Democrats will not be helping Republicans clean up the mess they're about to make with Obamacare repeal. That's the official line coming out of their meeting with President Obama. Simply put: Republicans break it, they buy it.
Emerging from their final huddle with President Obama, congressional Democrats said their plan is essentially to leave it to the GOP to replace Obamacare. And they’re getting an unintended assist from Republicans, who to date have no full plan, only a vague timeline and very few details on how they intend to do it.
“They’re going to own it and all the problems in the health-care system,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference after a 90-minute meeting with the president in the Capitol basement on Wednesday. Republicans will discover quickly, Schumer said, that implementing their preferred market-based alternatives will be virtually impossible without a large source of revenue, which would probably require Democratic votes for approval.
“Now they’re responsible for the entire health-care system, and it will be on their backs,” he said. “And I believe, a year from now, they will regret that they came out so fast out of the box.”
Along with that message to Republicans, Democrats are lining up behind the message to the public that Republicans are trying to "Make American Sick Again." That's a potent message, because the prevailing worry among a key demographic for Republicans—Trump voters—is that they are "simply afraid they will be unable to afford coverage for themselves and their families. They trusted Mr. Trump to do the right thing but were quick to say that they didn’t really know what he would do, and were worried about what would come next."
That's a very real fear, one that Democrats can use to their advantage, backed up by very smart ads from outside groups, like this one (watch below) with a simple message—Republicans are taking away our health care. That's as straightforward and basic as it gets, and has the advantage of being true.