New Orleans The Trump Tower has now been reduced to rubble. Ryan’s House is a shambles. Obamacare is now with us “for the foreseeable future,” according to the Speaker.
Right now the Affordable Care Act is better than nothing, but it could be nothing better.
The best news of the Trumpcare debacle and the inability of all of the concessions and arm twisting producing nothing is that it may have taught the President to write off the so-called Freedom Caucus, committee of no way. After having given away the store of all of the essential guarantees of the ACA, even the inclusion of children on parents’ policies until 26, which reportedly even the President understood was past the pale, the no-birds were still flying and demanding more, more and more. They had already pulled the bill so far right that what remains of moderates in the House of Representatives were forced to run from the bill and declare they would vote no. One lesson we can hope that Trump has learned is that these folks don’t negotiate in good faith, and it is worth walking away from their demands and their skinny 30 odd votes in their secret caucus, if you have a job that you want done.
Given the obstinence of the Republicans to countenance any fixes over the last seven years – and, yes, many are needed, as we have argued continually, especially capping deductibles – there might be an opportunity to get something good done if the President, the moderate Republicans, and the Democrats in the House and the Senate finally looked at “repair,” rather than “repeal and replace.” The polling on this recent abomination of a bill, thankfully pulled off the calendar, had indicated only 17% support and 56% opposition with 26% undecided. The Republican effort was failing most miserably among the so-called Trump base where as conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan wrote that it was 26% “underwater” among non-college educated whites and an amazing 46% “underwater” in the 50 to 64 year old age group where people are more likely to forget to take their pills that day than they are to forget to vote. Trump couldn’t threatened to punish Congressman by mobilizing his base because they were in the bathroom losing lunch at the prospect that they would lose the healthcare they had gained under the Affordable Care Act.
If Trump wants to govern and we want to live through these next couple years, the President needs to stop all of this alt-right baloney and crazy flirting with the far right wing, and get closer to the where real deals are made. Even his former Breitbart Rasputin Stephen Bannon was reportedly disgusted with the concessions and bargaining posture of the far right, and that’s saying a mouthful.
I can remember presidents in Peru getting so low in popularity that they were hardly making it to two-digits. Trump is on his way there and the slope is no longer slippery, but fully greased unless he figures out a way to put the brakes on. Experts estimate that any new Congress only has about 200 days to get anything done for good or evil until mid-term elections suck the votes out of the room. For Trump and his gang 60 of those days are already gone, and we’ll all be counting on the death watch now.