


Demoralized Democrats who have denounced President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill have landed on a silver lining. It is so unpopular with voters, they say, that it could win them back one, if not both, chambers of Congress in next year’s midterm elections.
Top officials in the party, who see the bill as cruel, fiscally ruinous and the single biggest wealth transfer in American history, expect that they can blame Republicans who voted for the loss of health care coverage, nursing home care and food security for millions of Americans in order to extend the 2017 tax cuts that favor the wealthy.
And they have plenty of quotes from Republicans like Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska denouncing their own bill that, Democrats say, will make the argument that much more potent.
“There’s going to be some powerful ads,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the chamber’s Democratic leader, before rattling off potential scripts for advertisements that are set to begin airing as early as next week. “‘My daughter had cancer. She was doing fine. Well, all of a sudden, her health care was blown up.’ ‘I worked at this rural hospital for 30 years. I put my heart into it because I wanted to help people. I was fired.’ Stuff like that is going to really matter.”
It may take a while for people to feel the full effects of the bill because Republicans front-loaded some temporary tax cuts for working people, like no taxes on tips, that were engineered to appeal to working-class voters. The cuts to Medicaid are not set to be implemented until after the midterm elections.
Still, there were some immediate effects. A clinic in southwest Nebraska announced this week that it was closing, blaming anticipated cuts to Medicaid. And Democrats said they expected millions of people to feel the impact from the bill’s allowing credits from the Affordable Care Act to expire. It will be up to Democrats over the next year to drive home the arguments that these policies are the fault of Republican lawmakers.
The party is starting in good shape: A slew of recent polls show that the bill is deeply unpopular, including one by the nonprofit health care research group KFF that found that 64% of voters viewed the bill unfavorably.
For now, Democrats think they are in a strong position to hammer the most vulnerable Republican House members, who represent tens of thousands of voters on Medicaid and who themselves said they opposed cuts up until they voted for them.
In his marathon speech on the House floor, which began at 4:53 a.m. Thursday and lasted more than 8½ hours, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., the minority leader, singled out by name the most vulnerable members of Congress that Democrats hope to unseat next year. The list included Reps. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., David Valadao, R-Calif., Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., among others.
Jeffries highlighted an April 14 letter that more than a dozen of these lawmakers addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson, in which they expressed grave concerns about cutting Medicaid.
“We are committed to working with you to preserve Medicaid,” they wrote in the letter. Jeffries noted that they subsequently voted for the legislation that slashed Medicaid at every step of the process.
Jeffries also noted that, in Lawler’s district, “more than 30,000 New Yorkers will lose their health care.” Lawler was one of the few Republicans on the House floor early Thursday morning listening to Jeffries’ speech.
House Majority Forward, a group affiliated with the House Democrats’ main super PAC, is set to immediately begin advertising in the districts held by three vulnerable Republicans, Reps. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Tom Barrett of Michigan and Derrick Van Orden of western Wisconsin.
The group affiliated with the Senate Democrats’ super PAC, Majority Forward, has already been airing advertisements in five states: Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and Georgia, where Sen. Jon Ossoff is the most vulnerable Democrat seeking reelection next year.
Democratic groups are also looking to expand their advertising blitz to prominent podcasters, who would read ad scripts on their shows.