The scuttling of the American Health Care Act on Friday was good news for anyone who believes health care should be a basic right for every American. With the non-stroke of a pen, 24 million Americans could breathe a little easier about not losing their coverage in the foreseeable future. And by revealing the limits of President Trump’s power and influence, including over his own party, it was good news for his opponents; this bill’s withdrawal was another puncture to the cartoonish aura of invulnerability that is one of the most worrisome things about him. Repeal of Obamacare was a central campaign pledge, and Trump isn’t going to be able to fake news his way out of all the headlines of failure.
This is also a valuable lesson about the complexity of politics and social change in our country. I’m going to speculate that opposition to Obamacare became such a proxy for opposing Obama himself, for both Republican politicians and voters alike, that too few noticed the shifting of the ground beneath their feet: enough conservative voters benefitted from Obamacare, whether they realized it or not, or at least embraced the basic assumption that citizens should have health care, that when it came time to actually repeal it, sufficient will was simply not there on the part of their representatives. In a larger sense, then, it should provide some comfort to progressives fearful of a major assault on the remaining elements of the New Deal and other liberal legislation. As this piece by Brian Beutler indicates, none other than Senator Mitch McConnell has pointed out that the Republicans will need much bigger majorities, like the Democrats have held in the past, if they are to be able to roll back all the programs they want to. This speaks to a basic fact: in the United States, there is not only a bulwark of consensus for long-standing social insurance programs like Social Security, but an appetite for new ones like health care.
I would like to think that people are also beginning to see through the insistence of conservatives like Paul Ryan that the greatest good in the world is to cut taxes on the rich, in the name of economic efficiency; from their perspective, private citizens, particularly the wealthiest among us, will always more effectively invest their money than the government ever will. But the issue of health care highlights the irrelevance of this argument to many issues: what could be a better an investment than the health of our fellow citizens? And even a cold-hearted, economics-only analysis would say that healthier workers are more productive workers. But of course, the ideology of such folks is more ruthless and sadistic than the mechanistic one I just mentioned: to them, it's obviously better to have sick workers scared for their basic needs and more willing to accept shitty jobs with bare bones benefits, than people secure that their society, acting through the mechanism of their government, has got their backs.
Democrats have won a reprieve with the failure of Obamacare repeal; but they should also take what has just happened to the Republicans as a cautionary tale. For too long, the G.O.P. opposed Obamacare with little thought as to what should replace it — obviously many oppose government-supported health care as a matter of belief, but some don’t, and should have been ready to put forward a reasonable replacement. It is not too early for Democrats to talk loudly and boldly about a renewed push for broadened health coverage, and real fixes to the Affordable Care Act’s weak points. The Republicans have created a public perception of incompetence; while the strategy of keeping out of the way of this trainwreck of a bill has worked out so far for the Democrats, it’s not a viable long-term plan, not for the good of the party or the good of the country.
Trump’s election win amid promises to actually protect the social insurance benefits of his voters means that there is more room for maneuver than many Democrats realize: given rising public perceptions of Trump’s incompetence, the failure of Obamacare repeal being Exhibit A, there is an increasing opportunity to take back the mantle of protecting the common man that Trump has attempted to appropriate. Progressives need to continue to push the Democratic Party back to its roots, toward economic security for all. Voters will listen and respond to straight talk and common sense, particularly as Trump's message becomes increasingly garbled.
Finally, while I'm not as pessimistic as this guy that Trump supporters may take the defeat of Obamacare repeal as yet more evidence that the president should press on in an authoritarian direction, I do think that the largest threat that Trump presents may have just gotten bigger: that faced with failure in the realm of conventional politics, he has an increased incentive to assert his powers in areas where presidential power is less constrained — namely in matters of war and national security. Andrew Sullivan is beating this warning drum again this week, and is right to do so; it is worth noting as well the ominous escalation of American involvement in Syria, about which The Hot Screen will soon have more to say.