Via the Standard, I confess that I did used to think that a multi-trillion-dollar leftist reinvention of the insurance industry would have all sorts of untoward consequences, some intentional and some not.

But then I watched Harry Reid mumble about the Koch brothers for three minutes and mine eyes were opened.

Guy Benson is virtually shaking with rage and disbelief that this tool could say this with a straight face, knowing that there are scores of reporters watching who’ve encountered genuine horror stories and could debunk him. (Start with Pulitzer winner Charles Ornstein of Pro Publica and work your way down.) But that’s another sign of a trend developing among top Democrats: The more time wears on, the more brazen and Orwellian the lies get. Why else would Sebelius have said, on camera, that the administration never chose seven million as a target for O-Care enrollment when she must have known that she herself had used that figure — also on camera? Are they just exhausted from defending the law at this point and willing to resort to nonsense no matter how easily exposed it is?

Actually, the real meta-problem for Democrats on ObamaCare that this clip exemplifies is that, from the beginning, they simply would not and could not pitch this boondoggle as a matter of trade-offs. Yes, Obama could have said, if you like your plan you may not be able to keep your plan, but the trade-off is that you’ll get “comprehensive” coverage from now on. Yes, the White House could have said, healthy young people will get hosed by being legally compelled to buy insurance they almost certainly won’t need, but the trade-off is that the money insurers make off of them will be used to pay for treatments for very sick people. Yes, Harry Reid could have said, there are some real horror stories involved in this program, but the trade-off is that it’s made life better for more people than the old system did. They could have said this, but acknowledging trade-offs means admitting that Democratic proposals do indeed have serious costs, possibly serious enough to fatally wound public support for them while they’re making their way through Congress. So we get another Big Lie instead.