Bill Kristol is the latest to weigh in on the New York Times’ Schadenfreude –producing story about professionals coming smack up against the realities of ObamaCare. The Times article began this way:

Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.

It also included this:

“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

Well, we could have told her–in fact, we did. Repeatedly.

We’ve already taken note of Mollie Hemingway’s post on the same story over at The Federalist. Kristol says something similar to what Mollie argued, namely that conservatives need to be able to do a better job of explaining our policies and their philosophical underpining.

Liberals often buy into an absurd misrepresentation of conservatives (you know–we hate poor people and want them to have bad medical care). So they vote for politicians who pass laws that sound good for the commonweal. But they aren't. ObamaCare may well be the most egregious example of this in our history. We knew all along that ObamaCare was going to be a fiasco. But we never figured out how to explain this to others–who are now beginning to see the light–through a lot of human suffering and anxiety.

Kristol writes:

If conservatives and Republicans can explain the facts of life in a language intelligible to contemporary Americans, the year 2014 could be an inflection point in the saga of modern American liberalism, modern American conservatism, and modern American politics.

Hear! Hear!

If the GOP has a retreat before the midterms, this is a nice workshop topic: Learning to Talk, 101.