Dems plot to punish House GOP politically, save ACA,
Much as Dems once did, some in House risk backlash
Many House Republicans who gambled to pass a health care plan must now turn to a new challenge: survival.
The two largest purges of House members since the early 1940s have followed efforts to remake the nation’s health care system: in 1994, when Democrats lost 52 seats after the collapse of the Clinton administration’s health care plan, and in 2010, when the party lost 63 seats after the narrow passage of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
Those precedents have fed Democratic hopes that GOP efforts to repeal President Barack Obama’s health care plan could have a positive side effect for them: control of the House in 2018.
Significant uncertainty remains. Democrats would have to gain almost two dozen seats to take back the House.
But right now, both sides are planning for a midterm election in which the highly contentious and historically emotional issue of health care is likely to remain a focus.
Studies of the impact of the 2010 Obamacare vote showed that Democrats from vulnerable districts “paid a significant price,” George Washington University political scientist Sara Binder said. (The 1994 health care plan was killed without a vote.)
“They were far more likely to lose their seat, even once we factored in everything else that would have affected them in those places,” she said of 2010’s spurned incumbents.
“There’s an analogy here,” she said. “It was a risky vote for many Republicans.”
Despite the risks, however, Binder and others said that internal party politics made Thursday’s vote imperative for the GOP.
In the end, that argument was the one that persuaded many wavering Republicans to vote for the bill: After the party had promised for seven years to repeal Obamacare, it simply couldn’t turn its back on the voters who had accepted that promise and elected them.
David Wasserman, who analyzes House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said in a report Friday that the post-vote landscape “is consistent with past scenarios that have generated a midterm wave” against the party in power.
“Not only did dozens of Republicans in marginal districts just hitch their names to an unpopular piece of legislation, Democrats just received another valuable candidate recruitment tool,” he said. “In fact, Democrats aren’t so much recruiting candidates as they are overwhelmed by a deluge of eager newcomers, including doctors and veterans in traditionally red seats who have no political record for the GOP to attack — almost a mirror image of 2010.”
Between presidential elections, independent voters generally lose interest. That means midterm races typically become a battle between party regulars. The party out of power historically benefits from increased intensity among its disgruntled voters.
That certainly has been true leading to the 2018 elections.
President Donald Trump and his early moves on issues including immigration, his budget plan that would gut many domestic programs and health care have already been used as motivation by Democrats.
Special elections in Kansas and Georgia in the spring have suggested that GOP voters, meanwhile, have been less enthusiastic in the early months of the Trump administration.
The question of whether the health care vote has immediate political consequences will be tested in upcoming elections prompted by the departures of Republican incumbents for roles in the Trump administration.
In Montana, where voters will decide May 25 on a replacement for Ryan Zinke, the former at-large congressman who is now Interior secretary, Democrat Rob Quist immediately sought to use the health care measure against Republican Greg Gianforte.
Quist said the bill “would kick thousands of hardworking Montanans off of their health insurance and raise premiums by hundreds of dollars a month” in addition to lessening protections for those with pre-existing conditions.
Jon Ossoff, the Democratic nominee in the tossup Georgia House runoff June 20, also used the vote to extend his credibility as an independent voice — a key need in a district that has long been held by Republicans.
The measure that passed the House, he said, “puts Georgians’ lives at risk.”
Once the special elections wrap up, both parties will turn their attention to 2018. At this early point, Democratic strategists say they are thrilled about the potential benefit of the House vote.
Republicans, meanwhile, are hopeful that by 2018 voters will begin to see benefits — either to their health insurance or through the tax cuts that were included in the health care measure, assuming those survive the Senate remake.