On ObamaCare, Trump just dropped the ball

One of the biggest unforced errors in pro sports history occurred in 1986, when Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner let a grounder roll between his legs. This 10th-inning misstep allowed the Mets to survive and force game seven of that year’s World Series. They won, and the Red Sox, who had been just one strike away from a World Series victory, had to wait another 18 years. 

Former President Trump is having a Bill Buckner moment in his presidential campaign.

With polls showing him in a tight rematch with President Biden, Trump announced he wants to kill off a health care plan that reached record popularity among Americans this year with 62 percent approval.

The wave of support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as ObamaCare, got past Trump because he is distracted, obsessed with former President Barack Obama and fixated on repealing Obama’s signature health plan.

As we end 2023, “more than 40 million Americans have coverage under the ACA, the highest total on record,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

In fact, 4.6 million Americans got health care coverage through the ACA in the first weeks of open enrollment this year. 

And last week, an important state on the presidential election map, North Carolina, expanded Medicaid benefits to 300,000 people under the ACA. 

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) described Trump’s political blunder as a personal issue for voters.

“We’re talking about childcare workers, we’re talking about people who take care of senior, we’re talking about people who work in restaurants. These are the people that Donald Trump wants to rip away insurance from and that is a message that I think will resound during [the 2024] campaigns,” said Cooper.

Trump’s political error came at the right moment for Biden. The Biden camp is ending its strategy of silence on Trump’s policies as president.

For example, Vice President Harris is saying out loud that Trump helped to end abortion rights. And Biden’s re-election campaign last week launched advertising to remind voters that Biden lowered the cost of prescription drugs and while Trump promoted tax “policies that helped the rich get richer … we can’t go back.”

The ad is running in swing states, including North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Biden is looking to use Trump’s latest slip-up to remind people starting to pay attention to the upcoming election that Trump has also announced plans for more federal control of public schools and federal control of local police departments.

“Trump’s not even hiding the ball anymore. He’s telling us what he’s going to do …” Biden told a Boston fundraising audience by specifically citing Trump’s announcement of new efforts to repeal the ACA.

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board recognized that Trump tripped himself up: “Donald Trump handed his opponents another gift over the weekend by vowing to ‘terminate’ ObamaCare — or at least that’s how Democrats are translating his blunderbuss comments. Democrats are distorting the issue as ever, but they know Mr. Trump has no plan of his own.”’terminate” ObamaCare — or at least that’s how Democrats are translating his blunderbuss comments. Democrats are distorting the issue as ever, but they know Mr. Trump has no plan of his own.”

The Journal is right. Trump never had anything close to an effective replacement for ObamaCare.

And keep in mind, while he was in the White House, Trump failed to get a Republican Congress to go along with a plan to end ObamaCare after an outcry from their constituents.

Now, more than a decade after ObamaCare passed, it is clear that Republican doomsayers’ predictions about ObamaCare leading to “death panels,” “rationed care” and “death spirals” was hyperbole and hogwash. 

The reality is that millions of Americans have decided for themselves that they want ObamaCare. The insurance industry has long adjusted to that reality.

Despite that truth, Trump is dragging his fellow Republicans down the same road of attacks on ObamaCare ahead of the 2024 elections. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is already echoing Trump’s attack on the health care plan by saying he too wants a plan to “supersede ObamaCare.”

It’s worth remembering that DeSantis opposed the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid in Florida despite a large population in need of health insurance coverage.

Former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, also running for the GOP presidential nomination, took the same callous approach to score political points when she opposed the ACA’s Medicare expansion in South Carolina.

These Republicans are all dropping the ball of public support for the ACA.

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll of American adults taken in May 2023 found 59 percent of adults have a favorable opinion of the ACA, while only 40 percent have an unfavorable opinion.

According to Kaiser, partisan politics does have an impact on views of the ACA.

Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republican voters to say the future of the ACA is a “very important” issue for the candidates to discuss, 70 percent to 32 percent.

Democrats also hold an advantage on which party voters trust to do a better job of handling the ACA with 59 percent saying they trust the Democratic Party more, compared to 39 percent who say they trust the Republican Party more. The Democratic Party holds the advantage among independent voters on handling health care, 61 percent to 36 percent.

Throughout this year, I have argued that Trump should be subject to a gag order to prevent him from inciting violence against judges, prosecutors and court staff presiding over his many criminal and civil cases.

But when it comes to ObamaCare, I say let the man speak. This is Bill Buckner bragging about his big play in the World Series.

Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.