Credit where credit is due

John McCain’s vote against the “skinny repeal” has folks singing his praises, but who really put in the work to save the ACA?

broccoli rob
Jul 28, 2017 · 5 min read
Photo via ADAPT

Early this morning, Mitch McConnell’s latest desperate move to repeal the Affordable Care Act went down in flames. The Healthcare Freedom Act, a “skinny repeal” that would result in 16 million uninsured Americans and a 20% increase in premiums, failed 49–51. To hear the media tell it, the hero who saved us all from this heartless piece of legislation is Senator John McCain, whose conscience simply could not abide cynically passing something he and other Republicans didn’t actually want to be made law. For those of us who have attention spans longer than 24 hours, this sounds absurd: our hero is John McCain, the man who got a doctor’s note just so he could fly into Washington to vote for the motion to proceed that made the Healthcare Freedom Act passing a possibility in the first place?

Praise for McCain sounds absurd because it is absurd. The most McCain deserves is a sarcastic “thanks for actually doing the right thing this time”. Others have written at length how the GOP’s resident Maverick never really was one. Those of you with a love of numbers might appreciate viewing fivethirtyeight’s Trump Score for John McCain, which shows him voting in line with Trump’s preferences 86.7% of the time. McCain’s cynical “vote to proceed and then lecture the Republicans” play risked the health insurance of millions of Americans. The media may wish to paper over that and his vote for a full repeal for the sake of Narrative, but we shouldn’t. Despite all the praise he’s gotten and will continue to get until he again shows his true colors, his 2 AM vote is nothing compared to the sustained opposition that Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have put forth. Collins and Murkowski are the only two Republican senators to vote against the motion to proceed, and the only two Republican senators to vote against all three repeal bills. They did so under heavy fire from their fellow Republicans, including Trump. McCain, by contrast, belongs to the group of 11 GOP senators that voted for at least one of the bills but not all three. If you must give credit to any Republicans, it should be Collins or Murkowski.

Vote breakdown infographic via The New York Times

But then again, why focus your praise on the Republicans at all? Something convinced these two Republicans to break with their party and oppose the repeal of Obamacare (lest we forget, Murkowski voted for the 2015 ACA repeal bill), and I doubt it was that their hearts grew three times this day.

This is not to say the Democratic senators deserve more praise. Certainly not the Democrats who are wasting their breath begging for bipartisanship, as if McConnell and the 51 other senators he’s spent months trying to wrangle into passing a healthcare bill without a single Democrat vote are going to suddenly play nice. These Democrats aren’t fighting to save your healthcare, they’re LARPing an episode of The West Wing. Having defeated a Bad Bill, they can now go back to looking for a Jed Bartlet Moment that will never come, where they convince their opponents to Do The Right Thing and Work Together. Certainly not the 4 Democrats and 1 Independent who couldn’t resist voting to reject single-payer when afforded the opportunity by the GOP’s little bit of gamesmanship. These Democrats aren’t fighting to save your healthcare, they’re following the party line. This party line conveniently allows them to live deep in the pockets of the insurance companies, even with growing public support of healthcare coverage for all Americans. And most certainly not the Democrats who flocked to John McCain to give him applause and big hugs before and after voting. These Democrats aren’t fighting to save your healthcare, they’re playing a game. In the context of that game, McCain is to them not an opponent whose reckless voting endangered millions of Americans in the first place, but a friendly rival whose last-minute decision helped them win. No, the Democrats do not deserve more praise.

Photo by Mike DeBonis

The people who deserve the most praise for their efforts defeating the repeal attempts didn’t have the opportunity to speak in front of news cameras in the middle of the night, or campaign managers to send out press releases this morning. That’s because the people who deserve the most praise are the organizers, the activists and those who they mobilized. They’re members of advocacy groups like ADAPT, ACT UP, Housing Works, and The Center for Popular Democracy, as well as political organizations like The Democratic Socialists of America. They risked arrest and violence at the hands of the state to make sure that opposition to repealing Obamacare was heard loud and clear. They organized mass groups of people calling Senate offices and filling town halls to demand a “no” vote until phones rang off the hook and senators dodged their own public events. A dedicated coalition of activists and socialists sacrificed time, money and their well-being to save the ACA. This coalition was filled with members who are disabled, who are women, who are LGBT, who are people of color. Such coalitions always are. Many have acknowledged their efforts, but many more should. They deserve all the thanks in the world. Without them, who knows if those 11 Republican senators would have voted no on even one repeal bill, or if the pressure brought on Collins and Murkowski would have broken their opposition?

So when you watch yet another CNN panel sing the praises of Bipartisan Hero John McCain or read another Slate article about who the real Good Republicans are, remember the people who fought tooth and nail just to be heard by them. And when they finish their well-earned day of rest to resume the fight for Medicare For All or to mobilize against the next effort by Trump, McConnell and Ryan to strip away our healthcare, consider joining them.

broccoli rob

Written by

living and organizing in the Boston area. blog-writing is the opiate of smartasses.

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