If Democrats pass awesome bills and nobody hears about it, did it really happen?
by digby
All the polling shows that health care remains the public's number one issue. For Democrats it's their main concern after defeating Donald Trump. But I wonder how many have even heard about this? Joan McCarter at Daily Kos writes:
Last week, House Republicans were given yet another opportunity to separate themselves from Donald Trump's lawsuit to destroy the Affordable Care Act. Once again, they sided with Trump. The House considered amendments to top a "minibus" spending package Thursday and in addition to funding a number of agencies, they adopted an amendment to defund the Trump administration's efforts in federal courts to overthrow the law.
Freshman Democratic Rep. Laura Underwood of Illinois offered the amendment, which passed 238-194. Just four Republicans decided that sticking with the American people—particularly the 134 million estimated to have pre-existing conditions—isn't as important as sticking with Trump. What's at stake in this lawsuit is health coverage for 20 million people who've gained it through Obamacare is at stake here, as well as the ongoing coverage for people whose illnesses could once again be excluded in health plans if the law is struck down.
This is the second time the vast majority of Republicans voted with Trump and against Americans on health care in just two months. Just last month, the House passed the Protecting Americans with Preexisting Conditions Act of 2019 230-183, with just four Republicans breaking ranks.
They really couldn't make it more clear. A decade later, Republicans are still fighting against the idea that everyone should have access to health coverage and they're still lying about it. They've had nine years of debate to come up with a plan and they've failed for nine years. And they're going to go out on the campaign trail one more time to try to convince voters that none of that has happened and they have a plan. The good news is, voters stopped believing that years ago.
Trump reassured us that he's going to have a beautiful plan any day now. In fact, he said he already has one that nobody's seen.
This illustrates the fallacy of the Democratic leadership's belief that their voters are so obsessively concerned with the bills they are passing to address their concerns about kitchen table issues that they don't want them to waste their time on impeaching Donald Trump unless Republicans agree in advance to remove him from office. I'm sure they are concerned about kitchen table issues. But I would guess that the number of people who are aware of votes like these is minuscule. And they aren't paying attention because they know that nothing will make it past Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.
What this leaves is a strange vacuum around both the issues Democrats care about and about the Big Issue, which is stopping this assault on norms, decency, the constitution and humankind that's currently being perpetrated by Donald Trump. So naturally, we're just watching the horse-race now, wondering what stupid thing tTump or Joe Biden is going to say next and it's all as if it's all just business as usual.
We'll "beat him at the ballot box" and then ... what? This whole thing will just have been a bad dream that meant nothing? We'll act as if this man and his decadent, nihilistic party haven't permanently changed the way the rest of the world sees the United States? That the weaknesses in our system haven't been torn asunder, showing how another, more cunning, demagogic fascist might exploit them, knowing that the opposition party will just wait it out assuming they can always "beat them at the ballot box" with their awesome ideas?
Do we think the Trump/McConnell judiciary will let that happen?
I don't know. But I do know that the Democrats look feckless right now, reminiscent of the Republicans in 2008 and 2012. Only now the stakes are truly existential.
Donald Trump could win.
.
