Dem
47
GOP
53
Sometimes we wonder whether Donald Trump is on the red team or the blue team. This does not happen often, but sometimes. When reporters asked the President if he wants to extend the subsidies for Obamacare (aka, the ACA), he said: "I'd rather not. Somebody said I want to extend them for 2 years. I don't want to extend them for 2 years. I'd rather not extend them at all."
We can't believe this. It boggles our mind. It's not that we have trouble accepting the concept that Trump doesn't give a hoot about people not getting medical care. That is easy to accept. He genuinely and truly does not care about another person on earth except himself (possibly with the exception of his sweetie, Ivanka). What we can't believe is that he just wrote the script for Democrats' midterm ad, and it is a doozy.
If Trump really gets his way—and that is not certain, because Republicans in Congress do understand the stakes here—health insurance premiums will spike for millions of people. How will Democrats explain this to people? They will say "Donald Trump decided to kill the subsidies that kept your health insurance costs down." Maybe there is video of him saying this, we're not sure. That would make it even worse. People are already very angry about inflation, and a huge spike in health insurance premiums will come at exactly the wrong time and Trump will get the full blame. Goodbye House. Goodbye Senate. Hello one or more impeachments.
Trump has talked about a Plan B: Sending voters checks for $2,000. But as we noted on Monday, Republicans in Congress are not enthusiastic about this idea. They are more likely to draft a bill extending the subsidies with some unpleasant restrictions and hope to get it through Congress and get Trump to sign it.
In any event, Trump openly saying he doesn't want to extend the subsidies is a political own-goal. Even if some bill gets through but premiums rise anyway for other reasons, Democrats could still use Trump's remark against him. Many voters don't follow the ins and outs of how the sausage is made. With a bit of careful wording, they could make ads that show Trump saying that he is against subsidies and then show clips of people being shocked when they see their premiums followed by something like a voiceover "Words have consequences," which is true, even if the three parts of the ad aren't exactly connected. (V)