Wilkinson: Trump just gave Democrats a health care gift

Chronically low poll numbers for President Joe Biden. A brutal war in Gaza that’s driven a wedge into the Democrats’ coalition. A migration crisis at the southern border and an overwhelmed immigration court system. An unnerving election victory by an anti-immigrant demagogue in the Netherlands, a staunch ally of the U.S. and NATO.

Less than one year from Election Day 2024, supporters of rule of law and democratic institutions have plenty of cause for concern. Still, holiday lights twinkled a bit brighter when Donald Trump reminded everyone that his ineptitude remains a powerful advantage in democracy’s favor.

In a Nov. 25 post on his infirm social network, Trump announced that Democrats were having a tough week and he wanted to help them out of a jam. Or at least he might as well have said that. “The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare,” Trump wrote. “I’m seriously looking at alternatives.”

With that, Democrats in Washington moved in unison to change the subject from war (and the funding of it) to health care, an issue on which the party is relatively united and typically holds a double-digit polling advantage over Republicans. In a June survey by Pew Research Center, respondents said they agreed with Democrats on health care by a 12-point margin over Republicans, a gap similar to the Democrats’ advantage on abortion. There are few topics Democrats would rather discuss.

There are also few topics that more effectively expose Trump’s con. The former president first promised to deliver “something terrific” on health care in 2015. Indeed, the argument went, because Trump was the world’s most successful and classiest businessman, he would be able to produce a health care plan to deliver vastly better results for dramatically lower costs. It was all so easy if you were a very stable genius.

Of course, anyone who knew anything about health care, or about Trump, understood that he was lying. Not a little bit — but completely. Eight years later, no such plan exists, or ever will. But Trump decided it was a good idea to remind everyone of his empty bluster along with his previous efforts to kill Obamacare, the health insurance program that tens of millions of Americans rely on. In 2017, Republicans came within one vote of repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with a bucket of liberal tears. Trump was furious that President Barack Obama’s signature initiative survived. Apparently, he still is.

“My predecessor once again called for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans,” Biden said Monday. “They just don’t give up.”

On Tuesday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi followed up with another reminder, reciting a greatest hits of Democratic talking points from the Obamacare battles — no “preexisting conditions” — combining them with newer points on prescription drugs and abortion. Trump is “coming for your health care,” Pelosi said at a news conference. “The Affordable Care Act will be on the ballot.”

Message discipline had been the special sauce of American political campaigns for decades before Trump came along. Polling and focus groups guided message development, and candidates who stuck to the script generally fared much better than those who didn’t.

Trump upended all that, mixing stream of consciousness, demagoguery, insults and random inanities on the campaign trail with lies and more lies. The news media went along for the ride, allowing Trump to renege on promises to produce everything from a health care plan to his wife Melania’s mysterious (and never disclosed) immigration records.

Trump’s lies are still working overtime; an entire political party is now devoted to their maintenance. But his lies about health care, in particular, combined with the cruelty of his efforts to take health insurance from millions, never carried the day. Unlike words such as “open border,” which for most Americans conjures a place indistinct and far away, “health care” hits close to home. After eight years of falsehoods and flailing, only the most addled cult members could believe that Trump has even bothered to learn anything about health insurance — let alone devised a policy to improve it.

Which is why you’ll be hearing Democrats talk about health care every chance they get. It’s also why anyone eager to keep authoritarians out of the White House ought to take heart. Trump’s sloppy blunder won’t be his last.

Francis Wilkinson is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.

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