Mike Pence: "Disgraceful and offensive to me, my family, and our entire team."

There is a war going on for control of the White House.  Republicans are as divided as Democrats.

I am loyal.  Really and truly.

The Tea Party Trump people are at war with the establishment Republican Party.   Pence is caught in the middle.  He is trying to signal that he is on Trump's side.   The giveaway is that Mike Pence went ballistic.  He needed to reassure Donald Trump.  He may have overdone it.

The signs are pointing to a growing worry within the White House that the establishment Republicans, with whom Trump had made peace with sufficiently to consolidate the Republican Party behind him on election day, is now becoming an enemy once again.     It is Trump against the old guard Republican establishment.  They didn't have his back on healthcare or on the Mueller investigation or on Russian sanctions.

There are signs of change.  Reince Priebus, that link to the old RNC,  is gone.  The GOP senators couldn't pass a healthcare repeal bill, defying and disappointing Trump.  Trump is publicly chiding them as weak.  Trump is humiliating Jeff Sessions.  Mueller convened a grand jury and few Republicans are condemning that.  Republican senators organized to block him from making a recess appointment which would him to fire Sessions and replace him with someone who will fire Mueller., thereby signaling their distrust of Trump.    

They have got to wonder whether a fast and loose player like Trump didn't maybe make some deals with Russian finance people that will look bad under a microscope.  It would make sense for why Trump is so desperate not to have his finances looked at.  The problem is unlikely to be the collusion.  The problem is they may find Trump laundered money within some real estate deals.  He was accustomed to acting as an individual unaccountable to anyone.  God knows what Mueller will find.

As Trump's links to the establishment GOP have gotten weaker an idea is getting traction:  Trump is a failure and a danger to the party, but there is a wonderful Plan B as a fail safe backup:  Mike Pence.  Back to normal.

The idea sounds pretty good to a lot of Republicans.

Pence did not just announce that it was silly to suggest he is plotting to replace Trump.   He shouted it.   People are noticing that.  Chuck Todd observed that a simple statement from the Chief of Staff might have sufficed.  Mike Murphy said, "The guilty dog always barks the loudest."  Bill Kristol said it was genius the way Pence was handling this by planting the story of his disloyalty so he could loudly deny it, thus putting out the story as a denial.  

Meanwhile Breitbart, that semi-official news outlet representing Trump's populist impulses, is running multiple stories about National Security Advisor McMaster serving as a mole inside the Trump administration undermining Trump.   The stories touch the important code words of disqualification:  "George Soros", "Obama", "Iran Nuclear Deal." "Bill Kristol" "Jeb Bush."  

Breitbart is announcing open war.

McMaster represents the "adult in the room" old style Republican orthodoxy, the people with links back to the long established foreign policy and military establishment, the Bush administration, the intelligence services.   Reminder:  these people are Republicans but they are simultaneously the enemy for Trump.  The Tea Party populist nationalist group ran on a platform of cleaning out those dwellers of "the swamp" but they cannot disappear because many of them hold elective office and Trump may despise them but he also needs them to pass legislation.

Besides, those House and Senate members have  institutions to defend, starting with Article One and their own jobs.   They have been Republicans longer than Trump has.  There is a struggle over who represents the real Republican party.

Trump has "the people" of his core constituency, as evidenced from his successful rallies,  and it has to put fear into Republican House and Senate members.  They don't want to cross him, but they also don't want to be steamrolled and forced to defend the indefensible.  They defied him on health care and on Jeff Sessions and Mueller investigation, showing the split cannot be papered over.  

Pence is caught in the middle, an establishment representative who needed to show whose side he was on.  Trump's side.  Absolutely.   Fervently.  Loudly.

At least supposedly.  

The notion that Pence reacted too strongly is already out there in the minds of close observers as a pretense.   It has already moved into the realm of satire.  Comedy Central's The President Show ran a long segment in which advisors were shown looking at Pence in a brand new way, no longer considering him a lightweight but instead a very crafty schemer and political heavyweight in disguise, moving to defenestrate Trump.  Oh, the realized.  He isn't a toady, maybe.  He is may be playing the clever long game of a man easy to underestimate and more dangerous because of it.   Click the link for the five minute segment.

Click Here: Comedy Central Sketch

Meanwhile, the Trump White House is pulling away from Congressional Republicans, with the fault line being Tea Party vs. establishment.  Mike Pence is caught in the middle, but maybe that is exactly where he wanted to be.

Democrats 2020. Don't groan. They need a candidate.

You cannot beat something with nothing.

One of the problems with the Hillary Clinton campaign was that her campaign was a collection of constituencies and a liberal orientation, but not a diagnosis of the current state of the union and a solution.    I listened to five Hillary Clinton speeches live and up close and dozens of them on television and I share the widespread opinion that she had a list of legislative policies, but not a simple, clear repeatable justification for her election.

I told you so:  Click Here

I have said this before, on the day before the 2016 election, when I summarized her closing argument, which I summarized as ineffective and mushy: "I am warm and nice."

The next morning on election day, I posted my supposedly laughably improbable prediction of Trump's victory.  

Donald Trump wanted to Make America Great Again.   It was short enough and clear enough it could fit on a hat.

The past 6 months have been chaotic for the Trump administration and some Democrats will take heart from this.   They need to beware, because the past 6 months have been a continuation of the months of the Trump campaign: Trump is the exciting, newsworthy, bumbling, controversial, bull in a china shop while Democrats remain in essentially the nowhere-ville that they were with Hillary.  He is a mess but Democrats are nowhere.  

You cannot beat something with nothing.

No Democratic candidate has emerged because no Democratic position has emerged, and there is a simple reason for that.   Democrats are divided.

Hillary people.  One group of Democrats--their core base of educated professional people with college degrees--want the system to work better because their orientation is toward fairness and inclusion.  They want reform but not economic revolution, because the modern economic system of global trade and education as the entrée' to the middle class works pretty well for them.   Manufacturing takes place offshore but the financial, marketing, and accounting functions take place in the USA and those are the jobs they possess.   This archetypal Democrat is an educated woman with a desk job in a blue state on the salt water or fresh water coasts or in a college town in the heartland.  They like issues like family leave, like equal pay for women, equal rights for the LGBTQ community, and easier access to college for their children.  They support Planned Parenthood.  They like decorum in politics,  They care about the environmentalist and are happy to have businesses be "good citizens."  They are offended by the subtle and not-so-subtle racial resentment and xenophobia that Trump nurtured in response to cultural changes.  They are appalled by Trump, and therefore being anti-Trump is a sufficient platform.   

Bernie people.  Another group of Democrats, the progressive, Bernie, Jill Stein, Nader wing, is where the fervent energy is.  They seek fundamental change, not reform.  They perceive Democrats who work with those businesses as having been co-opted and have sold out.   They perceive the great businesses of America as deeply destructive.  They are not progressive allies; they are the enemy.    As one correspondent put it to this blog, listing malefactors:

"***Apple is one of our most egregious corporate tax dodgers.  I won't take time to give details. They are laid out in a 2013 Forbes article about Apple's years-old Irish holding company scheme. Go to https://www.forbes.com/sites/leesheppard/2013/05/28/how-does-apple-avoid-taxes/#1b37d4c120a7

***Pfizer and the other players in Big Pharma assure that we pay much higher prices for their drugs in the US than people do in Canada and elsewhere. When Medicare Plan D was adopted, Big Pharma got Congress to forbid the U.S. government from negotiating drug prices.

***And what can one say about Exxon except that it has been devastating the environment for decades and is determined to keep the nation committed to a fossil fuel economy."

A real divide

The reformer wing of the Democratic party is content with leaving in place the current system, big auto, big energy.  They want reforms like higher fuel standards, something politically hard enough to do, evidenced by Trump having recently reversed Obama's initiative.  But such a response leaves in place that system, an inadequate response for people who seek a commitment to end a fossil fuel economy.

Few of these big-change-Democrats believed that Donald Trump would in fact "drain the swamp" of corporate power, but he talked a good game.  Trump's cabinet choices fully disabused them of any hopes they might have have had, but the desire for big, deep fundamental populist change remains, only this time from an electable Democrat.  They welcome an anti-corporate,  swamp-draining candidate, not a reform candidate.

The divide is real.   The DNC tilt toward Hillary means the Democratic Party lacks credibility as a big tent unifier.  Until a candidate emerges who has credibility with both groups Democrats will be unable to present a plausible alternative to Trump, and such a bridge-builder may be impossible.   They will be hard to please because the words are deep and suspicion is high.

Potential candidate senators and governors who hold statewide have baggage in the form of donors, friends, and interests.   To paraphrase Shakespeare's Polonius, we get a little soiled by working in the world, and the Democratic bench may not be good enough.

Appalachia is Trump Country.

West Virginia Governor Jim Justice switched from Democrat to Republican.

"The Democratic Party walked away from me.  Today I will tell you, with lots of prayers and lots of thinking. . . . West Virginia, I can't help you any more being a Democratic governor."

Appalachia is lost to the Democrats until their message turns from benefits to jobs.    


Appalachia used to be solidly Democratic.   FDR and Truman and JFK and Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton won there.  JFK and Johnson focused attention on that big pocket of poverty in the "War on Poverty."  The face of poverty and disfunction in Appalachia is white.  When Trump talks about disfunction and total carnage, he refers to a Chicago that is urban and black.

2016 Democratic candidate:  "Jobs. Jobs. Jobs."

Donald Trump won Appalachia overwhelmingly and a Democratic governor just switched parties, becoming Republican.   It is the most Republican part of the country.

Appalachia gives Democrats an opportunity to better decide and define who they are looking at the politics and political messaging of West Virginia governor Jim Justice and by the still-Democratic senator Joe Minchin.    

Should Democrats try to reconnect with Appalachia?   Are these people a plausible part of the Democratic coalition?  They voted for Carter twice and Dukakis and Bill Clinton twice, so can't Democrats re-connect? 

Lots of electoral votes in these states

Yes, carefully, if they represent jobs, not benefits.  Work, not safety net.   That is the bridge issue.   In Appalachia, the archetype example of national disfunction is black, urban Chicago with lazy people sucking benefits from taxpayers, enabled by anti-white over-educated coastal elites.    The problem for Democrats is that, in fact, key elements of the Democratic coalition are people of color and the educated professional classes, who tend to live in cities and have urban sensibilities regarding guns, minorities, the environment, and diversity.

Appalachia itself may be politically lost to Democrats for a generation but the states that include Appalachia need not be.

  
The horror story of social disfunction for the archetypal Democrat is the economy and style of West Virginia, populated as some see it, by uneducated racist whites clinging to religion, guns, and a coal industry that is destroying the planet, sucking benefits from taxpayers enabled by demagogic con men who pretend that coal, not solar, is the future.

The Democratic party can do a light adjustment, and it should.  A party that celebrates inclusion can manage to include people who are religious and rural, even if they must exclude people who are racist.   Democratic diversity and inclusion can re-embrace the blue collar and less educated.  Democrats need to accept and integrate that white people are Americans too:  all lives matter.

Republicans have done a better job of embracing the value of work.  Democrats must not be the "food stamp" party, as Newt Gingrich accused.  They need to be the party of rewards for hard work.  This will require some areas of policy and message adjustment for Democrats. The image in the mind of Appalachian voters when they thought of Obamacare was not their white neighbors, it was those layabouts in cities, which is why there seems to be so much shock at the discovery that repealing the ACA hurts so many of themselves.

There is a style here of clear non-verbal communication that goes beyond the written text:  Justice wears an ill fitting suit, one at least a size too big.  He uses poor--but familiar--grammar ("I got to tell you a couple of stories real quick. . . . listen to me and listen real good.")  The backdrop of people behind Trump and Justice were 100% white, wearing hats and tee shirts.  Justice embraced religion, making reference to prayer, to his soul, and to his parents looking down on him from heaven.  Justice talked about coal and coal jobs.  The crowd cheered.

Friendly faces

These are Trump's people.  This is Trump's style.  Notice it is not about fairness and equality; it is about white, rural, coal identity. Nothing about inclusion nor diversity nor tolerance.  Nothing about transgender.  Nothing about urban poverty.  Nothing about "our precious environmental heritage."  Nothing about education and technology.  Nothing about climate change.

Democrats cannot hope to become Trump-light nor should they want to.  The Democratic voter understands coal to be bad, both polluting and climate killing, and that solar is the future, not coal.  The Nader-Sanders-Stein progressive environmental wing of the party will split off once again if the Democrat moderates here.   Most secular Democrats will tolerate religious talk by their candidate, but not apostasy on race or the environment.  Central values for Democrats are inclusion and environmentalism.

Coal country is likely lost to Democrats because coal is a symbol of identity in this region.  But hard work is also a point of pride and identity.  The Trump-Justice crowd is not cheering  the billions of dollars of federal aid that flows into their region to support their anti-poverty programs, funds pouring in from those coastal urban centers with strong economies and full employment.  They are cheering talk of jobs, jobs in their area.

Recommendation for a Democratic candidate for congress in a red district or a Democratic candidate for president: Promote a targeted jobs program for rural America, a modern version of the Rural Electrification program of the 1930s.  Promote tax advantages for factories and design centers and distribution centers that take place outside of urban areas, argued as a matter of national security and infrastructure efficiency.  Our dense cities  make America less safe from foreign enemies, and proposed infrastructure spending just exacerbates the traffic problems.   Repopulate rural America.

The internet is making this practical.  The value proposition for dense cities is weakening.  Housing prices in cities are sending a signal: move out.  

It may not win electoral votes in West Virginia, but people in red America need to be included back into the Democratic coalition.  A map like this one should be as disturbing to Democrats as would be a graph of black poverty.   

The "Death Panel" Problem

It is nearly painless to spend someone else's money.

A problem that confounds a rational health care system is the human emotion of care for a person in need, especially when that person is a loved member of the family or appealing or sympathetic to the general public.

In the late 1980's Oregon enacted an innovative and cost effective system to stretch the health care dollars the state received from federal Medicaid funds. Oregon created a list of conditions and medical interventions and decided to fund the most cost effective ones first, then the less cost effective ones, and finally drew the line where the money ran out.  For example, vaccinations and pre-natal care were a high priority (relatively inexpensive, big long term payoff), splinting broken arms (more expensive, but big payoff), etc.  Then on down the list of interventions with less and less utility, until the money ran out.  Breast surgery for cancer was in; most reconstructions for cosmetic purposes afterwards was out.

Click here for the news story

The priority list had a "utilitarian" rationality to it: the most good for the most people.  There is only so much money.  Better to spend a few hundred dollars on pre-natal care for a thousand pregnant women, preventing ten tragic cases of babies born with a lifetime of future disability, than spend the same dollars on one spectacular case of heroic interventions but then not have money to do the pre-natal care.   The public universally agrees that government should use tax money wisely and this was an effort to do it. 

Insurance companies, then and now, do this, too.  They cover blood pressure reduction medication, but not viagra.  They cover some drugs but don't cover others they consider too expensive and not sufficiently better than older cheaper ones.  People grumble.

There was a problem: the case of Angela Gesher, age 11, a very ill Oregon girl whom doctors said needed a liver transplant.  Her parents' private insurance would not pay it, and the procedure would cost some $300,000 for the Oregon system, a budget buster.  The transplant was not in the priority list:  very high expense, low certainty of favorable outcome, only one life.  There was a public outcry.  How could Oregon be so cruel?  

Angela's case was resolved by the girl getting treatment at a University of California in San Francisco hospital at University expense, but the political issue has never resolved because what makes sense from a cost and tax efficiency point of view is contrary to what feels imperative as soon as an individual case is particularized.  

Terri Schiavo

In 2001 Terri Schiavo became a breaking news item.  She had been in a persistent coma-like condition and her husband wanted to take her off the life support; her parents argued that she was still alive with mental functioning and hope of recovery.  There was a strong partisan tilt to the controversy with radio talk show and Fox leading the call for her to be kept on support.  The issue became a proxy for the national debate on abortion.  She had a right to life.


This week the issue rose again, with the battle lines drawn against "government rationing" of health care and government death panels, and the British Health Service held up as an example of the "problem with government health care."  A British baby, Charlie Gard, was born with very severe and apparently incurable problems.  British doctors said that heroic interventions would only prolong his suffering.  Charlie's parents protested that they were rationing care and that possibly doctors in the US could do something experimental and useful.  They refused to pay to send Charlie to the US.

The British Health Service was making decision based on the big picture view of what made sense for the whole system: don't squander resources that would do more good if used elsewhere and spending millions of dollars to prolong life for days or weeks is a poor substitute for helping hundreds of people with interventions with proven success.

But parents do not think that way, nor does the public when the patient becomes identified and personal.   A factor in the desire for government to do every single possible thing is the fact that it is paid for by the archetypal deep pocket, the government.   Parents and public cannot accept a situation as hopeless or "all that can be done" when the government, with the potential to spend unlimited money, is choosing to fail to do it.   

Government is choosing to do less that "everything conceivable."  There is only so much money.  
It makes government a decision maker, not simply a third party passive player.   When the insurance company says that something is not allowed (i.e. a drug is not approved in the formulary) people blame a tight fisted insurance company but have little recourse.  One can complain to the government, and the fear of "government death panels" is a potent weapon to use against single payer health system.

Some kind of rationing is apparently happening now within Medicare.  The notion that most Medicare spending goes to hopeless cases at the end of life is contradicted by the data.  It shows that the most expensive interventions--inpatient hospital care--is spent on younger Medicare recipients, people in their 60's and 70's, in which there is substantial potential for future years of life.  Per capita spending on older people declines.

Click Here

Insofar as patients and families consider themselves to be "consumers" who have paid for top quality "everything that can be done" service and are therefore entitled to it, then government is criticized when it overtly or quietly rations health care to where it is most efficacious.  That is a confounding problem with the "earned benefit of universal health care" that this blog suggested yesterday.

Air France First Class, NY to Paris

The solution for policymakers may be to embrace a two tier system.   There would be a "good" system, of general public care--perhaps equivalent to Medicare now, or analogous to the public university system.  Then there would be add-on options for prosperous people who wanted the equivalent of private college, first class airfare, or Ritz Carlton treatment.   People would be entitled to care that is lightly rationed for efficiency, but would pay substantially extra for the luxury of the healthcare equivalent of extra legroom in the first class cabin.

Obamacare is needs-based, so of course it is unpopular.

There is a great problem with Obamacare.   It is needs based and not universal.  No wonder a great many people dislike and resent it, including people who benefit from it.

There is a great divide between kinds of public benefits: the ones that go to other people versus the ones that go to oneself and ones family.   

A problem for Obamacare is that most Americans, most of the time, don't need it and don't get it, but they pay for it.  Most Americans, most of the time, have access to health care through their employer or somewhere else.  Virtually everyone over 65 is eligible for Medicare, Veterans get the VA, people employed at a "job with benefits" have health insurance.  People who have health insurance through age or military service or employment consider that benefit earned.  

Obamacare is needs based.   People who pay taxes and have earned their health care are paying for people who earn less, pay less in taxes, and get the ACA  because they need it.   It puts a huge divide into the public attitude toward it.   I contrast this with Social Security, in which the benefits are skewed toward the poor (something prosperous people may not realize), but in which everyone pays the tax and gets a benefit generally based on the tax they paid.  

Notice what we do not see:  There is no populist groundswell of opposition to the government socialist pension program of Social Security.  

Democrats who propose applying the Social Security tax on the full income of high paid employees, rather than capping it as it is currently done, while maintaining the cap on benefits, are taking a huge risk to the system.   They will have turned Social Security into a needs based entitlement, in which people are paying for the benefits of others poorer and different from themselves.  (Not capping the tax or benefits would be worse.  If Bill Gates got a million dollars a month in Social Security benefits--even if he paid in fair and square and is entitled to them based on the tax he paid, people would howl.)  The current system is well designed to provide near universal buy-in.

Food Stamps and Obamacare are needs-based.  Note the language of derision by Newt Gingrich, calling Barrack Obama "the Food Stamp president."  It was an insult.  

Thad Guyer observes the ACA is likely to survive and settle into the general pattern of bipartisan entitlement muddle, just another complicated and unexceptional needs based benefit along with Medicaid, Food Stamps, Disability payments, fee-waived benefits, subsidized housing, etc.  It will be generally disliked and unpopular, right along with other permanent fixtures of American life.  

He predicts it will endure and become institutionalized, which Democrats will consider progress toward a more fair and just society.  Simultaneously, it will become one more bureaucratic irritation and whipping boy for people who resent paying taxes to support other, less fortunate, less healthy, less provident people, an entitlement.  

There is, in fact, another path for Democrats although there may not yet be a political consensus to allow it: make healthcare an earned benefit for everyone in a single payer system providing baseline service.  People might pay for healthcare the same way they pay into Social Security: everyone pays, everyone gets.  People with healthcare benefits are accustomed to paying for them, as part of a pay package with more or less visible employee direct contribution.   Employers know full well that healthcare is not "free."  It is an expense they pay for, and they would welcome it being more transparent.  They pay for something they do not get "credit" for in the employee mind.   It is entirely likely that Democrats can get employer buy-in.  It would be the "pro-jobs" position, de-coupling health care from employers.  

CNBC article. Click here.

 "Medicare" generally has credibility.  My experience with Medicare recipients is that they are generally very pleased with the program.   Those same people are generally suspicious of "government."   From a message point of view, Democrats can call it "Medicare for all."  Republicans will condemn it as "government health care."  

We are paying for health care one way or the other.  What is up for discussion is we pay for it and whether we are paying for our own heath care, or whether we are paying for someone else's health care.  In the long run the only political stable equilibrium is for people to believe they are paying for their own.

Guest Comment by Thad Guyer:

Thad Guyer

Healthcare Transitions from “The” Issue to a “Whatever” Issue

It’s likely that healthcare will remain a headline, certainly an inside the beltway resentment, but not a determinative issue in the 2018 midterms or 2020 general election. By now it’s clear to the electorate that there is, in fact, involuntary bipartisan resignation that Obamacare is a mess, it has to be fixed, but that’s as good as the Congressional reality will ever get. Voters know regardless of how they vote, Obamacare is going to slog on, and both parties will continue their feckless partisan rhetoric. This is not the stuff of an election-changing issue. It is, well, whatever.

Like any entitlement program, Obamacare will will no longer pack an ideological punch, like when it was enacted in 2010 during a fierce partisan civil war, and thereafter with “full repeal” fervor. But the apparent death of repeal will have resulted in the program's last gasps of ideological energy. Soon it will just another entitlement issue, like welfare, food stamps, public housing and Medicare, giant programs that nobody can do anything about except add or subtract around the edges. In election after election, these entitlement programs generate dogmatic interest only in the aggregate, under pitches of “entitlement reform”, slogans like “workfare not welfare” (Bill Clinton), and “slow the rate of entitlement growth” (Bush). Not one of these programs standing alone has ever been politically energizing for either party, not even Medicare despite bipartisan predictions of imminent collapse and calamity for the past two decades. This is the fate of every entitlement program. Broken, wasteful, inefficient, underfunded, inadequate, voters collectively yawn “whatever”. Healthcare will now join this boring aggregate of entitlement programs.

It's not plausible that Trump can “lose” the healthcare “issue”. Nor is it plausible that Democrats can “win” it. Neither political party will see its electoral fate dispositively strengthened or weakened by promises to expand, cutback, or leave Obamacare alone. Ironically, we’ve achieved that elusive unity, a bipartisan consensus, that the program with its myriad problems, is here to stay. Voters accept that neither party can do anything other than patch it up. Yes, headlines will erupt periodically with Obamacare horror stories about 50% premium increases, counties with no insurance providers, inadequate Medicaid funding levels, disputed anecdotes that some children and old people died. To all this, voters will say "how sad", then heave a big sigh of "whatever". America does not weep long for its poor. 

Trump will be blamed, Democrats and Republicans will be blamed, and Congressional candidates will promise fixes and reforms. But there will be no energizing ideology in it, no bonanzas of televised crowds or surges in voter turnout-- for either party. Ideology will one day return to our healthcare debate when Democrats feel enough political safety to go all-in on single payer, but it’s hard seeing that happening before 2024. Single payer is just too scary. Baby Charlie Gard’s death in the UK, and the hopes of his parents snatched away by healthcare bureaucrats, will long be remembered and surely resurrected. Death panels are a reality.

In the meantime, America has got a growing list of toxic and polarizing ideological issues locked and loaded for 2018 and 2020, fierce partisan issues over immigration, law and order, and defense spending that motivate voter turnout. But healthcare is not likely going to be one of them again until 2024.

Fix Obamacare

Prediction:  A Message War.

Outcome:  Trump will say he was a master dealmaker, and Democrats will say he was repudiated.

Attacking Obamacare was one of the great successes in American politics.

Trump and Republicans pointed to problems with the ACA, called it "Obamacare" and campaigned against its multiple problems, including the individual mandate, the requirement that businesses with more than 50 employees provide insurance, and for many the lack of good choices of insurers at affordable prices.  Those are real problems and no Democrat can hide from that.  Republicans triumphed. Trump and other Republicans promised to either 1. end Obamacare root and branch, or 2. repeal and replace Obamacare with something inexpensive and great for vulnerable people.

There is not sufficient consensus among Republicans to do either, because they are essentially opposite positions. 

Ending insurance support will kill the ACA  

Trump openly threatened Democrats.  "Let Obamacare implode."  Trump had the message right, but the message was contradicted by the facts on the ground.   The Medicaid expansion would not implode on its own; it would be starved for funds by votes taken openly.  And insurance marketplaces would implode because Trump failed to pay the money promised to support them. Obamacare was not falling off a cliff; it would be pushed off a cliff, and there would be witnesses and videotape.

Trump said Republicans wouldn't "own the mess", but Democrats have worked to get in front of this one, aided by the simple fact of unified Republican majorities and the fact that Trump is the political center of gravity.  The sun cannot hide.  Trump says he is the can-do man in charge.

This blog observed yesterday that there is a slow revolt happening among Republicans.  We had 6 months of Trump-centered Republicanism but now GOP officeholders are cautiously changing directions.  In the House a "Problem Solvers" group of moderate Republicans formed a coalition with centrist Democrats: a group of about 40, enough if allied with unified support with either party would create a House majority.  In the Senate Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, and other relatively moderate Republicans announced joint bipartisan hearings to fix Obamacare.  Don't kill Obamacare, fix it.

Current Trump position:  opposition to bipartisanship.

This is apostasy.  This is heresy.  This is a reversal of seven years of Republican campaigning.  Trump has positioned himself against Obamacare  He said he wanted to destroy it, not repair it.

I predict Trump will change directions, and try to bring his base with him.   If progress on a bi-partisan bill led by Democrats is achievable, he will claim credit for it, and he has a route to doing so.   He is a dealmaker.  He can say that it was his strategy all along, to take a negotiating position, to force the Democrats to the table.  Trump can claim to be the great unifier. 

In the alpha male world of dogs marking a fire hydrant or tree, Trump can claim that he didn't remove the hydrant, he just marked it higher and better: top dog after all.

Democrats will have a message of their own: Trump was repudiated, and the coalition is a return to governmental sanity and cooperation.  They have the advantage of Trump's speeches, calling it a disaster.  Trump created a record.

Trump has the advantage of giving his interpretation of those speeches and tweets. Fooled you!  It was a negotiation tactic, and Democrats fell for it and I won!

Trump preserving flexibility.  It might have all been a show

Both messages will be out there simultaneously.   Once again, as this blog stated yesterday, the key to Trump's success will be senior GOP leaders in the House and Senate.  If they congratulate and thank Trump for his brilliant leadership then Trump can probably  win the public debate.  

But maybe topping Obama will not be enough.  Trump wants to win and that means Obama has to lose, not be the foundation for something better.

We will get an early indication of which way Trump wants to play this by whether he changes tune shortly.  Currently he is critical of the officeholders, saying they sold out the American people by not killing Obamacare.  "Total quitters."   The longer he takes that tack the more locked in he is to a position of killing Obamacare rather than saving and topping it.  

A sure sign that Trump would have changed directions will be leaks or other comments from either of the GOP bipartisan groups that Trump called them to encourage them.  If  Lamar Alexander goes to the White House for a visit then we will know that a policy switch is underway.  Trump will start selling to his base that, in fact, cooperation with Democrats is a good thing.  He will need to bring Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Colter, Laura Ingraham and Fox and Friends along for the ride.   They will have a lot of videotape baggage to reinterpret.  The story would need to change:  Trump was not a Tea Party president after all.  He was a coalition builder.   

It could be a tough sell, but Trump has his base in good control.  So far, Trump has governed solely by appealing to that base.  This is a moment of decision for Trump.  Does he surprise them and risk disappointing them, or does he bear down and oppose bipartisanship and feed the base what it wants to hear, that Trump is good and he is surrounded by Democratic devils and Republican weaklings.

Coarse Correction

Trump reversed himself on the Scaramucci style, from loving it to condemning it.   It was too much.

The important thing may not be the "Scaramucci Week."  It may be that Trump ended it.

Donald Trump has a Board of Directors in fact and practice, if not in the Constitution.  That Board consists of the senior and visible members of the Republican Party.  If they act with clarity and unity they could, by announcing that the broad leadership of the party would support replacing Trump, cause Trump to resign or face impeachment.

Gone.  Too much.

Mike Pence is their ace in the hole.  

So far that Board has quibbled and complained on the edges, but they are letting Trump be Trump.  As Eric Trump said yesterday, "My father has the voice of the American people.  The American people love him."

He is right, so far.   But problems are emerging within that Board of Directors and Trump appears to have noticed he needed a big, dramatic change.  Kelly in/Scarmucci out provided it.

The drama of the past week was causing upset inside the GOP and within that Senatorial Board of Directors:

   

***the failure to repeal and replace Obamacare

  

 ***news that President Trump dictated Donald Junior's misleading explanation of the meeting with the Russians

   

***Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer abruptly leaving the Administration

***The Trump boy scout speech

***Commander in Chief Trump making military policy by tweet

   

***Scaramucci coming aboard, Scaramucci's bluster, the on the record content and vivid vulgarity

   

***Scaramucci's departure after ten days

   

There was a lot of drama and apparent disfunction.  It bled onto the reputation of that Board of Directors.   

   

***Trump was criticizing one of their own, longtime Republican Senator Jeff Sessions, a loyal, conservative who gave up a safe senate seat to join the administration as Attorney General, a shocking lack of loyalty to a faithful GOP leader. 

   

***Trump was overtly maneuvering to fire Sessions so a new AG could fire James Mueller and shut down an investigation into Russian involvement in the Trump campaign.  There was speculation he would do it during a recess so the new AG could take office without senate confirmaiton.  This would put the GOP  senate majority in a hot seat.  Do they succumb to having their power snubbed or do they push back against a president of their own party?  If they go along they are publicly acknowledging they are cooperating with the president to shut down an investigation, but if they don't they are publicly acknowledging they don't trust a president of their own party.

Headline and story in Alaska's largest newspaper

   

***They failed to repeal and replace Obamacare, confirming the story of disfunction.

   

***Trump criticized the senators for that failure, casting blame on them.

   

***Trump threatened them.  He promised to raise money for primary opponents of senators who didn't knuckle under and he threatened publicly to punish a state (Alaska) for the votes of Senator Murkowski.  Trump's messenger, Interior Secretary Zinke denies it was a threat.  Alaska's two senators considered it one.  The important thing is that senators got the message and Alaska news media got the message.  It was extortion.

If a significant body of GOP leaders said Trump no longer had their confidence then a constitutional crisis could take place.  Mike Pence is a safe substitute.  There are rumblings in the Board of Directors of Republican leaders.  Lindsey Graham and John McCain are warning him not to fire Mueller.  Other senators, with less reputation for independence, are saying similar things: Grassley, Sasse, Hatch.  The key people to watch are not Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, men with ambition.  McCain and Graham don't count either, since they are thought to be mavericks.  It is when the rank and file senators feel that can--or must--speak up that a president's position becomes fragile.   We are seeing indications.

Bob Corker goes public

Jeff Flake, a Republican senator from Arizona, has just written a book blasting Trump, saying he is a disaster for the GOP and America.  He is on TV, promoting his book.  But so far the story is not one of senatorial pushback but rather the fact that senators complain but still support a presidential agenda they publicly oppose.  The "skinny bill" replacement of Obamacare was unpopular with the public and the senators but 49 of them voted for it anyway, including Jeff Flake.

Trump is safe for now.  His base is with him.   But the "Scaramucci week" was too much.

The base is not a majority of the population but it is a majority of the Republican electorate.  Trump has inoculated much of his base from news from news that would cast doubt on him.  He speaks directly to his base via Fox News, talk radio, and twitter but there are growing cracks in the Trump media fortress.  Scaramucci's comments were vulgar and rough.  The A Trump spokesperson can call Obama a Muslim, a socialist, and a Kenyan, but cannot say Bannon is busy sucking his own cock.  Talk Radio and Fox News hosts criticized it.  It fed the story of disfunction at the Trump White House.  It lent credibility and evidence to the rumbling by the Board of Directors.  Scaramucci was indefensible in the heartland.

Too far, too much.

Trump immediately responded.  

Democrats who are exhilarated thinking this was a terrible week for Trump are looking at the wrong thing.  The right thing to notice likely is that Scaramucci is gone.

  We may look back and see this is yet another iteration of Trump's rapport with his base, recognizing that Scaramucci went too far and the Scaramucci vulgarity story needed to be replaced by the "clean house blank slate Marine general in charge" story.   That is a story Fox News is comfortable relating, the base is comfortable hearing, and the Senatorial Board of Directors is happy to go onto TV right now, as I write, to be echoing with satisfaction.

This could be a winner for Trump.  It depends on Trump and what he does next..