Outgoing Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is on a truth-telling tour, and it's truths Republicans and Democrats need to hear. On Obamacare, Reid lays it out: Republicans have finally taken a hostage that can really die—American people who will lose their health care. They think Democrats will blink when faced with the prospect of those deaths. Reid thinks Republicans will blink before it happens.
"They don't have enough nerve to repeal Obamacare. And if they do, they are just a lot more visionless than I can imagine," Reid told The Huffington Post in an interview this week. "Let them repeal it. They will rue the day." […]
"Can you think of—maybe there is something more cold and calculated and mean-spirited than that: 'Let's have a few people die.' Because that's what'll happen. You get rid of Obamacare, people are going to die," he said.
"In the last few days, doctors have written columns and op-ed pieces in major newspapers talking about how terrible it would be to not have Obamacare. And if these people are going — 'We're going to repeal it, we know it's going to be horrible, but it's going to be so horrible that in a few years, maybe they'll work with us' ― by then, there'll be dead bodies all over," Reid said.
It's not hyperbole—it's life and death for actual Americans, and is as much a message to Democrats as Republicans: don't capitulate and don't help them destroy this law. Force Republicans to realize that the disaster they create will be all on them. Make them prove they're willing to shoot this hostage.
This is Mitch McConnell's playbook. Remember what he said about the debt ceiling and the game of chicken he was playing then?
I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn't think that. What we did learn is this—it's a hostage that's worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.
In other words, we force Democrats to bow to our will by threatening the worst. This time, make him do it and face the consequences, and make him blink.