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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| 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.
2 comments:
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.
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