Donald Trump totally stepped on his own victory lap following Attorney General William Barr's declaration that there was nothing to see in the Mueller report (so you can't see the Mueller report, just take his word for it) by deciding that it was time for Republicans to take on health care again. After news broke that his Justice Department was arguing in court that the entire law should be struck down, Trump decided to declare that the Republicans were going to be the healthcare party for 2020. His allies in the party are less than thrilled.
"They are completely tone deaf," one of the GOP's top strategists told the Daily Beast. "How bout a few more victory laps on Mueller while you can get away with it? WTF is wrong with them?" Another, a former administration official, said, "It doesn't surprise me because this president is a hyperbole in action every day, so if there's an opportunity to end the whole Obamacare, ACA, regardless of the consequences of doing that, he's fine." Suggesting that this is exactly Trump acting on his own, the official continued, "[It] speaks to the lack of anybody within the administration pushing back, and it gets fewer and fewer and fewer individuals who will speak with responsibility."
For their part, most Senate Republicans are less than enthusiastic. Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who apparently spends 99 percent of his working hours coming up with folksy things to say to reporters, offered, "There's an old Japanese proverb: Fall down seven times, get up eight. You just keep trying." Just because health care for 20 million people is on the line, it's nothing to get worked up about. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who can always be relied upon these days to lick Trump's boots, offered Trumpspeak: "If there's a message to be learned from 2018 on policy, it’s health care. […] Let's become the party of health care."
Sure, you do that, Huckleberry. We're all waiting to see your plan. For their part, Democrats were uniformly on point. Scuttling the whole idea that the Beltway media is so in love with this cycle, that Democrats are at each others' throats over how much to change health care, Sen. Bernie Sanders (the vanguard of would-be socialism) was spot on: "Our goal is to pass Medicare-for-all and make health care a right. […] Today our job is to defend the Affordable Care Act from relentless attacks by the Trump administration." That's the tone other Medicare-for-all supporters and presidential hopefuls echoed. Sen. Kamala Harris said, "Trump and his administration are trying to take health care away from tens of millions of Americans—again. […] We must fight back again with everything we've got. And in 2020, we need to elect a president who will make health care a right." And Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined them: "I'll say it for the zillionth time: We will not let the Trump administration rip health care away from millions of Americans. Not now. Not ever."
So yeah, let's make health care the issue of 2020, again. Because no matter what the pundits and the traditional media like to say, Democrats are absolutely united behind the premise that health care is a right for everyone. And Republicans are going to have to be united behind Trump's efforts to take it away.