implementation of the law was becoming a “train wreck.” This emboldened other Democrats to express their own forebodings after fingering their worry beads in private for the last several months. Things got so bad that even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — normally Obama’s most consistent Senate advocate — embraced Baucus’ train wreck metaphor.

It seems that nothing concentrates the mind like a hanging or an election in November 2014. A week after his public blubbering, Baucus threw in the towel on his re-election effort and, as National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar reported Friday, plenty of his Democratic colleagues may be having similar thoughts: “In the face of intraparty criticism that implementation of his health care law will be a ‘train wreck,’ new polls showing support for the law near all-time lows, and even the Democratic nominee in next week’s House special election calling the law ‘extremely problematic’ — there’s plenty of evidence piling up to believe health care will be a political millstone for Democrats in 2014.”