I have certain beliefs about how people should treat employees and how companies should be run, but I was really surprised though this process to learn that those beliefs are actually good business.
I think American culture had just become so disengaged from the process of government, and we'd been so fuzzed out by our pop culture around us, that I don't think people really saw this guy for what he was.
There's such an aggressively apolitical movement in the US that anything that smells of being political - even the term "political" is so ridiculous, when you think about it. The worst part of governing, the political side, is the grossest part, so that's what they call it. So anything that reeks of that immediately gets tuned out by 70 percent of the population.
Obamacare is a private mandate that will drive billions to the insurance industry, much like the auto insurance mandate. Hardly socialism. In fact, it was a Republican plan to begin with.