Paul Ryan and the GOP finally managed to get the votes needed from the House to pass the American Health Care Act Thursday to repeal and replace ObamaCare and the news was a huge upset for the mainstream media. All three networks cheered Democrats taunting Republicans in the House for passing what Democrats saw as a failure of a bill, as some sort of victory dance for the left. ABC, NBC and CBS also acted as Democrat operatives, complaining about everything wrong with the bill from the left’s perspective, while ignoring concerns conservatives had with the health care bill retaining many of the problems from ObamaCare.
On ABC, Good Morning America political analyst Matthew Dowd reveled in the bill’s bipartisan problems, calling the bill passing a “huge negative” that would sink Republicans. Dowd even claimed that by passing it, the GOP had managed to do something Democrats failed to do for their own health care bill; make ObamaCare popular.
Anchor George Stephanopoulos began his discussion with Dowd boasting about the “political fallout” from the bill.
Let's talk about the political fallout with our political analyst Matthew Dowd and he's joined us from Miami. A real split screen yesterday after that vote. You had President Trump and the Republicans there, they were celebrating at the White House. You had the Democrats can cheering on the floor of the house after losing the votes saying Republicans are going to pay. How do you assess the political fallout?
While Dowd called both parties’ celebration dances “unseemly,” he specifically went after Republicans for trying to repeal and replace ObamaCare as an “anchor” that would sink the party:
Well, I actually thought it was somewhat unseemly on both sides in the middle of this. You all mentioned the Kentucky Derby. It seems both sides are in the first turn and they're already drinking mint juleps thinking it's the end of this thing. We have much more to go on the political side of this. I think right now this is a huge negative for the Republican party. But it's a year and a half from election day. We don't know what's going to happen in the Senate in this but as of today, it's an anchor for Republican candidates.
Stephanopoulos boasted of polls showing the bill’s unpopularity with the public, which caused Dowd to gush sarcastically that Republicans had “managed to do something” Obama “couldn’t do.”
STEPHANOPOULOS: Yeah, because this bill passed through the House yesterday. As we said with one vote to spare even though right now it polls in a very negative way. A lot of Republicans under fire for this. You had even some House Republicans yesterday saying, yeah, we voted for this bill. We don't think it's very good.
DOWD: George, the amazing thing is is that Donald Trump and the GOP have managed to do something President Obama couldn't do which was make ObamaCare popular. ObamaCare today is popular by a majority of the vote today. When you look at the process of this, the fact they didn't present the bill early enough for people to read, they didn't do a CBO score, they rushed it through. All of the process as well Tom talked about the substance is going to cause a huge political problem. Now we don't know what the Senate is going to be but this is going to be an anchor regardless of what the Senate does Democrats will hang it on Republicans in the fall of 2018.
Stephanopoulos and Dowd ended by downplaying the victory for Trump, with Dowd saying Trump needed “a series of victories” to “break through the dam” and benefit his presidency long term:
DOWD: Well, I think he needed an early victory to demonstrate he can actually get something passed because he hasn't done anything major in the House of Representatives or the Senate yet. He needed that. But in the end that's going to fade away. I actually think he needs to put together a series of victories on a lot of different things and maybe they think it will break through the dam and can do a lot of other things they want to do but right now I don't think this is going to benefit Donald Trump much in the long term.
