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The mover on health care loses, Democratic operative James Carville said in January. To do something is to lose. That cold-hearted political proverb has been repeatedly proven true, if the standard is short-term electoral gain. In terms of policy, its another story. Now that Obamacare repeal has fizzled, Democrats have officially won the eight-year health care war.

The victory was not by default. Trump might look silly blaming Democrats for the failure of repeal and replace when Republicans control all branches of government, but united Democratic resistance was critical to keeping the Affordable Care Act as law. Without a single Democrat in Congress breaking ranks, the ideologically divided Republican caucus found it impossible to stitch together a majority for a functional alternative to the status quo.

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But the euphoria of victory may quickly dissipate. Despite the fact that Obamacare was signed in this decade, many Democrats dont appreciate the bills history and have not internalized the lessons of its passage and durability. Without a clear-eyed understanding of their own triumph, Democrats may hastily launch another health care war, repeat many of the Republican Partys clumsy mistakes and prove Carville right all over again.

Many analysts will attribute the repeal bills demise to raw politics: be it Trumps unpopularity, poor salesmanship by Republican leaders, incorrigible Republican backbenchers or Democrats cynically betting on gridlock. But the biggest reason why Democrats were able to unify was the substance of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. However imperfect, however unpopular, the law was built to last.

The popular provisions were intertwined with the unpopular provisions. The program was designed with input from insurers, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies; critics say they got off light (for example, POLITICO just investigated how much hospitals have been able to profit off of the ACA while cutting back on charity care), but all had a stake in Obamacares success. The bill was worked and re-worked until Democrats secured the blessing of the Congressional Budget Office. Finally, the law implicitly enshrined the principle that the government is responsible for making the health insurance system work for all Americans.

Plus, while theres plenty of room for improvement, the simple truth is the ACA has helped many people, covering more than 20 million additional people and contributing to an approximately 50 percent decline in bankruptcies.

Facing off against these strong foundations, the Republicans were outmatched. Playing Jenga with Obamacares complementary elements was doomed to crash at the steps of the CBO. Leaving people to the mercy of the free market was a political non-starter. The insurance industry, long the bte noir of the left, plunged a stake in the final version of the Republican replacement plan, warning the last-minute addition of the Cruz Amendment made the bill unworkable in any form.

And where the Republicans collapsed, the Democrats stood firm. Some Democrats on the left never liked the Affordable Care Acts compromises with the private health industry. Some red state Democrats were sensitive to complaints about rising premiums and little to no choices in some state insurance marketplaces. But all Democrats put those differences asideas they did in 2010to unite behind thwarting repeal. Yes, the amateurish nature of Republican lawmaking, at the presidential and congressional level, no doubt aided that unity. But if the current law was a complete bust, several Democrats would have broken ranks out of political necessity. They didnt.

And so, after eight exasperating years of playing defense on health care, Democrats finally have some wind at their back. But where they take that momentum is far from clear, as Democratic factions with competing goals are bound to draw different lessons from their win.

Health care wars never truly end; they just enter new phases. The core elements of Obamacaremost critically, the individual mandateare now entrenched. But there are still debates to be had about maintaining insurer subsidies, attracting insurers to uncompetitive marketplaces, reducing consumer costs and achieving 100 percent universal coverage.

In this next phase, unity will be much more difficult for Democrats. Opposing is always easier than proposing, and Democrats are already offering vastly different proposals in response to these issues. Fundamentally, Democrats have to ask themselves: Is it time to go big, or to largely quit while theyre ahead?

Some Democrats view Obamacares resilience as proof they should stick to fine-tuning within the structure of the current law. For example, Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who represents the largest percentage of Trump voters, is organizing a bipartisan group of senators to discuss how do you fix the private markets?

At the same time, the populist left wants to do what Republicans tried: repeal and replace. But instead of repealing Obamacare to give the wealthy a tax cut, hard-core progressives want to supplant the current system in favor of their long-time health care holy grail: single-payer, or Medicare for All. In the words of one progressive activist, single-payer is becoming a litmus test, not just for progressives, but for Democrats writ large. Sen. Bernie Sanders championed the Canadian-style plan in his 2016 presidential bid, and now 2020 possibilities such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Kristin Gillibrand have joined the club.

Both camps are taking big risks. Manchin and his fellow red state Senate Dems10 of whom are up for re-election next yearneed to be careful not to sacrifice the political leverage their party has earned from united resistance when they work to forge a bipartisan fix for the bill. Any deal that involves gratuitous concessions to Republicans will enrage the Democratic rank-and-file and cause a debilitating rift. But so far, the right-leaning Dems havent bound themselves to a specific set of proposals.

Not so on the left. The rigidity and intensity of the single-payer movement could well put Democrats in the same untenable box Republicans find themselves. Republicans just humiliated themselves by juicing their base with a grandiose yet simplistic promise, then learning the hard way they couldnt deliver. Now the GOP has to worry about turning out a deflated base for the midterms. A single-payer strategy could put Democrats in a similar predicament if and when they regain power.

The House Medicare for All bill (which, as of this spring, a majority of the Democratic caucus has co-sponsored for the first time ever) is a light 30 pages, hardly enough detail to engender confidence for a successful transition of one-sixth of the American economy. The Atlantic reports that Sen. Sanders will soon unveil a significantly more detailed single-payer plan. But there are fundamental obstacles that await any such bill.

Recall why the Affordable Care Act won the war: Because a nuanced policy was crafted with the input of the insurance, drug and hospital industries. All of these forces either fought for Obamacares passage (the pharmaceutical lobby spent a whopping $100 million in support of the bill in 2009 and 2010) or helped defend it against repeal, as the hospital lobby did fervently and the insurance lobby did in its late strike against the Cruz amendment.

For single-payer to succeed, a grassroots army would need to overwhelm the powerful health industry lobbies. No deals could be cut with an insurance industry literally fighting for its life. Meanwhile, the hospital and drug lobbies would fear getting squeezed hard by a government looking to consolidate all bargaining power. Recent single-payer fights on the favorable deep blue turf of Vermont and California did not provide much hope these obstacles can be overcome. Legislators in both states flinched because the taxes required to cover the upfront cost are so politically daunting.

Advocates of single-payer also dont have answers for voters who still want to hear whether they can keep their current plans if they like them. Some progressives see the public option, which would give customers the choice to buy into Medicare but wouldnt require it, as a way out of that jam. Except too many on the left, including Sanders, have already given away the game: Theyve said out loud they want public option to undermine private plans and be a stepping stone to single-payer. Therefore, insurers and their allies will have the political ammo needed to malign public option as a Trojan Horse.

Health industry lobbies would invest millions upon millions to stoke such consumer concerns. And winning a health care war without some health industry support is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible. That was the lesson President Barack Obama took from the 1994 failure of Hillarycare.

Of course, a battle royal with the health care special interests is exactly what the populist left wants. Not only do many progressives believe they can win the legislative battle in Congress, they believe its the way Democrats can win control of Congress. MoveOns Ben Wikler recently told McClatchy that the decision whether or not to back Medicare for All is a choice between a broken past or a future that gives people a reason to knock on doors and get involved in campaigns. It may be true that single-payer would motivate the Democratic base. But MoveOn and Wikler managed to successfully rally their troops for weeks in order to save the broken past known as the Affordable Care Act, so we know single-payer is not the only way to generate enthusiasm.

Its one thing to believe in your heart of hearts that, despite the political challenges, single-payer is the best health care policy. Its quite another to make it a litmus test that questions the sincerity of Democrats who disagree, either on substantive or politically pragmatic grounds. That would shatter Democratic unity, the very unity that Democrats needed to win the eight-year Obamacare war.

Bill Scher is a contributing editor to Politico Magazine, and co-host of the Bloggingheads.tv show The DMZ.

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How Democrats Won the Healthcare War - POLITICO Magazine

History suggests the 2018 election will almost surely be a bad one for Republicans. Midterms are generally considered a referendum on the president, and the results are almost always bad for said president. Layer on the fact that President Trump is the most unpopular new president in the modern era, and it would seem to be at least at this early juncture a clear recipe for a Democratic wave.

The key word there being seem.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll, as Mike DeBonis and Emily Guskin report, presents a pretty mixed bag for Democrats. It shows that registered voterssay they want Democrats to control Congress to be a check on Trump by a 52-38 percent margin, but it also shows Democrats are rather remarkably less enthusiastic about voting than Republicans are. While 65 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning adults say they are almost certain to vote, just 57 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning adults say the same.

The question from there is which is more predictive of what lies ahead. And the answer won't necessarily make Democrats feel better.

That first number would seem to be a big one: People prefer a Democratic Congress reining in Trump by a 14-point margin! That is a big margin. It's actually similar in size to what itwas for Republicans before their big wins in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. When the Post-ABC poll asked this question in April 2014, the GOP led on it by 14 points. When it was asked twicetoward the end of the 2010 election, the GOP led by between eight and 16 points.

But then there's 2002. That midterm election was close to a stalemate, but just over a monthbeforehand, a similarquestion rendered a 19-point advantage to Democrats quite similar to today's 14-point edge. Despite this, Democrats would actually go on tolose some seats in the House and the Senate.

In addition, thechoice in the poll question is between being a check on the president and voting for the party that supports the president's agenda, and poll respondents are often drawn toward more middle-ground, moderate positions. Hence, Post-ABC polls show people have consistently leaned on the side of checking a president's power. But if you look at the so-called generic ballot a simple question about which party you prefer it's almost always closer than this. And sure enough, that's the case today, too.

So Democrats have an advantage there, though it's not clear how predictive it is. Which brings us to the flip side of the coin: enthusiasm. How bad is it that Democrats are somehow less enthusiastic about this election than are Republicans?

For past polling on that question, we have to look at registered voters rather than all adults, as we did at the top of this post. There, Republicans have a smaller, four-point advantage with 70 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning registered voters almost certain to vote vs. 66 percent for Democrats.

That's actually just shy of where the GOP's advantage was for much of the 2014 election, when they went on to a big win. On the eve of that midterm, the GOP had a seven-point edge on enthusiasm in Post-ABCpolling.The GOP had a bigger, double-digit edge on this heading into the 2010 election in which they won big.

And finally, many of the voters who give Democrats an advantage on that first question above saythey are "almost certain to vote" but didn't actually vote in the last midterm in 2014. Democrats-as-a-check-on-Trump leads by 34 points with this group, but by just 8 points with "almost certain" voters who did vote last time. This, as much as anything, suggestsenthusiasm is hugely important to Democrats.

These are indicators that fluctuate quite a bit, and we're still more than 15 months away from the 2018 election, so we'll have to stay tuned. But there seems to be almost an expectation that Trump as president will spur big Democratic turnout, and this poll calls that into question. Watch these "almost certain to vote" numbers going forward,because they are a pretty solid leading indicator.

ThePost-ABCpoll was conducted July 10-13 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults reached on cellular and landline phones. The margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points and four points among the sample of 859 registered voters.

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This poll should be a warning sign for Democrats - Washington Post

The Democratic National Committees Unity Tour, featuring the committee chairman, Thomas Perez, and Senator Bernie Sanders, included visits to overwhelmingly white states like Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska and Utah. Meanwhile, African-American women who voted at a rate of 94 percent for Mrs. Clinton last year, the partys most loyal voting bloc had to write a letter to Mr. Perez demanding time and attention.

In Georgias Sixth Congressional District special election last month, the Democratic nominee, Jon Ossoff, raised a record $23 million and spent dollar after dollar to cast himself as a moderate in a failed attempt to appeal to Republican voters.

The Democratic Partys fixation on pursuing those who voted for Mr. Trump is a fools errand because its trying to fix the wrong problem. Although some Democratic voters (in particular, white working-class voters in Rust Belt states) probably did swing to the Republicans, the bigger problem was the large number of what I call Obama-Johnstein voters people who supported Mr. Obama in 2012 but then voted for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, last year (according to the exit polls, 43 percent of them were nonwhite).

In Wisconsin, for example, the Democratic vote total dropped by nearly 235,000, while Mr. Trump got only about the same number of votes as Mr. Romney in 2012. The bigger surge in that state was for Mr. Johnson and Ms. Stein, who together won about 110,000 additional votes than the candidates of their respective parties had received in 2012. And in Michigan, which Mrs. Clinton lost by fewer than 11,000 votes, the Johnson-Stein parties total increased by about 202,000 votes over 2012.

The Democratic Party committees and its allies are likely to spend more than $750 million on the 2018 midterms. Will they spend it fruitlessly trying to lure Trump voters, or will they give uninspired black Democrats a reason to vote and offer disaffected Obama-Johnstein voters a reason to return to the fold?

Democrats have an opportunity in 2018 because of the significant enthusiasm gap between the parties. By concentrating their firepower on inspiring, organizing and mobilizing people who voted for Hillary Clinton to vote again in 2018, Democrats can take back the House and also win the governors office in six key states Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin for a fraction of their $750 million budget, less than $100 million.

In the congressional special elections and primaries for governor this year, just 39 percent of the Republicans who voted in the 2016 presidential election came back out to vote this year, while 57 percent of Democratic voters returned to the polls. Thats a normal pattern for midterm elections: The in-power party almost always sees a sizable drop-off in enthusiasm.

Too many Democrats sit out midterm elections (in 2014, drop-off was slightly over 40 percent). Those infrequent but Democratic voters hold the key to the balance of power in America. Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to take control of the House, and there are 28 Republican-held seats in districts Hillary Clinton won or nearly won. If Republican turnout drops by the 36 percent that it did the last time a Republican held the White House, Democrats need to get 951,000 drop-offs to vote again in those 28 districts. Civic engagement experts have found that an effective canvassing and mobilization program costs about $50 per infrequent voter who actually casts a ballot.

By that metric, it would cost $47.6 million to get enough infrequent voters to the polls in the 28 congressional districts that will determine which party holds the House. In the six battleground-state contests for governors, the cost to bring out the necessary number of infrequent voters is $42.1 million.

The country is under conservative assault because Democrats mistakenly sought support from conservative white working-class voters susceptible to racially charged appeals. Replicating that strategy would be another catastrophic blunder.

Steve Phillips, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the founder of Democracy in Color, is the author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on July 20, 2017, on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Billion-Dollar Mistake.

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The Democratic Party's Billion-Dollar Mistake - New York Times

UpdatedSince Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2016the day after Donald Trump shockedthe world by winning the presidencyDemocrats have eyed 2018 as a year of redemption. The midterm elections would be the first real shot to make up for their stunning failure in 2016and to take advantage of a president who hasat least for nowproven to be historically unpopular.

And after careful consideration, likely countless hours of work-shopping and input from focus groups, the Democrats have reportedly settled on a new slogan and tagline for the '18 midterms. That's a big deal, since aslogan can prove massively importantremember that whole thing aboutMaking America Great Again?

"A member of Congress told me Democrats big 2018 slogan, which is set to be released Monday. It's: 'Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages'" tweeted Vox's Congressionalreporter Jeff Stein Thursday. He later deleted that tweet and corrected it by noting the full slogan was actually, "A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages."

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Stein saidthat a member of Congress "noted that this is the result of months of polling and internal deliberations among the House Democratic caucus."

If you're suddenly hankering for a slice of greasy, cheesy pizza with sauce thathot take alertis reminiscent of ketchup, it's hard toblame you. The Democrats tagline is eerily similar to that of Papa John's: "Better Ingredients.Better Pizza.Papa John's." The similarity is not one noticed solely by your intrepid Newsweekwriter. The internet was quick to point it out.

But the real inspiration for the slogan and tagline likely isn't late night pizza order. Ezra Levin, co-executive director of liberal grassroots organizationthe Indivisible Project, pointed out on Twitter the new slogan appeared to be co-opted from an op-ed written by Virginia SenatorTim Kaine, who was Clinton's running mate in 2016.

As it stands Thursday, the Democrats have yet to actually unveil the slogan and tagline, so it could perhaps change before 2018. But if "A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages"does stick around for '18, there's no word just yet ifthe Democrats plan to offer complimentary garlic sauce to every American.

This story was updated to reflect the change in Stein's report that the phrase "Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages" was a tagline under the over-arching "A Better Deal" slogan.

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The Democrats Are Stealing Papa John's Slogan for 2018 - Newsweek

The Democrats, Vice President Pence said recently, have already settled on their agenda, and it can be summed up in one word: resist.

He isnt the only one with that view of Democrats. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, only 37percent of Americans think the Democratic Party stands for something, while 52percent say it just stands against Trump.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats campaign arm, seemed to admit as much two weeks ago when it sent supporters an email with the proposed slogan: Democrats 2018: Have you seen the other guys?

Now Democrats are trying to fix that and not a moment too soon.

On Monday, I am told, congressional Democrats in the Senate and the House together will roll out a legislative policy agenda, their de facto 2018 campaign platform. The details, after months of haggling and cat-herding, could yet disappoint, but the broad outlines as described to me are exactly what the doctor ordered.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

As important as whats in it is whats not. Democrats jettisoned social and foreign policy issues for this exercise, eschewing the identity politics and box-checking that has plagued Democratic campaigns in the past, most recently Hillary Clintons. This will be purely an economic message.

They also resisted invitations to steer the party toward the center (as pollster Mark Penn advised) or in a more progressive agenda. This is meant to be a populist manifesto that doesnt conform to the left/right debate but instead aims to align Democrats with ordinary, middle-class Americans fighting powerful special interests.

Titled A Better Deal: Better Skills, Better Jobs, Better Wages, it is expected to have many Democratic staples tax increases on the rich, affordable college, infrastructure spending, higher wages, job training, paid family leave and the like and a few new ones.

Hashed out over several months by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), DCCC Chairman Ben Ray Lujn (N.M.), and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), Cheri Bustos (Ill.) and David Cicilline (R.I.), it will be outlined Monday with a few sample proposals, to be followed in the coming weeks by more proposals, some to be introduced as legislation and some to be offered as Contract With America-style promises that a Democratic Congress would implement. Schumer told me in December that Democrats would have five, six sharp-edged [policies] that can be described in five words, although it sounds as if the plan hasnt come out quite so lean.

The goal is to avoid repeating Clintons problem in 2016. She had so many proposals, and she scratched the itches of so many Democratic constituencies, that she lacked a coherent economic message. The full-throated populist agenda should also make it harder for President Trump to claim that he is the one fighting special interests, which he did to great effect against Clinton.

Democrats have been little but the anti-Trump party lately, successfully fighting his legislative agenda, particularly health care, and raising a ruckus about the Russia scandal and Trumps other outrages. The danger is that an impression solidifies among voters that the party has nothing else to say.

As if to illustrate the point, 23 liberal House Democrats announced Wednesday morning that they were filing a resolution of no confidence in Trump. It contains no fewer than 88 whereas clauses (whereas the embassy of Kuwait held its national day celebration at Trump International, and whereas Trump referred to United States Senator Elizabeth Warren as Pocahontas). The idea might work if Democrats had a majority and if the United States had a parliamentary system.

A reporter asked Rep. Steve Cohen (Tenn.), sponsor of the no-confidence resolution, if he was focusing too much on Trump over jobs. Bubble-gum chew and walk at the same time, he recommended.

Except Democrats havent been doing both. Some think they dont have to, because polls show that voters prefer a Democratic Congress. But as The Posts Mike DeBonis and Emily Guskin point out, more Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (65percent) say they will definitely vote next year than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (57percent). To boost Democratic turnout, the party needs to be more than just anti-Trump.

Even if it doesnt help their electoral prospects, Democrats need a clear agenda so they can govern if they do win. If they win without a sharp agenda, they would end up where congressional Republicans are now: in power but without a popular mandate for their agenda.

On Wednesday, I asked Rep. Linda Snchez (Calif.), the No. 5 Democrat in the House, about the search for a unified agenda, and she bristled. Were not searching for an agenda, she replied. Democrats have always known what we stood for.

They just did a really good job of keeping it under wraps.

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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Democrats finally have an agenda. Here's what it looks like. - Washington Post