DAVID HARSANYI: So-Called Fact Checkers Keep Butchering The Facts About Obamacare.

“Fact checking” has evolved from an occasionally useful medium to an exercise in revisionism and diversion. Take The Washington Post writer Glenn Kessler’s recent article titled “President Trump’s mangled ‘facts’ about Obamacare.” Headline readers might assume it’s just Trump doing what Trump does most of the time. I almost passed myself. Yet it turns out that all these supposedly “mangled” contentions about Obamacare are, at the very least, debatable assertions.

Kessler, for example, doesn’t approve of this Donald Trump statement: “Americans were told that premiums would go down by $2,500 per year. And instead, their premiums went up to levels that nobody thought even possible.” Other than the hyperbole (“nobody thought even possible”), this statement is substantively true.

Kessler’s ostensive debunking of the “premiums are soaring” claim is really just a confirmation that premiums have indeed risen, augmented by an argument that it wasn’t Obamacare’s fault. Kessler blames the vagaries of modern life and demographics—because these things apparently didn’t exist when Democrats were making their big unrealistic promises in 2009.

Think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines, and you’ll have it exactly right.