House Democrats are angling to make the GOP’s plans to reverse Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and slash insurance subsidies the defining issue of the 2018 midterms. Some party officials privately say Democrats could ride a backlash over Obamacare repeal all the way to control of the lower chamber — and, in the Senate, stem what are expected to be heavy losses thanks to a Republican-leaning map.

For Democrats, the politics of health care “have flipped,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

“It was easy [for Republicans) to be critical of Obamacare when you thought it would stay in place. Now that the chance of repeal is real, people are much more worried,” Schumer said in an interview. “We are on offense and united. They are on defense and divided, the opposite of what people would have predicted a month or two ago.”…

The Democratic theory of the case is this: If Republicans try and fail to repeal Obamacare, the Democrats can paint the GOP as both legislatively inept and angling to gut an increasingly popular health insurance law. But if Republicans succeed, they’ll be attacked by the minority party for ramming through massive health care changes on a party-line vote — another reprise of GOP tactics from 2010.