The left deployed the same playbook that killed Obamacare repeal — but this time, it wasn’t enough.
The tax fight has all the ingredients that helped Democrats kill Obamacare repeal: party unity on Capitol Hill, energized liberal activists and legislation that polls in the toilet. But this time it doesn’t appear to be enough.
Democrats haven’t given up hope of stopping the Republican tax plan on the 1-yard line — relentlessly flogging the substance and process of the bill — but the reasons for their likely failure are becoming clear.
While stripping people of health insurance strikes at a visceral human need, a debate over taxes tends to bog voters down in wonky details. Meanwhile, Democrats struggled to break through a media environment crowded with an intensifying Russia investigation, a wave of sexual harassment scandals and a fight over young undocumented immigrants. And while liberal grassroots activists sought to bring pressure to bear on GOP swing votes, the Republican Party held together this time, desperate for a major legislative victory after a year in total control of Washington.
Cutting taxes “is who they are,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said of Republicans recently.
Pelosi argued that the GOP is in a “lose-lose situation.” While donors are “not going to answer their calls anymore if they don’t pass the bill,” she told reporters, “they’ll lose in the court of public opinion” if it does pass.
But after the morale boost that Democrats got from saving Obamacare earlier this year, it will be a real blow if the sweeping tax code rewrite makes its way to President Donald Trump’s desk as expected. The bill’s massive corporate tax cuts, which will help drain the Treasury of an estimated $1 trillion-plus over a decade, go against everything the party stands for. And Democrats’ next chance at serious revenge will be at the polls next year. Though they deployed the same playbook that took down Obamacare repeal, this time they met a very different outcome.
The tax debate “does feel different, I’ll acknowledge that,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in an interview.
Ellison pointed to the emotional gap between Obamacare and taxes as being a critical factor.
“Everybody has sat in a hospital room with a loved one and felt that tension, that anxiety, that raw emotion of how critical it is to have health care,” Ellison said. “But when you start talking about taxes, it’s complicated.”
Republicans have focused their pitch for the tax bill on the singular message of a promise to pad Americans’ wallets. While some will ultimately see tax increases — which the minority has used to help drag down the bill’s popularity — Democrats say it’s much harder to explain that without getting in the weeds and seeing voters’ eyes glaze over.
“We understand how tough this is, to talk about taxes compared to health care,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax-writing Finance Committee, told reporters. “The tax code is a dense, complicated document which I sometimes compare to prolonged root canal work.”
“But this tax bill is extraordinarily unpopular,” Wyden added.
Voters disapprove of the Republican tax bill by a whopping 55-26 percent, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. And 47 percent of independent voters reported being less likely to vote for any lawmaker who supports the bill.
Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), one of three House Democrats in charge of the caucus’ messaging, also pointed to the hyperactive pace of the news cycle as a hurdle.
In addition to taxes, lawmakers are confronting major developments in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and sexual harassment allegations that have roiled Capitol Hill and led to the resignations of Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and the retirement of Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas).
Congressional leaders and female lawmakers have mobilized a long-dormant effort to overhaul Capitol Hill’s harassment policies. And lawmakers are bracing for the next allegations to come out.
“I think Washington is all-consumed by what’s going on with sexual harassment,” Bustos said.
Some Democrats have also privately grumbled that their party — particularly in the Senate — should have done more to stop Republicans from passing a two-week funding bill to keep the government running through Dec. 22. That, some Democrats say, gave Republicans two weeks of unfettered time to negotiate a tax bill and move it through the House and Senate before having to again deal with a potential government shutdown.
Republicans have also had fewer town hall events lately, giving liberal activists fewer opportunities to mobilize voters against the tax bill — a tactic they used to great effect against Obamacare repeal.
The left has tried to beat back the narrative that its grassroots is less interested in fighting tax cuts than saving Obamacare. While progressive groups acknowledge their opposition to the tax bill has generated less media attention, they argue activists are still making their voices heard. Protesters have ventured out to the Capitol in frigid temperatures, with dozens of activists risking arrest on the Hill during recent civil disobedience actions.
“Even though they haven’t been dominating the story in the press, I think members of Congress are well aware that their constituents oppose this thing with every cell in their bodies,” MoveOn.org Washington director Ben Wikler said in an interview.
But the GOP senators who ultimately balked at Obamacare repeal — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John McCain of Arizona — came around to supporting the tax bill relatively easily. While Republicans never truly came to a consensus on a post-Obamacare health care system, the party has long been united around a desire to cut taxes.
Even Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the sole Republican to vote against the Senate’s version of the bill, has now decided to support the final compromise. Republican leaders are expressing confidence that they’ll be able to send the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by Wednesday.
“I’m optimistic that we’re going to surprise a few people by the size of the vote we have here,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told a Dallas radio station Friday a few hours before Corker announced he was on board.
