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One need not be a political expert to know what issues Republicans see as their strengths. If it were up to GOP leaders, the public conversation would focus entirely on inflation, border security and crime — not because the party has solutions to any of these challenges, but because polls tend to show that voters favor Republicans more than Democrats on these issues.
That said, there are plenty of issues that favor Democrats, most notably health care. A recent national survey from NBC News found the party with a 23-point advantage over the GOP on health care, which is one of the reasons Republicans generally avoid the subject.
It was against that backdrop that Donald Trump apparently thought it’d be a good idea to publish this message to his social media platform on Saturday morning, telling Americans that he’s “seriously looking at alternatives” to “Obamacare.” The former president went on to complain about Republican senators who failed to “terminate” the Affordable Care Act in 2017, concluding, “[B]ut we should never give up!”
The message was bizarre for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Democrats saw Trump’s missive as manna from heaven. Semafor reported on Sunday night that President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign was “eagerly planning to make the Affordable Care Act a bigger issue” in response to Trump’s missive.
As The Washington Post reported, it didn’t take long for the the Democratic president and his allies to follow through on that plan.
President Biden on Monday jumped at the chance to tussle with Republicans over the 2010 health-care law known as Obamacare after Donald Trump wrote on social media this weekend that he is “seriously looking at alternatives” to it, something for which Republicans had all but abandoned trying to fight.
“My predecessor, once again — God love him — called for cuts that could rip away health insurance for tens of millions of Americans on Medicaid,” Biden said at a White House event. “They don’t give up. But guess what, we won’t let these things happen.”
The public comments coincided with a written statement from the president’s re-election campaign. “Forty million people — more than 1 in 10 Americans — have health insurance today because of the Affordable Care Act and Donald Trump just said he would try to rip it away if he returns to power,” spokesperson Ammar Moussa said. “He was one vote away from getting it done when he was president — and we should take him at his word that he’ll try to do it again.
“That means letting insurance companies deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions like diabetes, cancer, or asthma; kicking college kids off their parents’ coverage the moment they graduate; leaving a job once again resulting in a loss of coverage; premiums skyrocketing; and middle class families suffering. Donald Trump’s America is one where millions of people lose their health insurance and seniors and families across the country face exorbitant costs just to stay healthy. Those are the stakes next November.”
This was soon followed by a lengthy memo from White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates on the same issue.
Soon after, the Biden campaign announced a press call with House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper in order to “highlight the devastating impact that a Trump and MAGA repeal of the Affordable Care Act would have on millions of Americans.”
The aforementioned Post report added, “The campaign will run new TV ads this week in swing states to highlight the president’s efforts to lower prices for some prescription drugs and spotlight Trump’s call to repeal the Affordable Care Act.”
If Democrats were to have literally written a script for Trump to follow, they probably would’ve had the Republican pick a fight over the future of the ACA. It was awfully generous of him to play along for no apparent reason.