The Daily 202: How Nancy Pelosi kept Democrats united behind Obamacare
By James Hohmann May 3 at 10:17 AM
THE BIG IDEA: An uncovered dynamic in the current health care fight is the degree to which congressional Democrats have held together in unified opposition.
There are 10 Democratic senators and a dozen House members up for reelection next year in places Donald Trump carried. Not one has defected to support the GOP effort to unravel Obamacare or even gone wobbly. House Republicans, who voted in unison dozens of times to repeal the law when they knew it was just for show, are now the ones struggling to get on the same page.
The complexion of the House Democratic caucus has changed, as Blue Dogs got wiped out and the base of the party moved to the left. Of the 34 Democrats who voted against the Affordable Care Act when it passed in 2010, only three remain: Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Daniel Lipinski of Illinois and Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts. Each is against the GOP push to undo the law.
We take this unity for granted because of how effectively Republican leaders held their rank-and-file together against even the most popular elements of Barack Obama’s agenda. Just as tea party activists enforced this discipline from the right under the last president, the so-called Resistance movement now demands the same lock-step opposition from the left.
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