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[Cthulhu]

Apparently there was some conversation he had, but the dramatic flair of his vote makes me feel like he knew he was gonna do this at least earlier than tonight.

[Frumple]

From a tactical standpoint, it was the ultimate troll. It should (unless I'm missing some arcane backdoor option), kill their chances to do this with a budget reconciliation bill for at least another year. They can try it again next year, but it'll be in an election year and that should harden the moderates against killing it.

Eehh... it's been noted it may not be much of an actual troll at all. It was flashy, but much of the GOP seems very much aware actually passing an ACA repeal, or much of anything that intentionally hamstrung it in a way their constituents would feel, would probably be political suicide come 2018, and possibly 2020 and beyond, too.

Unfortunately (for the GOP in particular), a lot of those constituents also very much bought the anti-Obamacare rhetoric, so putting up much opposition to screwing it also was likely to screw them. Self-fornicated coming and going, basically.

So something like what happened, with a distracting spectacle (i.e. drawing attention away from the other sacrifices) hinged on someone that pretty literally has nothing left to lose politically (odds are good he'll be dead by the 2018 election, and real damn bad he'll be alive for the 2020), means a lot of potentially at-risk senate seats didn't have to contemplate committing no-seppuku to save the rest of the GOP from the spike they've jammed up their own arse.

There's been a good chunk of face lost, but far less than a lot of the alternatives that were on the table, with far more counterplay narrative wise to work with and notably less cost. Cynically, as much as this eggs the GOP's face, it can be read as one of the better outcomes they could have been facing. And all it took was a dead man walking actually living up to a reputation for opposition to his party, for one of the few times in his political career.

[sluissa]

Frozen John McCain that somehow keeps getting elected despite being in a supercooled metal cannister 364 days out of a year. Revived each year just to pull the trigger on the latest health care fiasco and shut it down, protecting everyone for another year and letting Republicans save face.

Not the hero we need, but probably the one we deserve.

[RedKing]

When Obamacare faces its darkest hour, the Senator-under-the-Mesa shall arise from his eternal slumber to strike down its foes with his fabled vote.

[Cthulhu]

You know McCain never forgot what Trump said about getting captured.  I'm guessing he planned this from the start.  Get them hyped up for the controversial play, everything on the line, then the guy with a brain tumor and nothing to lose blows the vote, crashing what's left of Trump's presidential mandate with no survivors.  My ancestors are smiling on me. imperial.  Can you say the same?

This admin has been a fucking rollercoaster.

[Frumple]

Yeah, just think, there's good odds we're actually in one of the calmer spots that'll exist, should the term last all four years. Honeymoon period's barely over or still stretching out, there's been no notable crisis (outside self-inflicted ones), and there's at least one major election period coming up.

If anything, shit's slowly meandering up that first upslope. The ride's just getting started.

[smjjames]

Yeah, just think, there's good odds we're actually in one of the calmer spots that'll exist, should the term last all four years. Honeymoon period's barely over or still stretching out, there's been no notable crisis (outside self-inflicted ones), and there's at least one major election period coming up.

If anything, shit's slowly meandering up that first upslope. The ride's just getting started.

Yeah, there hasn't been any 'MAJOR' major crisis yet, the whole NK thing could be considered MAJOR, but it's a chronic MAJOR. The MidEast thing with Qatar looked like it could have blown up, but didn't, llikely in part because the participants didn't actually want to escalate it beyond words and some posturing. Also, Trump's approval rating has been pretty stable (not flatline stable, but statistically stable) since late May, flickering around 54-55% disapproval and 38/39 approval when looking at all polls.

[Starver]

Frozen John McCain that somehow keeps getting elected despite being in a supercooled metal cannister 364 days out of a year. Revived each year just to pull the trigger on the latest health care fiasco and shut it down, protecting everyone for another year and letting Republicans save face.

Not the hero we need, but probably the one we deserve.

Someone needs to work on a Die Hard gif with the obvious John McCain/McClain link.  And Donald Gruber/whatevever asking where his votes/detonators/covfefe are.

Putting it out there, if it isn't already. It must be, though...

[PTTG??]

One useful vote does not a legacy make. McCain has been a party loyalist his entire life, and his latest vote is not a divergence from that, but rather adherence. The party does not want Obamacare to end -- in fact, they want it to always be at risk of permanence, so they can always fight valiantly against it.

The Democrats should be pushing their own repeal-and-replace plan right now, saying they want to replace it with medicare for all. Failing to do so suggests that they don't actually want to win.

[Frumple]

... what? Like, pushing for something else is good, but doing it right now would be kinda' pointless. There's fuck all way they could win a vote for something like that until the 2018 elections are over at best, and it's fairly likely not even then.

Making intimations toward something like that (which, hell, m-whatever expansion would count as a starting/continuing point, and it still needs to be spread out a bit) would be fine, but burning political capital on it right now would be the exact opposite of wanting to win.

[smjjames]

One useful vote does not a legacy make. McCain has been a party loyalist his entire life, and his latest vote is not a divergence from that, but rather adherence. The party does not want Obamacare to end -- in fact, they want it to always be at risk of permanence, so they can always fight valiantly against it.

The problem comes when their consistuents expect them to act on it, like they've promised to repeal it for the last 7 or so years.

The Democrats should be pushing their own repeal-and-replace plan right now, saying they want to replace it with medicare for all. Failing to do so suggests that they don't actually want to win.

Oh yeah, they'll definetly be pushing their own alternate plan at some point, they have ideas galore, except they won't be calling it repeal-and-replace. However, the priority right now was to keep the Republicans from repealing it since it does nobody any good to try and rush a fix.

Once the Republicans get this whole repeal out of this system, they'll likely be able to do bipartisan work on it, since the last three attempts were totally partisan and we know how that all went.

edit: ninja'd somewhat.

[Frumple]

Man, if that last bit actually happens anytime soon I'd be hella' surprised. If they ain't stopped for eight years why the hell would they stop now? The bipartisan healthcare bill already passed, and the GOP's spent the better part of the last decade trying to burn it to the ground. Why would we think it's something they're going to get out of their system?

[smjjames]

Which one was bipartisan? The attempt during Bill Clinton wasn't, the one during Obama wasn't (the Republicans refused to cooperate, though I'm sure some will say that the Democrats refused to let them cooperate), the one during Trump wasn't either (see previous text in parenthesises), if you mean the original medicaid/medicare stuff, that was like, over 50 years ago.

[Frumple]

The ACA included over a hundred amendments coming from the conservative side of things, iirc. If that ain't bipartisan I don't know what the hell is.

E: Like, that's one of the primary reasons expecting some kind of bipartisan cooperation on healthcare from the GOP at this point is basically nonsense. We know what a healthcare bill would look like with substantial input from both parties, and we've already bloody passed an example of it.

Anything that starts with a broad rejection of the general shape the ACA ended up with is perforce not going to be bipartisan unless there are some serious changes in our body politic regarding the subject.

[misko27]

I'd be genuinely impressed if Republicans have the stomach for more discussion of Healthcare. The process has been so long and so bitter, and it just leads Republicare to die in ever more dramatic fashion.

Granted, I'm not even sure what they intended to achieve with this bill. It's universally unpopular, among conservatives for leaving almost all of Obamacare in place, and among moderates for kicking the feet out from under it. McCain did the GOP a huge god-damned favor by saving them from themselves, but it seems like they'll be content to yell at him for their problems.