My self-imposed exile from the news shows having (temporarily?) ended, I watched a lot of coverage of the Trumpcare battle the last couple of days, and also read the reports in the papers.
I can only reach one conclusion. If a vote is held on Thursday, Trumpcare is going down, and maybe going down YUGE.
Here’s why. You have at least two groups of R’s who have strong reasons to vote no, and you can’t attract supporters from one group w/o alienating would-be supporters from the other group.
You have the Freedom Caucus Crazies who (a) see the bill as a huge welfare giveaway and (b) can’t stand Paul Ryan and would like nothing better than to rub his nose in defeat. Even the so-called ‘work requirement’ hasn’t mollified many of them. There are 20 or more from this group prepared to vote no. 22 no votes from R’s will kill the bill. I was shocked at the number of Freedom Caucus reps who were all over the tube blistering the bill.
Then you have the Rust Belt and northeast R’s whose constituents will be devastated by the bill. Even Michigan’s despicable Gov. Rich Snyder has sent letters to the delegation telling them how many constituents in each district will lose protection under Trumpcare. Same for Ohio’s John Kasich. You think, for example, that western Pa. reps are gonna vote to reduce benefits to their retired coal miners? That would cost them their seats.
It looks like Trump’s visit to Capitol Hill accomplished nothing. In fact, it might have been counterproductive. The Washington Post reported that three representatives who had been leaning no came out of the Trump meeting as solid no’s. The trend is not their friend.
The argument for passage has now changed to ‘if we lose this one, it will place our entire agenda in jeopardy’.
In politics, the only jeopardy that concerns elected officials is whether their reelection chances are in jeopardy. As one wag pointed out last night, Obamacare is far more popular now than it was when Obama was president. Those rats are not going down with the sinking Ship of State. Trumpcare is going down.
Cut-n-save.