Howard Dean: Dems would win back House if not for health-care Web site woes

[mystery-ak]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/04/15/howard-dean-dems-would-win-back-house-if-not-for-health-care-web-site-woes//?print=1

Howard Dean: Dems would win back House if not for health-care Web site woes

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D) says Democrats would be in strong position to win back the U.S. House majority this year if not for the troubled rollout of the federal health-care Web site last fall.

"I think we would have won the House had the Web site not collapsed," Dean, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, said in a brief interview with Post Politics Tuesday evening. He called the battle for the House a "struggle" for Democrats but predicted the party would retain control of the Senate.

The flawed rollout of the health-care Web site "was a problem because we had [Republicans] on the run after the government shutdown," Dean said.

Dean was in Arlington to stump for former Virginia lieutenant governor Don Beyer (D), who is running for the seat being vacated by retiring Rep. James P. Moran (D-Va.). Beyer was Dean's 2004 presidential campaign treasurer.

As for 2016, Dean reiterated that he supports the idea of former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton (D) running for president.

[Millee]

Because the economy is so robust???   

[jmyrlefuller]

And if a horse had stripes, it'd be a zebra.

The fact is that mandating everybody rush to one Web site at the same time will invariably cause some sort of bandwidth trouble. That site was doomed to fail, because the very nature of the law provoked the high traffic that brings sites like that down.

[truth_seeker]

And if a horse had stripes, it'd be a zebra.

The fact is that mandating everybody rush to one Web site at the same time will invariably cause some sort of bandwidth trouble. That site was doomed to fail, because the very nature of the law provoked the high traffic that brings sites like that down.

Facebook, Amazon, etc. handle large volumes. Why couldn't a government site do likewise?

[jmyrlefuller]

Facebook, Amazon, etc. handle large volumes. Why couldn't a government site do likewise?

The business models are different.

For one, sites like Amazon and Facebook slowly grew into the leviathans they are today; they weren't just sites that sprang up and then one day directed all of their customers to shop there at once, as the publicizing of the first and last days to enroll effectively did. Besides, Amazon has an absolutely huge amount of excess bandwidth (to handle holiday loads), something that probably isn't practical at the government level.

[EC]

The business models are different.

For one, sites like Amazon and Facebook slowly grew into the leviathans they are today; they weren't just sites that sprang up and then one day directed all of their customers to shop there at once, as the publicizing of the first and last days to enroll effectively did. Besides, Amazon has an absolutely huge amount of excess bandwidth (to handle holiday loads), something that probably isn't practical at the government level.

We normally agree. But in this case, no. They had 4 damned years, near enough.

[jmyrlefuller]

We normally agree. But in this case, no. They had 4 damned years, near enough.

In theory yes. Yet because they took no customers in those four years they had no idea how much of a load their servers could handle... and as a result the code was bloated and dragged down the whole site.

Now, could they have hired some professional hackers to stress-test the site with DDoS attacks? I suppose.

[olde north church]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDwODbl3muE

[PzLdr]

Howie!

PzLdr: Germans would've taken Moscow if it hadn't snowed.