The Ben Shapiro Show - Democrats Struggle For A Strategy | Ep. 325

On Thursday, left-wing fact-checker PolitiFact stepped into a pile of doo-doo once again, this time they blasted President Trump with a fake news fact check that demonstrates just how dishonest they are. Today, Ben Shapiro talks about it, the Senate version of Trumpcare, and why the Democratic Party has nothing in common except their hatred for Donald Trump. Plus, he talks about how the hate for Trump is a symptom of deep-rooted institutional racism, and how the party should have been focused on Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, not the other way around. Ben Shapiro is a regular contributor to the New York Times and host of the conservative podcast "The Weekly Standard" and is one of the most influential conservative voices in the country. He is also the host of "The Ben Shapiro Show" on Fox News Radio and hosts the conservative radio show "The Right Turn" on SiriusXM Radio. He is a frequent contributor to The Weekly Standard and has been featured on CNN, NPR, CBS Radio, and other media outlets. You can reach Ben at: and Ben on social media at . He is the author of the book, as well as his new podcast, . and his new book which is out now, , which you can find on Amazon Prime and wherever else you get your news and information. If you're looking for a good deal, listen to Ben Shapiro's newest podcast, "Ben Shapiro's new book, "The Truth or Fiction." Subscribe to his newest novel, "Mr. Shapiro's New York Magazine's "New York Times Square" wherever else he is on the internet, click here. Watch him on the airwaves wherever you get his podcast is available. Thanks for listening to his podcast? Subscribe on Audible and subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform? Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about him on Podchaser and subscribe to his other podcast on the Four Corners Podcasts or wherever you re listening to him on your favourite podcast, The FiveThirtyEight app? or his newest podcast on PODCAST? Subscribe and review his latest podcast on Podcoin? and more! Watch this episode of The Ben Shapiro s newest book "The FiveThirtyeight Podcast? on iTunes on Stik and learn more about Ben Shapiro on The Six Sigma Podcasts on The Five Thirty Eight Podcasts?

00:00:00.000 On Thursday, left-wing fact-checker PolitiFact, a site known more for its biases than its quality fact-checking, stepped into a pile of doo-doo once again.

00:00:07.000 This time they blasted President Trump with a fake news fact-check that demonstrates just how dishonest they are.

00:00:12.000 Here is their headline.

00:00:19.000 So, what did the White House say that was so wrong?

00:00:22.000 Trump said, quote, Obamacare has led to fewer health insurance options for millions of Americans.

00:00:26.000 This is indisputably true.

00:00:27.000 Just yesterday, Anthem Blue Cross pulled out of the Obamacare exchanges in Wisconsin and Indiana.

00:00:32.000 Health insurance rates have risen dramatically.

00:00:34.000 As CNBC reported last week, quote, as many as 1,200 counties are projected to have just one such insurer next year.

00:00:41.000 More counties could be left bare or with just one insurer in coming weeks as insurers announce their intentions, unquote.

00:00:47.000 And this doesn't take into account the fact that many Obamacare plans have cut patients off from their doctors.

00:00:51.000 If you liked your doctor, you couldn't keep your doctor.

00:00:54.000 Those who have been added to the insurance rolls under Obamacare aren't actually buying health insurance for the most part.

00:00:59.000 They're being forced onto Medicaid by lack of options.

00:01:02.000 So, instead of dealing with that claim, PolitiFact made up an unrelated claim that the number of insured had dropped overall.

00:01:09.000 Nobody said that, though.

00:01:09.000 If you count Medicaid coverage, which doesn't actually improve health outcomes, the numbers are up.

00:01:13.000 But that's not what Trump claimed.

00:01:15.000 Here's PolitiFact admitting the truth all the way at the bottom of their little fact check.

00:01:19.000 Quote,

00:01:24.000 Oh, you mean the only claim here that Trump made was true?

00:01:28.000 And then you made up a series of alternative claims to knock down? 0.97

00:01:31.000 PolitiFact is ridiculous.

00:01:32.000 Their drive to check fake news from the left only makes them purveyors of that same fake news. 0.84

00:01:37.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:01:38.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:01:43.000 Okay, so they finally just released the Senate healthcare version, the Obamacare quote-unquote repeal.

00:01:49.000 It is not a repeal.

00:01:50.000 It is even more of a trash heap than the House version that passed.

00:01:54.000 I was very critical of that version.

00:01:56.000 Version 1 was really bad.

00:01:57.000 Version 2 was slightly less bad.

00:01:58.000 The Senate version is really quite crappy.

00:02:02.000 It's gonna pass, probably.

00:02:03.000 And the reason that it will pass, I would think, is because of two things.

00:02:07.000 One, it defunds Planned Parenthood.

00:02:08.000 And two, it basically allows Republicans to go out there and claim that they repealed Obamacare when they did no such thing.

00:02:14.000 But we'll talk about that in a little while after I want to discuss Trump in Iowa.

00:02:19.000 But before we do any of those things,

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00:03:01.000 Okay, so.

00:03:30.000 I do want to talk about the Senate version of Trumpcare slash Obamacare repeal.

00:03:36.000 Before we get to that, I think it's important to talk about the Democrats and their aftermath of their reaction to the loss of John Ossoff in Georgia's 6th against Karen Handel.

00:03:43.000 So, finally, all of the conflict that has been brewing under the surface of the resistance has broken open.

00:03:48.000 The hatred for Trump covered up the fact that the Democrats really have nothing in common anymore.

00:03:52.000 There are three branches of the Democratic Party and they are at war with one another.

00:03:56.000 One is the Bernie Sanders branch.

00:03:58.000 This is the progressive socialist Michael Moore branch of the party that says capitalism is evil and we need to redistribute all the income and all the problems in the country are created by income inequality.

00:04:08.000 These people are not intersectional politicians.

00:04:11.000 They believe that

00:04:12.000 Socialistic redistributionism is the solution and that the Democratic Party has to universally move toward the left.

00:04:17.000 That's branch number one.

00:04:19.000 Branch number two are the intersectional politicians.

00:04:21.000 This would be like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. 0.75

00:04:24.000 Both of these politicians, their principles are a little bit all over the place.

00:04:28.000 They're all to the left, obviously, but they tend to differ on certain basic functions of government.

00:04:32.000 But they all agree that America is a terrible place where human beings are separated by race and sex and sexual orientation.

00:04:39.000 So you have the intersectionalists who believe that they're going to cobble together

00:04:43.000 This new coalition of people who have been victimized by the American system in order to win elections.

00:04:47.000 So, again, Group No.

00:04:49.000 1, the Sanders people, they say, we move to the left, we'll win.

00:04:51.000 And then you have Group No.

00:04:52.000 2, and these are the Obama people, and they say, we need our intersectional hierarchy, the Hillary people, we need our intersectional hierarchy.

00:04:58.000 And then there's Group No.

00:04:59.000 3, and Group No.

00:04:59.000 3 are the Seth Moultons of the world.

00:05:01.000 This is the Democrat congressperson from Massachusetts who was making the rounds yesterday because he said, what we need is a broader tent party where we have some pro-life Democrats, where we have some people who are not so anti-business, where we are not

00:05:12.000 Universally, Nancy Pelosi, Democrats.

00:05:14.000 And these three factions are now at war with one another.

00:05:17.000 And that's breaking out into the open because Democrats, for the first time, are realizing that it's not enough just to scream at President Trump alone.

00:05:25.000 It's going to get them most of the way.

00:05:26.000 But if they have no unity, if they can't figure out what they're doing, then they've got a problem.

00:05:30.000 Rahm Emanuel acknowledged that they are in serious trouble.

00:05:33.000 He says, we are 1,000 seats behind, says the former chief of staff for President Obama.

00:05:39.000 We are a thousand seats shorter today than we were in 2009 or 2008.

00:05:44.000 This is not about one election.

00:05:46.000 It's about building a party, building an apparatus.

00:05:49.000 Okay, so they're finally realizing they have bad news.

00:05:51.000 But the problem is, their response to that was, Trump is colluding with Russia.

00:05:55.000 When Hillary lost, their immediate response was, we have to resist. 0.79

00:05:59.000 What are we resisting?

00:06:00.000 Well, we can't say what his agenda is, because we don't know what his agenda is.

00:06:03.000 Trump hasn't actually done anything major at this point.

00:06:05.000 So we'll resist him.

00:06:06.000 He's a Putin stooge.

00:06:08.000 Only one problem.

00:06:08.000 That entire theory is falling apart.

00:06:10.000 Jay Johnson, who is the former Homeland Security Secretary under President Obama, helps contribute to the collapse of the Democrats' key talking point that Trump is some sort of Russian stooge.

00:06:20.000 Not beyond what has been out there open source and not beyond anything that I'm sure this committee has already seen and heard before directly from the intelligence community.

00:06:33.000 So the only thing I'd have on that is derivative of what the intelligence community has and the law enforcement community.

00:06:39.000 Okay, so you can see that with that narrative falling apart, they now have to come up with a new narrative.

00:06:44.000 So on the one hand, you have the people who are more in favor of this broad tent Democratic Party.

00:06:51.000 That's the one that's actually going to be better for Democrats, right?

00:06:53.000 This would be kind of the Joe Biden wing of the party.

00:06:55.000 We need to get beyond intersectional politics.

00:06:58.000 Representative Dingell, who I guess replaced

00:07:01.000 I think she replaced her husband, right?

00:07:02.000 This is Debbie Dingell.

00:07:03.000 She spoke with MSNBC yesterday, and she talked about this.

00:07:06.000 She said that basically we need to get beyond the intersectional Obama era, and we need to move toward a more solid era of we're all Americans.

00:07:16.000 And this is what Democrats would do if they were smart, but they're not.

00:07:18.000 So here's Debbie Dingell from Michigan. 0.87

00:07:20.000 If we don't figure out how we become we again, we're going to keep losing.

00:07:24.000 So I think it's important that we need to understand each of these groups has issues.

00:07:30.000 So she says that we can't be African Americans for Obama or for Hillary.

00:07:34.000 We can't be Hispanic Americans for Obama or Hillary.

00:07:37.000 We have to just be we again.

00:07:39.000 And this is true, right?

00:07:40.000 This is the real reason that Trump won.

00:07:41.000 The reason Trump won is because he wasn't insulting Americans by categorizing them into small groups and then implying that there was this broad, vast, white mass out there that was out to get them.

00:07:50.000 That's the real reason that Trump won.

00:07:51.000 It wasn't about his populist politics.

00:07:52.000 It wasn't about tariffs.

00:07:53.000 It wasn't about any of that stuff.

00:07:54.000 It wasn't about Ross Douthat and the tax credits that Trump would give to particular businesses in the Rust Belt. 0.97

00:08:00.000 It was about the fact that Trump did not patronize a bunch of white voters by telling them they hated black and Hispanic people. 0.95

00:08:05.000 That's what actually happened here.

00:08:06.000 So you have this wing of the party, the Debbie Dingell wing, that is starting to figure it out.

00:08:10.000 Unfortunately for Debbie Dingell, that's being undercut by the Bernie Sanders wing. 1.00

00:08:13.000 So the Bernie Sanders wing says that Nancy Pelosi should continue to rule the party. 0.97

00:08:17.000 Nancy Pelosi is a wonderful far-left politician. 1.00

00:08:20.000 Who's just done Yeoman's work, even though it was Nancy Pelosi's name just being dropped a couple of times in the Georgia 6 that led to the Democratic defeat. 1.00

00:08:26.000 Paul Begala says we can't get rid of Nancy Pelosi.

00:08:28.000 We need Nancy Pelosi. 0.95

00:08:30.000 Let me defend Nancy Pelosi.

00:08:33.000 If there was a Mount Rushmore for speakers, Nancy Pelosi would be on it. 1.00

00:08:37.000 She passed national health care.

00:08:39.000 Even Franklin Roosevelt could not do that.

00:08:41.000 I mean, she is so important.

00:08:42.000 We need to keep her.

00:08:43.000 We need to run far to the left.

00:08:44.000 We need to become the Bernie Sanders party.

00:08:46.000 So that's wing number two.

00:08:47.000 And then finally, there is the intersectional wing.

00:08:51.000 So here's what Democrats need to unify.

00:08:53.000 And this is where it's kind of interesting what's going on right now, because I think it plays into what Democrats need in order to unify.

00:09:00.000 What Democrats need in order to unify is not only for Trump to be unpopular, but for there to be some piece of legislation that they can all jump on and smack him with.

00:09:09.000 So in 1994, Bill Clinton was very unpopular, but it took Hillarycare and the threat of Hillarycare to lead to this vast Republican wave that wiped out 60 seats in the House for Democrats and led to the rise of the Republican majority in the House that has basically been steady with the brief period between 06 and 10.

00:09:28.000 Since 1994.

00:09:29.000 So, the fact is that it needs two things.

00:09:32.000 In order for the out-of-party, the out-of-power party to take over, what they need is an unpopular president, number one, and then, that goes in the mix, and then you need an enzyme to catalyze the resistance, and that is some piece of unpopular legislation.

00:09:45.000 Well, so far, Trump hasn't actually done anything.

00:09:47.000 So far, the only thing he's done is nominate Neil Gorsuch, and that's not enough of a slap to Democrats for them to really catalyze around it, for them to coagulate around that and then become the quote-unquote resistance.

00:09:58.000 And so Chuck Schumer is interested in Obamacare appeal.

00:10:01.000 He thinks that the Democrats are going to be able to whip the base into a fury over the supposed repeal of Obamacare.

00:10:10.000 We're going to look at every single thing and find out the best way, but this is full-scale warfare.

00:10:14.000 This is the most important advancement since probably Medicare in terms of helping people, and we're not going to be complacent or go along or business as usual in any way.

00:10:29.000 So Democrats need something to oppose.

00:10:31.000 They need Trump not just to be Trump.

00:10:33.000 They need Trump to actually push a big piece of legislation that is unpopular.

00:10:37.000 Fortunately for them, it looks like the Senate is about to do that.

00:10:39.000 So the Senate just dropped their health care bill.

00:10:40.000 And the Senate health care bill is just a disaster.

00:10:44.000 The Senate health care bill, it cuts some of the Obamacare taxes.

00:10:48.000 But the problem is then it doesn't pay for all the subsidies that it's giving.

00:10:51.000 It's preserving virtually all of the Obamacare subsidies.

00:10:54.000 It's increasing subsidies in certain areas.

00:10:56.000 It cuts Medicaid, but it only does that down the road.

00:10:59.000 And those cuts are never going to materialize.

00:11:01.000 It enshrines the Obamacare central regulations in place.

00:11:05.000 Will Republicans pass it? 0.99

00:11:06.000 As I said, I think they probably will because I think that Republicans are stupid and they just want the immediate headline that they repealed Obamacare, even though that means they now own what comes next. 0.99

00:11:16.000 They also want to be able to say to their constituency that they repealed all the funding for Planned Parenthood. 0.97

00:11:21.000 Although, again, is that a big enough deal to... Is that a huge enough advance for the Republicans to own Obamacare for the foreseeable future?

00:11:31.000 No.

00:11:32.000 It's sort of reminiscent of what President Trump did with illegal immigration.

00:11:36.000 He said that he was going to get rid of DAPA, which is the protection for parents of illegal immigrants who came in when they were children.

00:11:41.000 He said he was going to get rid of DAPA, which wasn't even in place, and then he re-enshrined DACA, which was Obama's executive amnesty.

00:11:47.000 Republicans are basically re-enshrining Obamacare and then calling it Obamacare repeal, which is the worst of all available worlds.

00:11:54.000 Even the creator, even the creator of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber, you remember, he's the guy who was caught on tape saying, yes, we lied to the American public about what Obamacare was going to do.

00:12:03.000 Even he is now out there saying that this Senate version doesn't actually repeal Obamacare in any significant way.

00:12:09.000 Does this bill have more heart, as the president would say, Jonathan?

00:12:13.000 You know, I'm torn this morning.

00:12:15.000 On the one hand, this is no longer an Obamacare repeal bill.

00:12:18.000 That's good.

00:12:19.000 On the other hand, this is just a giant cut in Medicaid.

00:12:21.000 That's what this bill now amounts to, and that's bad.

00:12:25.000 Okay, and so he's upset about the Medicaid cuts, but he says that basically Trumpcare is Obamacare, and this is essentially correct.

00:12:32.000 There's a poll that just came out from NBC Wall Street Journal.

00:12:34.000 They found only 34% of Republicans like the House GOP health care bill, and only 16% of Americans overall say that that House GOP health care bill is a good idea.

00:12:44.000 The Senate GOP health care bill

00:12:46.000 is in many ways even worse.

00:12:48.000 Peter Suderman over at Reason.com has a good rundown on what exactly is in the bill.

00:12:53.000 What he says is the Senate plan looks even closer to the health care law that is already on the books.

00:12:57.000 In other words, it is exactly what critics predicted.

00:12:59.000 A bill that, at least in the near term, retains weakened versions of nearly all of Obamacare's core features, while fixing few, if any, of the problems Republicans say they want to fix.

00:13:07.000 It is Obamacare lite, the health law Republicans claim to oppose, but less of it.

00:13:11.000 It represents a total failure of Republican policy imagination.

00:13:15.000 And then he goes on, he says, to understand the Senate plan, it helps to recall Obamacare's underlying framework.

00:13:19.000 The centerpiece of the law was a reform of the individual market intended to give those who do not get coverage through work or a federal program access to subsidized regulated coverage.

00:13:28.000 The law created a new federal subsidy based on income for lower and middle income households to purchase health insurance.

00:13:34.000 It also set up federal rules requiring insurers to cover preexisting conditions.

00:13:39.000 I don't know.

00:14:02.000 It removes some of the taxes.

00:14:03.000 So it keeps all of the mandates on insurance companies, which means that the so-called Obamacare death spiral will be accelerated.

00:14:09.000 All these insurance companies are going to be forced to take on people they can't afford, and nothing makes up the gap, except for more government subsidies.

00:14:15.000 Those government subsidies, of course, come from borrowing.

00:14:18.000 And Republicans are cutting the taxes, so they won't come from taxes.

00:14:21.000 The reason Republicans are cutting Medicaid in the future is they're playing an accounting game.

00:14:25.000 What they're hoping to do is come across as revenue neutral

00:14:28.000 In fact, they're hoping that this quote-unquote saves revenue to the federal government, even though it really will not in the long run, so they can pass tax reform.

00:14:35.000 That's the goal here.

00:14:36.000 If you understand that the Obamacare repeal plan from the Senate is designed to do two things, neither of which is repealing Obamacare, you'll understand all you need to know about this Obamacare repeal program.

00:14:45.000 It is designed to, number one, tell Republicans that it repealed Obamacare without actually repealing it, and number two, it is designed to make room for a tax cut under reconciliation.

00:14:54.000 Under reconciliation, in order for Republicans to pass a bill through the Senate with 51 votes instead of 60 necessary to shut down a filibuster, Republicans have to get a score from the Congressional Budget Office that says that any bill that they pass is quote-unquote revenue neutral.

00:15:08.000 Okay, tax cuts are not revenue neutral because, in the short term at least, they reduce the amount of money that comes into the federal government.

00:15:14.000 So what Republicans are trying to do is pass a health care bill that cuts the amount of outlay by the federal government so they can then take that amount and translate it into a tax reform bill.

00:15:23.000 So all the Republicans really want from Obamacare repeal is the headline that says they repealed it, even though they didn't, and two, the ability to pass a tax cut.

00:15:30.000 That's it.

00:15:31.000 That's all this is.

00:15:32.000 And so the Senate bill accomplishes both those goals, but it doesn't actually repeal Obamacare.

00:15:37.000 Republicans have criticized these marketplaces, as Suderman says, for being expensive and unstable.

00:15:42.000 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Obamacare is collapsing around us.

00:15:45.000 Yet even more than the House plan, the Senate plan retains the essential structure of Obamacare's individual market reforms.

00:15:51.000 It would likely result in fewer people being covered, and it would not stop the destabilization of the market.

00:15:56.000 So it doesn't actually help anybody.

00:15:57.000 It creates a permanent subsidy

00:16:01.000 Right now, under Obamacare, there are subsidies that go up to 400% of the poverty line for a family of four.

00:16:08.000 So if you're trying to buy health care in the Obamacare plan, you get some sort of subsidy up to 400% of the poverty line.

00:16:15.000 That's about $100,000 for a family of four.

00:16:17.000 Starting in 2020, the Senate bill ratchets that back to 350% of the poverty line, about $86,000 for the same family.

00:16:24.000 Well, that hurts the middle class people who have been reliant on those subsidies.

00:16:27.000 And two, we shouldn't be subsidizing this stuff anyway, okay?

00:16:30.000 The idea that we should be subsidizing a family of four that makes $100,000 a year to buy Obamacare, it doesn't actually help anything in the sense that it continues to drive up costs because healthy people are still not getting insured once you remove the mandate.

00:16:45.000 So if you have an unhealthy family of four, even with the subsidy, they lose money.

00:16:48.000 If they're healthy, then they shouldn't really need the subsidy, should they?

00:16:51.000 So it's this bizarre situation.

00:16:53.000 It's an entitlement program, basically, that Republicans are signing off on.

00:16:57.000 And then, they're proposing to authorize certain payments called CSR payments.

00:17:01.000 These are cost-sharing reduction subsidies to insurers.

00:17:04.000 So we are now going to subsidize the insurance companies, even the same way that Obama was going to.

00:17:08.000 Remember, Obama tried to subsidize the insurers and Republicans sued to stop him.

00:17:13.000 And now Republicans are going to backtrack on that.

00:17:15.000 Republicans are now going to provide the same subsidies they sued Obama for providing, under the Senate version.

00:17:22.000 So, the reports, by the way, indicate that those subsidies for families of four, they're pegged to lower cost plans, which means smaller subsidies for crappier health insurance.

00:17:30.000 As Suderman says, the scheme undercuts the GOP's complaints Obamacare hurts the middle class.

00:17:34.000 In addition to higher deductibles, it creates a subsidy cliff for middle class families purchasing health insurance on the individual market.

00:17:40.000 And of course, it still spends an enormous amount of money.

00:17:44.000 So if you look at the Senate bill and how it handles Medicaid, it's like the House bill.

00:17:48.000 This is the one good part.

00:17:49.000 It slowly rolls back Medicaid expansion over a period of years and converts it into a per capita system rather than a need-based system.

00:17:57.000 But it delays the start of that phase out until 2021, which means it's never going to happen because a Republican president and Republican Congress would have to be elected from here all the way until 2020 in order to ensure that this kicks in.

00:18:08.000 Otherwise, the Democrats will come in and they'll just roll it back.

00:18:11.000 It says, starting in 2025, who places a stricter cap on the growth of Medicaid spending than the House bill?

00:18:17.000 Yeah, except by 2025, who thinks that Republicans are going to be able to withhold the pressure all the way to 2025?

00:18:23.000 Anybody?

00:18:24.000 Anybody?

00:18:26.000 This is the way that legislation works, folks.

00:18:27.000 If it says, in 10 years we're going to do X, it's never happening.

00:18:30.000 Because somebody from the other party will come in and destroy it before the 10 years are up.

00:18:36.000 This is all, it's just, it's a bad bill.

00:18:38.000 It's a bad bill.

00:18:39.000 Sutterman says, this might be the notable failure to think beyond the terms set by Obamacare.

00:18:43.000 It means the Senate bill not only won't be Obamacare repeal, it might not even be Obamacare lite.

00:18:47.000 Instead, it might be Obamacare lite later, and later could easily turn out to be never.

00:18:51.000 Because as the individual insurance markets fail, thanks to the lack of a mandate and thanks to the

00:18:56.000 We're good to go.

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00:20:41.000 You get that first refill pack free again at GetQuip.com slash Shapiro, Q-U-I-P.

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00:20:56.000 Okay, so with all of this said, the fact that the Senate bill sucks, right now we are now learning there are at least a couple of Republican senators who are probably not going to vote for it, which means that it may not pass at all.

00:21:07.000 The question becomes, do Republicans even want to pass this thing?

00:21:10.000 Do Republicans even want to pass this thing?

00:21:12.000 And it's not clear that they do.

00:21:14.000 It's not clear that Republicans actually want to do much of anything.

00:21:17.000 Because Republicans, number one, never want to do much of anything because they're afraid that if they do something, there will be a backlash.

00:21:22.000 And number two, because if you run the entire federal government, you pass something massive, again, this could catalyze the left into opposition.

00:21:32.000 For example, take the Ossoff race in Georgia 6.

00:21:34.000 There were a lot of people

00:21:35.000 We're suggesting that Ossoff should have run more heavily on Trumpcare.

00:21:39.000 Okay, number one, that wasn't gonna work because that's a pretty affluent district.

00:21:42.000 Not a lot of people are on Obamacare to begin with in that district.

00:21:45.000 And number two, nothing had actually passed.

00:21:48.000 It was hard to run against a piece of legislation that doesn't actually exist yet.

00:21:52.000 If Republicans pass a very unpopular piece of legislation, which this looks like it is, then they will bear the burden of that.

00:21:57.000 Now, imagine for a second that Republicans had come in and just fulfilled a basic promise.

00:22:01.000 We're going to repeal Obamacare.

00:22:03.000 End of story.

00:22:03.000 One sentence.

00:22:04.000 Obamacare is repealed.

00:22:06.000 Let's say they'd just come in and done that.

00:22:07.000 And then, they negotiated around the edges for what we're gonna do to fix the problems that Obamacare was designed to solve.

00:22:13.000 Then, Republicans would be in pretty good shape.

00:22:15.000 But now, because they're trying this omnibus fix to Obamacare that doesn't actually fix it, leaves it in place, increases subsidies in certain areas, decreases subsidies in certain other areas, gets rid of the underlying mechanism for funding the whole damn thing, so we're just gonna borrow up the wazoo for it, and then pretend we're gonna cut later.

00:22:31.000 If Republicans do that, then Democrats will have something to coalesce around.

00:22:35.000 Which is silly, because the fact is that if you're going to pass policies, they ought to be good policies.

00:22:39.000 If you're going to take political risk, it ought to be for a good potential payoff.

00:22:42.000 There is an alternative strategy that Republicans could pursue if they really don't want to do anything.

00:22:46.000 There's an alternative strategy that they could pursue that unfortunately, I think unfortunately, would actually work with the Republican crowd and would also prevent them from sustaining massive losses in 2018 because they wouldn't actually pass anything deeply unpopular.

00:22:58.000 But for that, you're gonna have to go over to dailywire.com and become a subscriber.

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The Ben Shapiro Show - June 22, 2017

Democrats Struggle For A Strategy | Ep. 325

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