McCain surely deserves credit for his surprise vote. There was an audible gasp when he voted “no” and flashed the bird at McConnell. Murkowski deserves more credit. She stuck to her guns in spite of Trump’s bullying. Collins deserves even more credit. She was a “no” the whole time and that allowed Murkowshi and McCain to come along. But as Josh Marshall, the most insightful and intelligent commenter on all of this points out, the activists and non-activists who showed up at townhalls and made endless noise are the real heroes.
With all this, though, all of the politicians were like small boats on a vast ocean. They made critical choices – some to their honor, Murkowski, others to their infamy, Heller; they executed strategies. But small boats on a vast ocean, no matter how expert their navigation, are ultimately subject to and at the mercy of waves and winds and tides. And here, to extend our metaphor, the ocean and the tides were activists and non-activists making phone calls, showing up at townhalls, emailing, in some cases reaching beyond partisan affiliation to say in various ways that this was not right. The victory here is really millions, tens of millions of people who made noise on a sustained basis over months. Noise is comparatively easy; sustained noise over months is seldom possible. It is an immense and bracing victory for what was at the end of the day very much grass roots, organic activism. Republicans were finally unable to overcome the common sense logic that the true measure of reform in the public interest was how a piece of legislation hurt or harmed how many people.
For all the whining, special pleading, CBO-bashing and just straight up lying, it was just crystal clear that every version of Trumpcare would harm millions and in most cases tens of millions of people in order to provide some greater flexibility for a dramatically lower number of people and a big tax cut for a tiny percentage of the population. The refusal to accept the undeniable numbers was simply an apt measure of the inability to make a political or moral argument for that tradeoff on the merits.