GOP retreat rekindles Democrats
OPPOSITION PARTY IN THEIR BEST POSITION SINCE THEIR EMBARRASSING LOSS IN THE NOVEMBER ELECTION
President Donald Trump, looking for a flicker of hope after his Republican majority fell to pieces last week, predicted that the opposition party would eventually give in: “I honestly believe the Democrats will come to us and say let’s get together and get a great health care bill or plan,” he said.
But Democrats will not be lending a hand anytime soon.
Invigorated by the Republican dysfunction that led to a stunningly swift collapse of the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and relieved that President Barack Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment remains intact, Democrats are in their best position since their embarrassing loss in the November election.
While it is far too soon to suggest that the House Republican majority may be imperilled, Democrats are newly optimistic about picking up seats in 2018, hoping to ride a backlash against Trump. Seeing an opportunity, they say they will not throw Trump a political life preserver at what they sense could be the first turns of a downward spiral.
The president’s approval rating was already mired below 40 per cent in some surveys, and is likely to remain low after the health bill’s failure.
He has no prospects for legislative victories on the immediate horizon, given how complicated and time-consuming his next priority, an overhaul of the tax code, would be even for a more unified party.
Unbroken front
And while his electoral success in states represented by Democrats in Congress had been thought to put such lawmakers in a vice between their party and their president, Trump demonstrated no ability to pick off centrist Democrats in his first significant legislative push.
Democrats — red-state moderates and blue-state liberals alike — formed an unbroken front of opposition to the repeal-and-replace campaign.
“We’re not going to sacrifice our values for the sake of compromise,” said Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “You think people from red states are going to be for tax reform with 98 per cent of tax breaks going to the top 1 per cent?”
For Democrats, the task of remaining unified was made easier when Republicans decided to go it alone and hastily draft a bill that turned out to be deeply unpopular. But the health care skirmish was also more broadly instructive for a party still finding its footing now that it has lost both the White House and Congress: Being the “party of no,” it turns out, can pay dividends.
“The unity we had internally, combined with the outside mobilisation, really made this success possible,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the top House Democrat.
Both Schumer and Pelosi insist that they are open to working with Trump if he shifts to the middle and abandons Republican hardliners. But while Democrats are loath to hold up Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a fierce and calculating opponent, as a role model, his strategy as the Republican leader in denying Obama bipartisan support is plainly more alluring now.
“You certainly saw the power of united Democratic resistance to the Trump agenda on Friday,” said Democrat Senator Christopher S. Murphy.