For the past two years, Democrats have clung onto emotional messaging, promising that the repeal of net neutrality would kill us all and how President Trump would start war with North Korea or act as a Russian agent.
Ultimately, their overblown, fantastical wishcasting, propelled by a cooperative national news media, proved a step too far. Even though Democrats won a House majority last night, the blue wave proved more of a trickle that still ceded to the Republicans’ domination in the Senate, probably for at least four years.
In a normal year with normal expectations, that would be a victory for Democrats, considering how great the economy is doing under a fully Republican government. But alas, the Democrats overpromised, and the media have spent the better part of 12 hours licking their wounds with fawning Beto O’Rourke obituaries.
But Republicans require a reckoning too. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, perhaps the biggest winner of last night, is leading the GOP’s judicial agenda, a wildly historic and impactful influx of conservative justices to reshape our legal ecosystem for a generation. But Republicans need to wake up, regroup, and design a legislative agenda, specifically an eight-year promise to repeal and, most vitally, replace Obamacare.
That we let the GOP get away with years of grandstanding on healthcare while Barack Obama held a pen ready to veto them is one thing, but that they went two years controlling every branch of the federal government with only a line item repeal of the individual mandate slipped into a tax bill and some effective — but easily reversible — executive healthcare policies to show for it is a disgrace.
The Senate’s role in judicial confirmations may have infused voters with the final thrust to get them to vote red yesterday, but the House has no such push. Representatives are purely legislators, and as of right now, they refuse to legislate.
Republicans need a legislative plan. We rightly derided Obama for building his policy agenda on a house of cards made through executive orders. While Trump’s healthcare mandates, specifically his price transparency pushes for pharmaceuticals and hospitals, have been excellent steps in the right direction, House Republicans need to do their jobs and come up with a real healthcare plan to break up the health insurance cartel, increase the elasticity of consumer demand, and empower and incentivize American patients to make better long-term consumer choices.
I never, ever thought that I’d be saying that Trump’s executive branch is exacting more thoughtful healthcare policy than the wave of GOP congressmen who rode into Washington on this very issue, but 2018 has been just like that.
Voters overwhelmingly listed healthcare as the number one issue that they cared about in exit polls yesterday. And it’s no wonder why. Total healthcare spending now comprises nearly one-fifth of the entire American GDP, a figure that’s projected to radically increase and outpacing real economic growth. As easy it is for the well-economically-versed conservative commentariat to sneer at the obvious insanity and catastrophic potential of instituting single-payer in the United States — namely, instigating a fatal physician shortage, killing the world’s greatest source of medical research and development, and exploding our national debt, just to name a few examples — average Americans are clinging to any alternatives to the current, broken system that we have.
Republicans owe us a healthcare bill. With the House lost, a complete conservative overhaul seems unlikely, but the GOP has to put on a happy face, bring Democrats to the bargaining table with a series of small bills to extend the populist transparency pushes started at Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services or perhaps expanding HSAs or relaxing regulations on concierge care, and start courting K Street again to craft a real, long-term plan.
After eight years of broken promises, Republicans owe us that much.
