Repeal failure fires up Dems
Support for Trump not likely following health care victory
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, looking for a flicker of hope after his Republican majority fell to pieces last week, predicted that the opposition party eventually would 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 imperiled, 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 percent 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.
And while his electoral success in states represented by Democrats in Congress had been thought to put such lawmakers in a vise 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 repealand-replace campaign.
“We’re not going to sacrifice our values for the sake of compromise,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader. “You think people from red states are going to be for tax reform with 98 percent of tax breaks going to the top 1 percent?”
Power of resistance
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 mobilization, 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 hard-liners. But while Democrats are loath to hold up Sen. 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 Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn. “There’s no way you can explain the failure of that bill without the story of a united Democratic and progressive resistance.”
Of course, much of the story revolves around the inability of the fractured Republican majority to reach a consensus. But while many Republican lawmakers were under pressure to oppose the health bill, Democratic members of Congress also felt the heat thanks to the new wave of activism in response to Trump.
Though the ability of Democrats to do much more than say no remains limited, their success in helping to thwart Trump will not only embolden them to confront him again — it will also inspire activists to push them to do whatever it takes to block his path.
“Having tasted victory, the resistance forces will feel even more empowered to insist that Democrats continue withholding any cooperation and not granting Trump any victories when he is so wounded,” said Brian Fallon, a Democratic strategist.
Up next: Supreme Court
Still, this rising energy could create internal turbulence for Democrats if activists turn their attention to the next major showdown in Washington: the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch. The court battle has not yet engendered the same intensity among activists as the health care bill or Trump’s executive orders on immigration. Some Democratic senators are uneasy about rejecting Gorsuch, preferring to save any fight for an opportunity by Trump to fill a seat now held by a liberal justice.
But the party’s senators may now be pressed to take a more aggressive posture against Gorsuch, opposition that may not halt his confirmation but would force Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster for such nominations.
An infrastructure plan may be a safer harbor for Trump — a measure many in Washington are mystified that he did not try to pursue at the outset of his administration. But Schumer suggested that the president would find Democratic votes only if he defied his party and embraced a huge spending bill, rather than just offering tax incentives for companies to build roads, bridges and railways.
“If he’s only for tax breaks, it will just be a repeat of the health care debate,” Schumer said.
To many Democrats and some Republicans, the resistance on health care was reminiscent of the 2005 clash over Social Security. President George W. Bush sought to overhaul a program covering millions of Americans but suffered a crippling loss when Democrats put up uniform opposition and Republicans backed away in fear of enduring political consequences.
There is one major difference, though. “President Bush was at 58 percent,” noted Pelosi, adding that Trump starts “in a very different place.”
Future prospects
But while Trump’s weakness has Democrats hopeful of making electoral gains in the House, next year’s Senate map offers few opportunities and many hazards. In the House, Democrats need 24 seats to take back the chamber. That deficit could fall to 23 — coincidentally, the number of Republicanheld seats in districts that Hillary Clinton carried — if Democrats win a special election in Georgia.
“There’s a storm that’s going to hit Republicans in 2018,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas. “The only question is if it is going to be Category 2 or Category 5.”
For now, though, Democrats stand to gain simply by standing back and abiding by the maxim of not getting in the way of an opponent who is damaging himself.
“Our best shot at stopping the Republicans has always been to let them cannibalize themselves, and this proved that,” Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic strategist, said of the health care fight.