Left alone Jonathan Gruber would have disappeared after a while but what makes this story interesting, and a lot of fun, are the people who now never heard of him, defend hm, claim it was someone else's fault, and so on.
I've followed Leftist politics for quite a while now and they always claim to know what's best for 'the masses', despite their infamous screw-ups over the years. I've no doubt that Gruber is representative of Left Wing leaders and that his fellow travelers believe themselves to be remarkably sophisticated about economics, human needs and understand intuitively and definitely what other people need and want in their lives.
'The masses' are always other people, "and we can all understand why it's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations". The masses have to be told what's good for them.
This is the point that usually gets missed in these discussions even if you take out all the numbnuts who just want to accuse, blame, or demonize the other guy instead of focusing on what actually happened and/or what should happen.
There is nothing wrong with 'socialization' of some public services so long as it is mutually agreed via social contract on a local level--at the very least a no higher than the state level. It only makes sense for the citizens to pool resources and share fire services, police protection, public schools, public libraries, city streets, sewers, water systems, hospitals, etc. Such benefit all and relieve each family from having to arrange for and provide that for each household. And it makes sense for the community to elect persons who will be entrusted to administer the shared systems and services and do planning for expansion that benefits all. This is as the founders intended and it works best the more local it is because it can be tailored for the particular local needs of a particular community.
The disconnect comes when some want the federal government to impose what they want on the states - on everybody whether they agree to it or not. And that is when oppressive laws and totalitarian concepts start coming into play. A national speed limit, for instance, is absurd given the wide varieties in terrain and conditions found across the nation. Ditto a national minimum wage, at least above the level intended to prevent slave labor. Each area is different and the cost of living widely varies rendering federal establishment of a 'living wage' really and counter productive for many.
With the consent of the people, a statewide healthcare law might work in Massachusetts with a relatively small, homogenous population and relatively minor welfare or illegal immigration issues, but the same law would be very wrong for other states with very different issues and situations to deal with. That is why the Founders intended that the states organize their own societies and that would never be the prerogative of the federal government.
The 'stupidity of the American voter' comes in when the people fail to see how the federal government is taking more and more power and is constantly growing government to enforce that power. It consumes more and more of the nation's resources just to maintain that ever more enormous and bloated bureaucracy, and it is more and more taking away the people's rights, options, choices, and opportunities to create the sorts of societies they want to have.
Our elected leaders consistently attempt to fool us that what they do is for our good, our benefit, our blessings when in fact what they are doing is increasing their own power, prestige, influence, and personal wealth.
Obamacare is an example of this in the most serious way.