I Agree with Rachel Bitecofer… Reality, Indeed, Bites… for MAGA Dupes… and Everyone Else, Too!

Seldom to do pen a post just to quote and recommend the work of another – unless it’s just too good to miss and exactly what I was about to say myself (but probably with more unnecessary words!). Today, political scientist and practitioner Rachel Bitecofer did just that:

When the government reopened, cable pundits called it a cave. Twitter called it surrender. I called it a win—because from where I sit, Democrats didn’t lose the shutdown fight, they won the long game and gave the ACA its only chance of survival. 

The point was never to “hold out” for an Affordable Care Act subsidy extension that Republicans were never going to give in the shutdown. The point was to force them to take ownership of killing it. That’s exactly what just happened.

Now, as December premiums land in mailboxes across America, voters will have one party to blame for the sticker shock. One man, really—Donald J. Trump—and the Republican Party that spent fifteen years promising to repeal and replace the ACA without ever producing a plan that wasn’t a dumpster fire. They voted to gut it once to end the shutdown, and they’ll have to do it again in the glare of public outrage. That’s not losing; that’s setting a trap.

A “Fold” That Sets the Board

There’s this fantasy that if Democrats just “fight like Republicans,” they’d always win but there is something called strategic retreat that is very important if you want to win wars: just ask the Wehrmacht! But here’s the problem: Republicans fight with nihilism, and nihilism works when you don’t care who gets hurt. Democrats govern. There’s a difference.

You can’t negotiate with a man who sued for the right to starve poor children!!

No he has to fix healthcare with no way to actually do it. 

Keeping the government closed would’ve starved SNAP recipients, sidelined veterans’ benefits, and wrecked holiday paychecks for hundreds of thousands of federal workers. Meanwhile, there was no path to restoring ACA subsidies through a shutdown standoff with a MAGA-controlled House. The right move was to reopen government and force Republicans into the impossible position of defending what they just did.

When Speaker Mike Johnson promised a floor vote on Obamacare repeal, he thought it was a victory lap. Within forty-eight hours, he was backpedaling, muttering about “replacement notebooks” and “plans in progress.” 

Translation: there is no plan, there never was, and now the clock is ticking.

They actually have to do something or unleash tsunami of pain for the entire insurance market and its customers. 

Read the rest at Rachel’s excellent Substack newsletter.