It’s not the end of Trump or the salvation of Obamacare by any stretch of the imagination, but make no mistake—it is a wound. He’s failed to deliver on one of his promises, and he’s done so in a way that exposes fissures among his own base; between those who wanted a simple repeal (who must feel betrayed), and those who expected a better system (who must be pretty disappointed).
More fundamentally, it has called into question his ability to shepherd legislation through Congress. Republicans are willing to tolerate a mentally ill president insofar as he’s able to further their agenda. If he’s unable to do that because he doesn’t understand the policy, how government works, and/or starts “going after” members of his own party who dissent, they may decide that he’s more of a liability than an asset. This is the reason why Wall Street is upset—they take the healthcare defeat as a sign that maybe they won’t get their tax breaks.
Undermining Obamacare and blaming the Democrats for its failures is a strategy that’s served them well as an opposition party, but the onus is now on them to actually do something. The Democrats aren’t going to get blamed because the GOP failed to pass an enormously unpopular healthcare overhaul—they’re going to get credit. And if the Republicans do nothing but drive up people’s premiums, voters aren’t going to respond by electing even more Republicans. The fact of the matter is, if they can’t figure out how to actually govern, no amount of finger pointing is going to spare them the wrath of voters who actually want their lives to get better.
This may be a small victory, but it’s still worth celebrating.
I wish I had your optimism about this. He’s always looked like a clueless idiot to non-clueless non-idiots. That’s the nothing changed part. His followers will still love him–and he won’t get or accept blame.
What has changed is one of the few major things that had an actual chance of turning his clueless idiot followers against him has just been taken completely off his shoulders and turned back into a rallying cry against the opposition. I don’t think that counts as not doing anything at all.
Maybe. Or maybe – at least as long as Obamacare is still in place (and at the mercy of the GOP to make even worse over the coming year) the Democrats will still get blamed for its failings–while leaving Trump to continue the same strategy of using it to scapegoat and blame others that served him so well in the election.
The Republicans are disappointed because their attempt at mass murder failed.
(Sorry, but when you deliberately withdraw healthcare to 24 million people, I dont know what else you call their subsequent early demise due to the lack of their health care.)
Thats the key. Republicans and Trump are going to continue to beat the drum of Failing Obamacare and doing everything they can legislatively and via state governors (eg, denying Obamacare’s Medicare expansion) to incrementally make it less and less feasible.
The question is: Will health care providers stampede away from it? Would some other providers see a business opportunity (if others are fleeing)-- albeit, they’ll charge higher prices, because there’s less competition?
Its just so [what other word is there but] treasonous, to hear Trump constantly downing Obamacare. Compare that to Obama himself going all over the place to publicize it, encourage people to sign up, etc. He went on Between Two Ferns, people! Meanwhile, Trump is rooting for America to fail.
That’s always going to be the case. How many of them are there? How many of them can swing elections?
He only won election because of 100K people in three states. How many swing voters are there? How will he do after 4 years of not achieving much, with all the controversies, corruption, nepotism associated with him? How many swing voters will swing back the other way, particularly if the Dems manage to pick someone who isn’t horribly unpopular next time?
This healthcare SNAFU doesn’t look good for him. His first big policy, and he failed bigly. And he really did try to pass it. This wasn’t 12 dimensional chess to undermine Ryan. He is exactly what he appears to be. There isn’t any clever strategy behind it at all. He backed a terrible plan, then backed making it worse to try to get it to pass. He made himself look weak, and a loser.
Meanwhile, the GOP looks just as ungovernable as it did under Boehner. I don’t see how they get themselves together to achieve too much.
The biggest issue will be if he gets to stack the Supreme Court. Gorsuch for Scalia will suck, but if the next vacancy is from the liberal side. Or if he manages to provoke a war. Then all bets are off.
I’ve heard someone ghost wrote a good book about that once. He could probably pick up a copy from the Old State Department library.
“Are all of us willing to give a little to get something done? Are we willing to say yes to the good, to the very good, even if it’s not the perfect? Because if we’re willing to do that, we still have such an incredible opportunity in front of us.”
Sounds like a great argument against the bill he just put forward…
His true believers will think that way, but the people who voted for him because they thought he’d “shake things up” and “get stuff done” aren’t going to be satisfied with excuses. If they don’t get results, they’re going to have better things to do on election day.
On the participation question, it’s now up to 1/3 of counties that have only 1 provider, though the concentration of population in large markets means that over 60% of people get a choice of 3 or more. What might happen? Yes, the states that run their exchanges could try chicanery. But as for federal, I think you’ve got to look to executive action. It’s especially interesting to consider what happens at HHS with the federally-run marketplace states, as this is most of the deep red states. Tom Price can sabotage these states with adverse regulation if they really think they can get away with it. More generally, with the regulations that apply to all states, the secretary can do thinks like give hardship exemptions so liberally that the mandate stops working. That kind of thing. There will be lawsuits!
