[...]
In The Art of the Deal — which liberals ought to study as carefully as conservatives studied Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals if they want to begin to understand a president they have only demonized and caricatured thus far — Trump explains that one of his core negotiating principles is: “Protect the Downside and the Upside Will Take Care of Itself.”
Today, the upside is obvious, but extremely elusive: a replacement for Obamacare that does not create new headaches for millions of patients. The downside is failure — either no deal, or a deal that hurts enough people to create a new opposition constituency.
President Trump has used the launch, and decline, of the American Health Care Act to highlight the downside — and take some wind out of the sails of the politicians and policy wonks who convinced themselves they had all the answers. As the bill falters, the next, inevitable step will be for nervous Republican leaders to ask Trump to offer a new plan.
And that plan will be more of a classic Trump bargain — one that does what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama refused to do: namely, bring all of the stakeholders together, including doctors and patients, to hash out something everyone can accept.
[...]
We live in interesting times.
We do live in strange times, I would love to see Trump pull the plug on all the uunconstitutional feral programs, not going to happen.