Did you hear many speakers at the Democratic National Convention hail the gains made by Americans from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known to Republicans and sometimes to Democrats as Obamacare? Well, there were some Monday and will undoubtedly be others Tuesday, but they were relatively few and far between — even though President Obama has called it the signal legislative achievement of his administration. And I haven’t yet heard — though maybe I’ve missed it — any praise for the nuclear deal with Iran, which Obama aide Ben Rhodes has called the foreign policy equivalent of Obamacare.
It’s true that Bernie Sanders and some others have called for taking more steps toward universal healthcare, and the party platform is calling for a health insurance public option — a provision Democrats, even with their supermajorities, had to drop to get Obamacare through Congress. And it’s usually the case that a party seeking a third consecutive presidential term dwells less on its achievements in the past than on its goals and hopes for the future. After all, voters can pocket past achievements and vote for the other side this time.
The Democrats seem to be looking forward not so much to major policy changes like Obamacare as to small potatoes measures like the $15 minimum wage (opposed by most serious Democratic economists), equal pay for women (which is pretty much a reality when you look at people with similar jobs and work hours) and family leave. They’re 70 percent issues with the public and popular with Democratic constituencies, but how many votes do they sway? But Obamacare and the Iran deal may sway some votes — away from the Democrats and toward, despite his obvious weaknesses, Donald Trump.
