Last time I wrote a politics post, I promised myself I’d take a break from writing politics. It doesn’t tend to get a lot of traffic and it’s a mostly self-serving topic. And aside for one foray into talking about how how to remove Donald Trump from Facebook, I did just that. But now that I’ve been reading about how Obamacare repeal just passed the House, and I feel like I have to say something about it.
Is anyone really surprised by this?
While Obamacare repeal failed last time, it wasn’t as though Republicans were just going to give up. This has been a cornerstone of their legislative agenda for the better part of a decade. It wasn’t just going to go away. But when Trump flips on major issues like NATO, healthcare, China and even Syria, it means that he’s learning how to play the game. It means he’s learning how to govern and make deals in Washington.
You can make fun of how he doesn’t know Civil War history all you want, but this seems to be a clear evolution of pushing forward a tangible legislative agenda. As Bernie Sanders said in February, Trump may not understood how the Constitution works back then, but he’s certainty starting to now. Deal-making and making individual concessions in bills is a clear part of how this all works, and Trump is looking to be a little more adept at this than anyone previously gave him credit for.
Still, this might be one of the biggest self-inflicted political wounds in American history. Voters in rural states aren’t going to love seeing their healthcare go up in smoke — even if they don’t understand what is going on right now. Ultimately, I think Republicans will end up regretting this vote, provided that it passes through the Senate. As of this writing, they don’t know how many people the American Health Care Act will cover, or how much it will cost. This isn’t a great way to reform the American health care system or even enact Obamacare repeal in general. This is how you cause a catastrophe like the travel ban.
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