Even as Mr. Obama announced that eight million Americans had enrolled in the program and urged Democrats to embrace the law, those in his party are running from it rather than on it, while Republicans are prospering by demanding its repeal. The reasons are complex and layered in the early assessments, but say much about the nation’s political polarization, its shifting fault lines of class and race, and a diminished faith in government. With the chance to apply for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal help set to expire in a few months, even Obama’s home state of Illinois is expressing little interest in taking the next step
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