Conservative pundits have been all over Democrats in recent weeks for supposedly handing Republicans political gifts, such as Hillary Clinton and former Attorney General Eric Holder recently advocating for fighting Republicans more aggressively.
"Democrats are blowing it, again," chided conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens last week in an op-ed that echoed several others in the Washington Post and elsewhere.
Now GOP Leader Mitch McConnell has handed Democrats a trifecta of political gifts within the course of a couple days—a rather stunning display of either hubris or stupidity. It's hard to know exactly which, or maybe he’s trolling for more cash from Republican donors. But in the midst of GOP candidates trying to rewrite their history on attempting to strip tens of millions of Americans of health care coverage, McConnell has been openly advocating for further attacks to healthcare access on three separate fronts.
In a Tuesday interview with Bloomberg news, McConnell not only lobbied for cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, he defended the Trump administration's lawsuit seeking to kill pre-existing conditions coverage.
"It’s no secret that we preferred to start over" to repeal and replace Obamacare, he said. That vote failed in 2017. "So no, I don’t fault the administration for trying to give us an opportunity to do this differently and to go in a different direction," the majority leader said.
Never mind the fact that the GOP had two years of unilateral control to "start over" on healthcare coverage, and couldn't pass a damn thing.
McConnell followed up on that Bloomberg bomb with a Reuters interview Wednesday in which he promised to take another whack at dismantling the Affordable Care Act, if Republicans end up with enough power to do it following the midterms.
“If we had the votes to completely start over, we’d do it. But that depends on what happens in a couple weeks," McConnell explained.
Goodness, Mitch. Congrats on all the transparency, since Donald Trump has been out-and-out lying about Republican efforts to dismantle pre-existing conditions coverage.
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But where's all the punditry now decrying McConnell’s unforced errors in lobbying to cut incredibly popular social safety net programs, gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions, and overturn the Obama-era health care law that now hovers around majority support nationwide.
It's not like McConnell is saying all this in a vacuum either. Democratic candidates across the country have sunk more money into health care than they have any other single issue. A September Fox News poll found that health care was the only issue they polled for which a majority of voters, 55 percent, said it would be an "extremely important" factor in their vote for a congressional candidate. And in states like Florida and Nevada—with key Senate races—voters tagged health care as a key driver of their vote in the most recent Kaiser tracking poll released Thursday.
A majority of Florida and Nevada voters say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports maintaining the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, making this the most popular candidate position on health care across partisanship in both bellwether states.
And once more, Americans already trust Democrats to handle the issue more than Republicans. The Fox poll found that voters trusted Democrats more than Republicans on healthcare issues by a 15-point margin.
In fact, the September 23 Fox headline read: “Health care boosts Democrats in upcoming midterm elections.”
Nearly a month later, here's some fresh headlines on health care:
- NYT, Oct. 16: “Republicans are suddenly running ads on pre-existing conditions. But how accurate are they?”
- Washington Post, Oct. 17: “GOP on defense to explain pre-existing condition protections”
- WSJ, Oct. 18: “Republican candidates play defense over health care”
And it's not just hurting GOP candidates in the House. Democratic incumbents in key red-state races, such as West Virginia's Joe Manchin and Missouri's Claire McCaskill, are using the Republican lawsuit targeting pre-existing conditions to their advantage. The AP writes:
In ads and speeches, Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill is pounding Missouri voters with a single message: Her Republican challenger wants to end health insurance protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
On Wednesday, McCaskill also tweeted out a reaction to McConnell's remarks on cutting Social Security and Medicare.
“Uh oh. Like the sun coming up in the morning. Tax cuts for the wealthy... now Rs planning cuts to Social Security and Medicare to cover the increasing deficit they caused," she wrote. "Not on my watch."
But so far, criticism of McConnell, the GOP's supposed "master tactician," has been wanting. As a point of sheer political stupidity, only the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin seems to have taken it on in a piece titled, "Democrats should thank McConnell for the last-minute assist."
Democrats are, indeed, doing just that by capitalizing on McConnell’s ill-timed and tone-deaf comments on a topic that feeds the narrative they have been driving home all election season.
How masterful is that?