What if Ted Cruz Wins?

No, I don't think Obamacare as a whole will be defunded but I think any delay for any major segment of Obamacare will be a very clear victory for Ted Cruz who almost nobody thought had a chance of achieving anything.  The White House's position was made weaker today by the fact that a Democratic Senator said that the individual mandate should be delayed a year using pretty simple logic:

"Don't put the mandate on the American public right now," Manchin said. "Give them at least a year. If you know you couldn't bring the corporate sector, you gave them a year, don't you think it'd be fair?"

That coupled with the fact that there is another glitch in the exchange software, you really can't argue that Obamacare is ready for primetime.  So why shut down the government in order to implement something on time that can't be implemented on time anyway?  Launching Obamacare now would be the equivalent of Apple launching an Iphone where you can only get data access by using a PC already connected to the Internet.  I'm sure there are other red state Democrats, besides Manchin, who don't want to risk their political careers to Obama's vanity.

The more Democrats that come around, the more Obama will look like a complete schmuck for refusing to negotiate and the more he will be blamed for any shutdown.  

I know the GOP is scared that people will blame them for a shutdown but I don't think it will be as bad as they say.  The GOP lost a handful of House seats and gained a couple of Senate seats after the last shutdown and that was before Fox News was around to give the conservative perspective to people.  It was also when the Internet was still just a niche and before blogs.  People were hammered day and night how this was the Republican's fault by the mainstream media and yet the GOP still suffered few ill-effects.  

Anyway, I am keeping my fingers crossed that the Republican caucus in the House keeps Boehner's backbone stiff and sees this thing through.  There is a decent chance that the Democrats will offer a delay to the mandate or other aspects of Obamacare before this thing is over.