Attorney General Bill Barr and Senator Lamar Alexander aren’t the only Washington Republicans terrified that the House-Republican backed lawsuit to eliminate the ACA will sink Republicans in November.
CNN reports that Republican strategists are already dreading a repeat of Democrats’ 2018 messaging – only this time with a deadly pandemic as a backdrop.
“Republicans can’t afford to litigate health care for the second election in a row,” said a senior Republican strategist. “We saw how this turned out in 2018 and we didn’t have a global pandemic and economic depression to go along with it.”
Nearly every House Republican voted twice to back the Trump Administration’s lawsuit to eliminate the ACA. The lawsuit would kick 20 million Americans off of their insurance and allow insurance companies to discriminate against Americans battling COVID-19.
53 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s record on health care, and Americans trust Democrats in Congress to improve the health care system over Trump by a double-digit margin.
Key Points From CNN’s Look At Democrats’ Health Care Messaging
Democrats used health care to win big in 2018. They want to do it again this year
Dan Merica and Ryan Nobles
- Democrats rode a conversation about health care to sweeping victories in 2018 and are keen to do it again this November.
- The debate, which helped the party take control of the House two years ago, rests on President Donald Trump’s repeated push to have the courts strike down the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s sweeping health care law that provided coverage to millions of Americans. But the coronavirus pandemic has further heightened the urgency, leading Democrats from former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign and top super PACs to argue Trump is looking to cut American’s health care in the middle of a global pandemic.
- “Republicans can’t afford to litigate health care for the second election in a row,” said a senior Republican strategist. “We saw how this turned out in 2018 and we didn’t have a global pandemic and economic depression to go along with it.”
- The latest example of the Democrats’ strategy came last week when Priorities USA, a top Democratic super PAC, released a digital ad hammering Trump for looking to cut back health care coverage. The ad featured Trump recent saying, “We want to terminate health care under Obamacare.”
- “Our lives are on pause. We are worried about our health and Trump is asking the Supreme Court to take away our health care,” a narrator says in the spot. “One-hundred and thirty-three million Americans could lose coverage in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Trump is putting us at risk.”
- Biden, too, has started to use the same messaging, hitting Trump for wanting to end Obamacare as coronavirus spreads.
- “During a global pandemic, they’re trying to overturn (Obamacare) and strip millions of American of health insurance,” Biden said this month during a virtual roundtable with African-American leaders in Jacksonville. “They should drop that lawsuit today. And Trump should reopen Obamacare enrollment so every American can access coverage today when they need it most.”
- For Democrats, the focus on health care is a no-brainer, especially after the party won 41 seats to take back the House by relentlessly focusing on the issue ahead of the 2018 midterms.
- But operatives like Josh Schwerin, spokesman for Priorities USA, believe that argument takes on even more importance as the coronavirus roils the country and has most Americans solely focused on the health and well-being of their families.
- “In 2017, 2018 and 2019, we said we needed to talk about health care and the economy. In our lifetimes we’ve never had something more relevant to health care and the economy than COVID,” Schwerin said. “Trump’s team said recently they want to make Trump the health care president. I don’t think they really thought this one through.”
- Democrats’ messaging on health care focuses on an upcoming Supreme Court hearing on the future of Obamacare, which pits Democrat-led states like California against the Trump administration and more red-states like Texas. Trump, despite concerns from Attorney General William Barr, has fully backed using the Supreme Court to attempt to fully nullify Obamacare.
- The issue for Republicans, though: While it is easy for them to downplay the popular aspects of Obamacare and amplify the problems with the program, they still do not have an alternative plan of their own, meaning Democrats can credibly say the party wants to take away health care from millions of Americans without a tangible replacement.
- Tyler Law, an operative who worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2018 cycle, said key voters didn’t buy Republican health care messaging two years ago and they are unlikely to again this year.
- “The Democrats’ healthcare message in 2018 was so effective because there wasn’t any spin on the ball — Republicans voted to repeal the ACA and strip protections for preexisting conditions, and then sued to dismantle the law,” Law said. “Same principle applies again in 2020 where Republicans are still suing, and Trump is saying on camera that he wants ‘to terminate healthcare.'”
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