5 Nominees That Should Have Been on TIME’s Person of the Year Shortlist

TIME Magazine announced this morning that Pope Francis has been chosen as their Person of the Year for 2013. They made an excellent choice. We were a little disappointed, though, to see that these other great nominees, who did so much to remind America about the failures of the Obama Administration, didn’t make it onto TIME’s runner up list.

1. The Newly Uninsured

More than 5 million Americans this year received cancellation notices from their health plan providers thanks to ObamaCare’s burdensome rules and mandates. This came after the President and Congressional Democrats had repeatedly promised Americans that they could keep their health plans if they liked them. These newly uninsured, who lost their plans through no fault of their own, are angry – they reminded us how much of a failure ObamaCare truly is, and Democrats will pay the price in next year’s midterms.

2. Lois Lerner

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who managed applications for tax-exempt status, shocked the country earlier this year when she admitted that the government tax-collecting agency had intentionally targeted conservative political groups. Lerner reminded voters that government is not transparent, despite Obama’s promises to the contrary, and raised questions about the IRS’ power in implementing ObamaCare.

3. HealthCare.gov 

For becoming a national punch line and reminding Americans how incompetent government can truly be, HealthCare.gov should have been a strong contender.The operating system for ObamaCare, which launched in October, failed at dizzying speeds and produced error after error and delay after delay for millions of Americans. Even after the White House said the website had been “mostly fixed” two months later, the site is still plagued with problems – many of which won’t make themselves known until next year, when Americans start relying on the insurance they think they’ve bought.

4. Kathleen Sebelius

The head of the Health and Human Services Department, and the Czar of HealthCare.gov, did a fantastic job this year of reminding the voters just how incompetent President Obama and his Administration is. Whether it was her abysmally flailing performance in front of Congress, or all of HealthCare.gov’s disastrous errors (related: 8 Shocking Reasons the Person in Charge of ObamaCare Needs to Be Fired), Sebelius did a stand up job of representing the intransigence of the Obama Administration.

5. “The Pivot” 

President Obama and his shifty White House team have become experts at crafting presidential “pivots,” the vocabulary they use to hide a panicked retreat from whatever issue is bogging them down. The most recent panic pivot occurred last month, when Obama tried to shift back to the economy and ignore the ObamaCare meltdown. It didn’t work. In October, Obama tried again to pivot to immigration reform in order to avoid all of ObamaCare’s negative headlines. He again tried another economic pivot in July. In fact, Obama’s bad pivot habit has become so routine that NBC’s Chuck Todd has even nicknamed it the “Déjà Pivot.” So thank you for an amazing 2013, and for repeatedly reminding us how many times President Obama has tried to run away from his abysmal record.