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— ⣝⣵⡎⣵⢗⣿⣫⢗⡎⣵ (@zarawesome) December 6, 2018

congress

The Senate majority leader signaled in an interview that he’s more interested in taking on Democrats than jumping into a divisive debate within his own party.

Mitch McConnell has no intention of leading President Donald Trump’s campaign to transform the GOP into the “party of health care.”

“I look forward to seeing what the president is proposing and what he can work out with the speaker,” McConnell said in a brief interview Thursday, adding, “I am focusing on stopping the ‘Democrats’ Medicare for none’ scheme.”

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The Senate majority leader spent untold weeks and months on the party’s health care quagmire in 2017, when the GOP controlled both the House and the Senate and still failed to repeal Obamacare. The episode caused endless headaches for Republicans as their replacement plan fell apart first, followed by the so-called “skinny” plan they slapped together at the last minute.

Now in divided government, with the Senate majority up for grabs next year and McConnell himself running for reelection, another divisive debate over health care is the last thing McConnell needs. But that’s exactly where Trump is taking Republicans after his administration endorsed a wholesale obliteration of the law in the courts earlier this week.

So the Kentucky Republican and his members are putting the onus on the president to figure out the next steps.

McConnell’s clear reluctance toward trying to draft a sweeping health care bill in the Senate reflects his political instincts: that it’s better to focus on perceived Democratic weaknesses — the left’s push on “Medicare for All” — than to struggle to unify his own party on a plan almost certain to be rebuffed by Senate Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he’s eager to move forward on a new health care debate, but he’s not detecting the same enthusiasm in the leadership suites: “I’m not sensing a whole lot.”

While the GOP leader has endorsed efforts to protect pre-existing conditions, McConnell told his caucus on Wednesday he will stick to a message of asking the administration for a plan and focusing on making Democratic measures unpopular, according to attendees.

Soon after, Senate Republicans from across the caucus adopted a similar mantra: Let’s see what the White House proposes.

“The leader is sort of anxious to see what the president and his team put forward in terms of a proposal,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s top deputy. “The good news for us is the Democrat alternative, the so-called Medicare for All plan, the government-run program, is very, very unpopular.”

Marc Short, a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence, said Wednesday on television that the White House will submit a plan to Congress. But Republicans acknowledge that there is essentially no chance that House Democrats will want anything to do with it.

Trump is unbowed.

“The Republican Party will become the Party of Great HealthCare!” Trump tweeted on Thursday afternoon. “Moving forward in Courts and Legislatively!”

Privately, Republicans have been baffled all week about the latest tango with Obamacare, but they’ve tried their best not to be at odds with the president’s unwelcome push.

Asked about the prospects of moving forward with a new vision for health care as requested by the president, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) grinned knowingly, but demurred.

“You can’t quote a smile,” he said.

In fact, simply passing a new health care bill in the Senate before the 2020 election appears nearly impossible. And there may be no need to, since court action appears months away.

Neither chamber is moving forward on a budget that would allow Republicans to skirt the Senate filibuster through the “reconciliation” technique they used in 2017. And there won’t be 60 votes for a comprehensive plan because Democrats won’t cooperate with GOP efforts to replace Obamacare.

Even introducing sweeping legislation could be a political liability for Senate Republicans up for reelection, who would then be forced either to endorse or oppose it. That’s got Republicans embracing a wait-and-see stance to test how serious the president really is about his latest legislative push.

“We were all a little surprised, [McConnell] included,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a close ally of the majority leader. “We know that Ms. Pelosi is going to be a challenge. But it would be even more problematic if we were crosswise with the White House. So that’s why we need to be coordinating.”

Still, Trump’s backing of a lawsuit seeking to dismantle all of Obamacare and come up with a new plan has been welcomed by Republicans who want to promote their own agenda rather than issue takedowns of Democrats’ ideas. And in a new Senate with a handful of senators who didn’t experience the debacle of 2017, some want to start anew.

“I’ve been out there on health care more aggressively than anyone. … We need to see what President Trump means. He’s throwing a lot of stuff out there,” said freshman Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). He added: “We need to do something other than just talk about repealing it.”

While they wait, some committee chairmen are beginning work on targeted health care reforms.

Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said whatever they produce on lowering drug costs and medical bills will not resemble the effort from two years ago to craft a wholesale replacement of the Affordable Care Act.

But that is likely not going to be enough for Trump. The question Republican have now: What is?

“The president’s entitled to his opinions, so I don’t begrudge him that,” Cornyn said. “But what they need to do now is tell us what their plans are.”

2020 elections

The former Texas congressman’s campaign set-up is a departure from form.

Beto O’Rourke shunned precision politics in his Texas Senate run last year, running an unorthodox — and often haphazard — effort to turn out hundreds of thousands of Democratic-leaning but previously inactive voters.

But as he begins running for president, O’Rourke is trying something new: a conventional campaign.

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After eschewing strategists and pollsters in his Senate run, O’Rourke this week hired a data expert, Jen O’Malley Dillon, to manage his presidential campaign. He recruited Norm Sterzenbach, a veteran strategist with deep knowledge of Iowa’s caucus math and mechanics, to marshal his operations in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

O’Rourke has advance staffers with presidential campaign experience in place for what are expected to be frequent, road trip-style campaign appearances. And the campaign was organizing more than 1,000 watch parties around the country to coincide with a campaign kickoff event in El Paso on Saturday.

His burgeoning organization is a concession to the unique rigors of a crowded presidential campaign, but it’s also a reflection of the vastly different landscape he faces in 2020. In the Texas Senate race, O’Rourke could focus almost exclusively on turnout as the only Democrat running in a general election against Republican Ted Cruz. And he could afford to visit every one of Texas’ 254 counties in 2018.

Now, however, with more than 3,000 counties in the United States, he faces geographical constraints that will require selectivity in his campaign spending and candidate appearances. And the Democratic voters O’Rourke will confront in Iowa and New Hampshire nominating contests will require more nuanced messaging from the Texas congressman — persuading them not only to vote, but to vote for him instead of any number of other high-profile Democrats.

“They’re making smart hires and building the kind of campaign you need to run for president,” said Scott Arceneaux, a Democratic strategist and the Florida Democratic Party’s former executive director. “Running for president is different than running for statewide office. It’s just a different animal. It’s a lot bigger and it’s multidimensional chess. You’re playing in four, five, 10 states at a time with both national and in-state implications. It’s different. He seems to be building an organization to do that, not just run statewide.”

Middle Seat, a digital firm that worked on O’Rourke’s Senate campaign, remains involved in O’Rourke’s presidential effort, as does the fundraising and consulting firm Katz Watson Group, according to a source familiar with O’Rourke’s operation. Becky Bond, a senior adviser to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, has been speaking with prospective operatives in early primary states.

Chris Lippincott, an Austin-based consultant who ran a super PAC opposing Cruz in the Senate campaign, said O’Rourke’s early staffing and organizational efforts reflect an understanding that in 2020 “he can’t DIY things like he did in Texas.”

“Clearly, they’ve acknowledged they can’t just re-create their Texas mechanism in Iowa or New Hampshire,” Lippincott said. “This idea of, ‘We’re running against one other guy, Ted Cruz, who’s really unattractive to your average voter, and you’ve got all these people who just don’t vote,’ that’s the terrain in which they just ran super fast and hit every door, bang, bang, bang. You can’t do that … You have to be much more specific with your targeting.”

For months, it was unclear how significantly O’Rourke would elect to adapt. Before entering the presidential contest, O’Rourke told reporters that in “any campaign I run … I would want to run in the same way that I’ve run every race — just as grassroots as possible, powered by people, directly connected to the people that I want to serve and represent.”

In a highly unusual move, O’Rourke announced his candidacy before hiring a campaign manager. Ignoring the advice of many political consultants, he headquartered his campaign in El Paso, far from political and media centers on the East Coast. And dashing across eight states to open his campaign this month, O’Rourke insisted on driving himself to events in a rented minivan — an unheard of allocation of time by a top-tier presidential contender.

“I think part of his appeal is the fact that he’s non-traditional,” said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who ran for president in 2008.

Richardson, who met with O’Rourke in El Paso for a lengthy lunch before O’Rourke announced his candidacy, chuckled, “I made six recommendations on his campaign, and he hasn’t followed any of them,” including that O’Rourke find someone else to drive his car.

But Richardson called O’Rourke’s recent hires “first-rate talent.”

“You need some structure,” he said. “This is a big campaign, this is a long campaign. You can’t micromanage the campaign with junior aides that so far have been effective. You need an Iowa professional, you need a national campaign professional. So, it’s the right move.”

In hiring O’Malley Dillon, O’Rourke adhered to nonconformity in one significant way — putting a woman in charge of a presidential campaign. Doug Herman, a Democratic strategist, called O’Malley Dillon a “mold-breaker” for that reason.

But O’Malley Dillon is also expected to bring a traditionalist’s sense of order to the O’Rourke campaign. A former executive director of the Democratic National Committee and deputy campaign manager to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, O’Malley Dillon is steeped in field organizing experience and is an expert at using data to target voters.

“This is more than data, it’s also organizational discipline and sort of a deep understanding of what needs to happen to win in Iowa and win in these early states and she’s done tons of presidentials, so it was a huge get for him,” said Jessica Post, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

Post pointed to O’Rourke’s canvassing for a state Senate candidate in Iowa this month — a mainstay for presidential candidates — as evidence of his understanding of traditional campaign norms. Sterzenbach, a former executive director of the Iowa Democratic Party, is an expert in the state’s caucuses.

In 2020, Post said of O’Rourke, “I think he might still be the same authentic, table-standing Beto but with an organization behind him that can collect volunteer sign-up cards and supporter pledges in the Iowa caucuses.”

O’Malley Dillon did not respond to a request for comment, and the O’Rourke campaign declined to provide any information about its staffing.

Despite hiring O’Malley Dillon, O’Rourke remains far behind rival candidates in staffing and organization. On its hiring page, the O’Rourke campaign asks applicants specifically if they have experience in more than a dozen states that come relatively early in the 2020 primary calendar — states where other Democrats already have operations. Multiple Democratic donors, activists and operatives have complained privately that their calls to O’Rourke’s campaign go unreturned or that, once contacted, the campaign has failed to follow up.

“I think there’s a lot we don’t know about what Beto’s candidacy is going to look like,” said Pete Brodnitz, a Democratic pollster. “I mean at some point they get beyond the kitchen counter, or the tables and the café, and then what does that look like?”

Boyd Brown, a former South Carolina lawmaker and former Democratic National Committee member, helped to organize O’Rourke’s trip to South Carolina last week as a volunteer, after working on a “Draft Beto” effort to encourage O’Rourke to run.

Like other supportive Democrats, Brown said many staffing and organizational decisions appear to have been delayed until a campaign manager was in place.

“I think they were waiting on Jen to ramp up,” he said. “Anybody who’s been involved with Democratic politics over the last decade knows [O’Malley Dillon] is about a good a hire as you’re going to make, if not the best hire I’ve seen made this cycle.”