Kurtz condescends:

In the end, the subject may simply have been too dense for the media to fully digest. If you're a high-information person who routinely plows through 2,000-word newspaper articles, you had a reasonably good grasp of the arguments. For a busy electrician who plugs in and out of the news, the jousting and the jargon may have seemed bewildering.

Once the law takes effect -- its provisions stretched out over years -- perhaps journalists can help separate rhetoric from reality. That is, if we don't lose interest and move to the next hot controversy.