Obamacare vs. Trumpcare. That is the Question.

Health Care "Replacement" will be a train wreck.  The big fight is over who gets blamed for it.   Trump blames Obama.  Plan B is already in effect.

Trump understands politics as simple melodrama: heroes and villains.  Trump is defining Obama as the conniving villain who gave a time-delay poison pill to health care.  When health care dies an ugly death Trump knows who to blame:  Barrack Obama.

Right now the public is looking at the warmup act: the fight over the repeal and replacement of Obamacare.  It is not the real fight.  It is carried out by the understudies and aspirants, the mere Congressmen and Senators.  Something ugly will come out of the fight and what it is exactly doesn't matter.  What matters is that it will be very unpopular.

Chuck Schumer is doing his job:  "Trumpcare, Trumpcare, Trumpcare."  But Trump is agile and Trump-haters under-estimate how quickly he can adjust to frame his message.  He tweeted Friday:  "Obamacare is imploding and it will only get worse."

This makes sense of Trump's surprise accusation of Obama and his supposed wire tapping of Trump Tower.  Trump needs to replace the image of Obama on vacation with the image of Obama's hard at work at sabotage.  Trump has criticized leaks in his Administration:  Obama deep state.   Trump has just fired all the US Attorneys: Obama holdover saboteurs and malingerers and traitors.

Deep state is perfect for Trump.  It is dark and mysterious, it is unprovable, it is conspiratorial, it can be accused of anything, it is fearsome to liberals and conservatives and skeptical people everywhere.   Trump versus Obama's deep state is just the villain Trump needed.

Trump is not hiding the fact that he has a "Plan B" to blame the the upcoming health care mess on Obama.  This is a warning to Democrats, a frame to put into the mind of journalists, an escape hatch for Republicans, and an early initiation of the plan.   

  

On Friday Trump added a new angle to his attack on Obama and Obamacare.  Trump is now saying the ACA was designed to fail.  Trump says Obama planned that when he was gone from office Obamacare would "explode" which would then require what Democrats really wanted: single payer health care.

"I came home.  There was a man in my house."

This is the ideal frame for Trump:  Obama restored as a diabolical enemy versus Trump the hero, combined with a disastrous health care environment with a villain to blame.

It happens in movies, it happens in politics.  The hero is falsely accused.  Trump is setting up that idea right now.

Trump has some disadvantages. Republicans in Congress for years and on Day One as president the Trump took credit for repealing Obamacare.   But in politics as in crime dramas, just because the hero is shown with a corpse and with blood on his hands it does not mean that he will be blamed or punished for the crime.    "The victim was already dead!  I tried to save her and couldn't!  It wasn't me, it was the victim's ex-lover!  It was a one-armed stranger!  There are other people to blame!"

What about the stated intent to kill Obamacare.  Isn't that a flat out confession?  Yes, but that doesn't matter either.  "It was already dead.  I wanted to kill it to save it but I was too late.  Obamacare died on its own!  Blame Obama, not me!"

Harrison Ford was there, but he's not the murderer

We see it all the time in dramas.   The success of the strategy is in part on whether the character with blood on his hands is likable and believable, and whether the accused person--off with an excellent alibi being vacation somewhere photographed with smiling with his wife and daughters--is understood to be an honorable person or a sneaky conniving one who is actually the off-stage but guilty party, running the deep state with the help of his imbedded henchmen.

Trump is writing that melodrama right now, recognizing that he will be "framed" for the death of Obamacare.  He is putting Obama back in the picture, the alternative suspect, the person the jury will wonder about.  Trump does not need a unanimous jury; he just needs his base to believe his story and for there to be some reasonable doubt among some others.  He doesn't need to win every vote.  He just needs the jury discussion to be inconclusive.

Trump has his villain.  Trump is saying he is actually the good guy doing CPR on sick Obamacare--so that's why he has blood on his hands.    Is Obama the good guy who did a pretty good job after all, or is he the sort of person who would give time-delay poison to his cherished legislation?  Trump says Obama gave the poison.

The wrong guy gets blamed.

Trump understands what liberal elite readers of the NY Times and Washington Post and the supposed Mainstream News do not appear to understand.  The emotional response of the decisive voters in America will not be determined by long paragraphs and thoughtful news articles.  Trump understands politics to be as simple as professional wrestling or TV melodramas.   There are good guys and bad guys.  People ignore complicated debates and rely on first impressions and biases.  The actual truth will be complex so people glance at the situation and make a quick decision.  Whose mess is it?  Trump's or that conniving Obama with his wiretaps and sabotage?  

Trump is shaping the frame right now.  Obama is the conniving villain so it's Obama's mess.