JAMES TARANTO: They’re Desperate Now: ObamaCare supporters crank up the racial rhetoric.

Sometimes it’s obvious when somebody states the obvious, and we’ve seen a lot of examples of late as America’s left-liberals have struggled to come to grips with the disaster of ObamaCare. Example: “The mismanagement of the website HealthCare.gov and the cancellation of millions of policies pushes an underlying question out into the open: Is the federal government capable of managing the provision of a fundamental service through an extraordinarily complex system?” Arguably the answer is no less obvious than the question.

It is nonetheless remarkable for its source: Thomas Edsall, a “contributing op-ed writer” for the New York Times (we surmise that means he’s not on the New York Times Co. health-insurance plan). Edsall goes on to admit that “recent developments . . . strengthen the most damaging conservative portrayals of . . . big government”–to wit, that “too much a part of our lives, too invasive, too big, too scary, too regulatory, too in your face” as well as “incompetent, bureaucratic and expropriatory.”

Which, of course, means it is necessary to change the subject to something more comfortable: race.

Yawn. Race-talk is employed when Democrats are losing. Nobody takes it seriously anymore, not even Democrats. “The charge of racism is a sign of desperation. Expect to hear it more and louder in the coming weeks and months as the ObamaCare failures multiply.”