Everyone who knows anything about health care hates Graham Cassidy. Even the greedheads.

Senate Republicans have made a calculated decision: Better to fail again trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act than not to try at all.

That bet, made out of fear rather than a sense that victory is any nearer than it has been all year, can be traced to this year’s August recess — the five-week stretch back home that immediately followed the Senate’s previous, failed attempt to overhaul the nation’s health-care laws. The late-summer break, distant as it already feels to many of us, remains fresh in some lawmakers’ minds.

It did not entail the kind of high-profile clashes at town halls that Democrats faced eight years ago as they began drafting the Affordable Care Act — or that House Republicans confronted at the start of the year, when their repeal effort took shape. Nevertheless, according to GOP senators and aides, Republicans faced an unrelenting barrage of confrontations with some of their closest supporters, donors and friends. The moments occurred in small gatherings that proved even more meaningful than a caustic town hall — at meetings with local business executives, at church, at parks.

It didn’t matter if those friends and allies were big-time supporters of President Trump or part of the “Never Trump” crowd of purist conservatives opposed to his hostile takeover of the GOP. By August, those two wings came together in their sheer, utter contempt toward a Republican-controlled Congress that could not back up its most basic promise, to repeal Obamacare. Trump’s hectoring via social media egged them all on.

That’s the driving reason behind Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision to at least “consider” holding votes next week on new legislation to repeal the ACA. Stuck in what might become the greatest damned-if-he-does, damned-if-he-doesn’t moment of his political career, McConnell (R-Ky.) is, for now, siding with those clamoring for another vote to repeal the health law.