Senate Republicans finally revealed their secretly brewed Trumpcare bill to allegedly repeal and replace Obamacare. Needless to say, it’s even worse than the House bill (which is hard to accomplish), although Mitch McConnell drafted it so that some of the devastating effect is postponed until after the 2018 elections. There is great debate over whether it will pass in the Senate. Some claim that Mitch would not proceed with the anticipated vote this week unless he felt he could get it passed– and some claiming that moderate Republicans always cave in to Mitch in the end. Still, there is some hope that enough pressure will build on Republican Senators from AARP, the disabled, the health insurance industry, doctors – all of whom oppose the legislation -- and others to stop the bill. The Republicans can lose no more than two Republican votes or the bill will not pass. (The Republicans only have 52 votes in the Senate and all Democrats will vote against the bill.) We won’t know until the vote is taken, as most Republicans who decide to vote against the bill will likely try to keep that secret until the vote occurs to avoid further pressure.
The Trumpcare bill is devastating: It will cut deeply into Medicaid -- the program that provides health insurance for the disabled, children and the poor – premiums will skyrocket for adults between ages 50 and 65 (when Medicare kicks in) who do not have good insurance from a large employer, and deductible amounts will soar. It will also defund Planned Parenthood for at least a year. Americans oppose House Trumpcare bill by a three to one margin, not that that seems to concern the Republicans. It’s estimated that 23 million Americans will lose their health insurance and Medicaid will be cut by more than $800 billion dollars. Ironically, despite Trump’s campaign promises that he would make healthcare insurance better, many of his voters will be devastated by Trumpcare. Also, the vast majority of the billions in savings that come from not supporting health insurance for millions of Americans will go to the very wealthy in the country. All that should be good for Democrats in the 2018 election, but at the unacceptable price that many will die because of inadequate healthcare. Bernie Sanders said that thousands of people will die (I believe it will be far more than that) and Hillary Clinton said that Republicans are the “death party” if Trumpcare passes.
Trump’s poll numbers continue to decrease. Still, in terms of what the Democrats need to do to win upcoming elections, there is a great article about Professor George Lakoff’s recommendations. Lakoff predicted a year ago that Trump would win with 47% of the vote. His argument is that “voters don’t vote their self-interest, they vote their values.” That means that Democrats who want to win cannot count on their policies or the facts, they have to appeal to people’s subconscious worldviews or “frames”. “Donald Trump’s tweets…had one central and fact-free message: ‘Make America great again.’ Clinton’s message was more detailed and fact-based, but also much more diffuse.” It’s the reason Lakoff feels, for example, that Democrats should not refer to government “regulations” but to government “protections”.
In terms of Russia, the Washington Post reported that CIA intelligence collected last summer showed Russian President Putin directly ordered operations to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign and get Trump elected. In other words, it wasn’t just that Russia was trying to disrupt the U.S. election, Russia definitely supported one side. (At the time Mitch McConnell “made clear to the administration that he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics. As a result, unfortunately the Obama administration said nothing.) Time Magazine reported this week that the Russian hackers altered U.S. voter rolls and stole U.S. private voter data. We don’t believe that they affected ballot counts, but no one is sure. Finally, CNN reported that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers told special counsel Robert Mueller and Senate investigators last week that Trump asked them to publicly deny that there was any collusion between Trump and the Russians regarding the campaign. They refused. It’s difficult to know if there was actual collusion. We do know that when Trump was asked about documents stolen in a Russian cyber attack on the Democratic National Committee’s servers, he publicly asked the Russians to “find” Hillary Clinton’s allegedly lost Secretary of State emails.