It’s a McMiracle.
The narrow defeat of a hastily written, barely analyzed bill to replace Obamacare, a bill that would have left at least 15 million more people without health insurance and raised premiums by 20 percent for many citizens, shouldn’t feel like a remarkable event.
But we’ve sunk so low — Republicans are so desperate to prove they can do something, anything, that even senators who hated the bill voted for it — that the defeat of the so-called “skinny repeal’’ feels, yes, miraculous.
In the early hours of Friday morning, Senator John McCain was the man his admirers believe him to be, bucking his party to do what he thinks is right, his dramatic thumbs-down relegating the bill to history.
It was a legacy-making moment for the Arizona senator. Recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, McCain returned to the Senate last week to vote to push debate forward on the repeal bill, delivering a speech decrying the process of writing the bill “behind closed doors . . . then springing it on skeptical members, trying to convince them that it was better than nothing.’’ He pleaded for a return to the “old way of legislating,’’ with debate and attempts at bipartisanship.
But Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell appears not to have been listening. The master obstructionist, adroit at blaming Democrats for the cynical tactics he himself has turned into an art form, put the bill up for a vote so quickly that members barely had a chance to read it, let alone properly debate it. A whopping 48 of his colleagues voted for it anyway, some of them only after they were reassured that the bill they’d approved would not actually become law.
Just let that sink in for a minute.
McCain voted no because the bill would not have made health care any more affordable for Arizonans. He urged legislators to hold hearings, and agree on one that would. Barring some kind of seismic transformation on Capitol Hill, the suggestion seems hopelessly naive.
There was more drama in McCain’s decision, and more pathos, his legacy suddenly too immediate a prospect. But, as others have noted, he wasn’t the only hero here, nor the most consistent one. That honor goes to Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, who held the line against their fellow Republicans’ cruel intentions through several votes, and withstood tremendous pressure. Each of them was rightly worried the various repeal proposals would hurt their constituents. Murkowski, whose state President Trump won by 15 points, resisted relentless public and private bullying from the White House.
But blocking the bill doesn’t fix what’s wrong here. The 48 Republicans who voted for repeal — even those who said they were holding their noses — did so because they thought they couldget away with it. Polls show Americans pretty much hate the notion of repeal as presented to them in the various GOP proposals. But somehow, Republicans in Congress seem unperturbed. Perhaps they figure they can fool their voters into believing their higher premiums and disappearing insurance are the fault of the flawed Obamacare they wanted to “fix.’’
They’ve gotten plenty of help from the administration, which will now likely redouble its efforts to make true the lie that Obamacare is collapsing. It can continue sabotaging the Affordable Care Act by, for example, weakening the requirement that people buy insurance, suppressing new sign-ups, and threatening to withhold subsidies
“Let Obamacare implode, then deal. Watch!’’ Trump tweeted on Friday morning.
Polls show that there is some peril here, that voters will blame the GOP if the ACA really does collapse. If that’s true, McConnell had best push for bipartisan measures to shore it up.
Then again, maybe unhappy voters aren’t as fearsome as polls make them seem. Maybe they’re more forgiving, or at least easier to gull, as Election Day nears.
Would we have this Congress, not to mention this president, otherwise?
Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yvonne.abraham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeAbraham.
