The emerging strategy is centered around highlighting people who have benefited from the law and who would lose insurance coverage or key consumer protections if it goes away. “We have to lead with them and their stories,” said Jeremy Bird, a Democratic strategist who served in senior roles for both President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012 and Hillary Clinton’s campaign this year. “This is about what Trump and the Republicans want to take away from working families across the country, and we have to make that very clear this is what we’re talking about.”
Organizers say they’ll announce details about the coalition on Friday, but the efforts could include rallies both in Washington and in the states and districts of Republican members of Congress. It might also involve television advertising, although Bird said the most important part of the drive would be mobilizing constituents—including Trump voters who would be negatively affected by repeal—on the ground across the country. “I think that’s more important than some barrage of national ads,” Bird said. “That strategy is not going to work anymore in the future. It’s got to be about grassroots organizing. It’s got to be about real people who are constituents of these folks making it known.”…
Democrats involved in the repeal fight say the party must heed the lessons not only of its past struggle to make the law popular but also of the recent election. They need a single, overarching message that doesn’t get bogged down in too many details or recitations of statistics. “Democrats and progressives will be at our weakest to the extent that we are doing ad hoc, one-off pushback and at our strongest when we have a cogent theme that spans issues,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. “And that theme will be that Donald Trump is betraying his own voters by siding with giant corporations against working-class people.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member