Trump’s Obamacare failure drives Biden on infrastructure

Former President Trump’s failure to repeal The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, likely drives President Biden’s support for the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. Biden knows the high price legislative failure can inflict on a presidency; he also knows he is not entirely accepted by his party’s ideological base. Both these warnings resonated from his predecessor’s Obamacare failure. 

Immediately following the enactment of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill early this year, Biden came forward with two equally large infrastructure bills. The first was the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan that focused on traditional infrastructure. The second was the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that focused on “human infrastructure.”

Together these bills formed the core of Biden’s agenda and became the object of intense negotiations with Senate Republicans. Despite weeks of talks, the negotiations failed to deliver a deal and the White House ended them. Almost immediately, a bipartisan group of senators began their own infrastructure talks. Just last week those Senate negotiations yielded a $550 billion deal for new spending on largely traditional infrastructure.

Although far smaller in scope and size, the White House wholeheartedly supported the deal, in many ways making it their own. This White House’s ready embrace is a stark contrast with the Trump administration’s inability to grasp a win under similar circumstances four years ago. 

In 2017, Republicans with larger congressional majorities spent the better part of a year seeking to repeal Obamacare. In the end, they did not. The result was that Trump came away with a defeat on one of the central elements of his campaign and presidency. At the center of this defeat was Trump’s inability to get conservatives behind a version of repeal. 

Trump’s troubled relationship with conservatives ultimately proved to be the endpoint of his presidency. Trump was viewed warily by conservatives when he started his 2016 campaign. This carried over even after he won the nomination and into the general election.  

According to exit polling, conservatives were 35 percent of 2016’s voters and Trump lost almost one in five (19 percent) of them — including almost one in six going to Hillary Clinton. Had Trump gained even half his lost conservatives, he would have won easily in 2016.  

Trump made gains with conservatives during his tenure as president, but less than many realize. In 2020, conservatives were 38 percent of voters; Trump lost slightly less than one in seven of them (15 percent) with almost all his losses (14 percent) going to Biden. Again, had Trump held defecting conservatives he would have won easily (recall: Trump lost five states with 63 electoral votes by less than 160,000 popular votes). 

Was 2017’s failure to repeal Obamacare the reason for Trump’s continued conservative problem in 2020? It is impossible to say, but safe to assume that it did not help. Certainly, repeal could easily have changed the trajectory of Trump’s presidency’s early rocky days.

Trump’s failures — to enact a signature proposal, to solidify himself with his party’s ideological base, and of course to win reelection — are ones that Biden does not want to repeat. Like Trump, Biden is at a crucial early juncture. And like Trump, Biden is viewed by his party’s ideological base as “not one of them.” 

A quick review of Democrats’ 2020 primary field shows Biden’s separation from the large majority of candidates running from the left. Biden won largely because of that separation, but it comes at the cost of some suspicion from the left. That suspicion is evidenced by 2020’s exit polling that showed Biden losing 11 percent of liberals — 10 percent to Trump. 

Will embracing the Senate’s bipartisan deal and pushing its passage solve all the left’s suspicions of Biden? No, but it also will not hurt. Plus, everything else Biden hopes to accomplish legislatively will be affected by the outcome here.

Unlike Trump, Biden is a seasoned legislator. He knows momentum can be destiny for a presidency. It also does not take legislative expertise to do simple math: Democrats have a zero-vote margin in the Senate, a three-vote margin in the House, and midterm elections in one year. 

Biden’s 2020 victory was narrower than it appears. In many ways, his political position is more Bill Clinton’s than Barrack Obama’s. Regardless, six months into his presidency, he knows he does not want to be Trump. Proclaiming purity and accepting defeat is no substitute for seizing opportunity and claiming victory. 

J.T. Young served under President George W. Bush as the director of communications in the Office of Management and Budget and as deputy assistant secretary in legislative affairs for tax and budget at the Treasury Department. He served as a congressional staffer from 1987 through 2000.