Two big issues breaking against Trump

Biden came through on the other guy’s promises

Perhaps ironically, I have been pretty sick over the last few days, so my substack has been a bit slower. Thanks for sticking with me, I think I’m finally on the mend, but not quite there yet. Oh the joys of parenting a 2 year old!

I began to have my doubts about the Republican drive to repeal Obamacare sometime in 2018. At that time, Republicans in Congress had tried 70 times and gotten close just once, on July 28, 2017. In that case, Senator John McCain, looking gaunt from his losing battle with cancer, famously walked to the well of the Senate, lifted his right hand, and turned his thumb down.

When McCain saved it, Obamacare, which was rolled out gradually, had been in full effect for just a little more than two years. Despite newly-elected President Trump’s effort to discourage sign-ups, applications exceeded 9 million annually. Countless families had benefitted from a requirement that kept children on their parent’s plans until age 26. The percentage of uninsured had shrunk by nearly half – 15.5 to 7.9 – and healthcare price inflation had dropped from 14.8 percent above the overall rate of inflation to zero.

I was among the House members who were devoted to repealing Obamacare because: A.) My constituents opposed the program, B) GOP leaders made repeal a singular policy position, C.) I feared it meant government expansion and D.) I thought it wouldn’t work over the long term.

It turns out that John McCain was right and I was wrong.  After complaining that a highly partisan Congress was “getting nothing done” he had decided to fulfill his promise to reach across the political aisle.  “I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to trust each other, stop the political gamesmanship, and put the health care needs of the American people first,” said McCain. “We can do this.”

Although McCain wasn’t ready to scrap the whole thing he did think Obamacare could be improved. This wasn’t good enough for Trump who had campaigned on the promise to repeal and replace it in a way that, “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” He never put a proposal on the table. Instead, he said, “Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”

In fact, everyone in politics knew healthcare was incredibly complicated and that this complexity explained why the Obama team had struggled to pass their healthcare act and then spent years tinkering with it. Today more than 60 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the program – up from 39 percent on the day Trump declared for president in 2015. What do these numbers mean? This means that Trump turned a winning issue for his party into a loser. And his opponent, President Joe Biden, is planning to stress its success in their election battle.

Trump turned another big issue into a loser when he promised and then failed to create a program to rebuild America’s infrastructure – roads, bridges, airports, harbors, etc. During the 2016 campaign, he said that America’s infrastructure was “like a third-world country” and he said, “We have a great plan and we are going to rebuild our infrastructure.”

Trump was right about infrastructure. We needed a massive rebuilding effort. Voters, who drove potholed roads and suffered in shabby airports knew it too. Once he was in the White House, Trump’s aides announced it was “infrastructure week” so many times that it became a running joke. As Election Day 2020 approached, Trump doubled down on his promise, pledging to propose a $2 trillion investment but again, nothing happened.

After he was elected, Biden declined to play the “infrastructure week” game and instead set to work on developing legislation that could be approved by Congress and signed into law.  In the end, he won approval for $1.2 trillion in spending over the coming decade, which I backed with my vote. Although money has been earmarked for projects in virtually every American community, implementation has been slow. (Infrastructure is complicated too.)  Still, people associate Biden with making a start when the other guy couldn’t.

Infrastructure and healthcare are serious issues that, now that they have been addressed, don’t occupy a lot of political space. However, the time is coming when a significant number of voters – especially the undecideds – will start to think about the country they’ll occupy come 2025. Biden is bound to remind them that they (mostly) like Obamacare, which he has preserved, and want to see our transportation and energy systems rebuilt, which he has begun.