Senators in Hospitals, Democracy in the Balance

When Graham and Cassidy conceded that their bill seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act didn't have the votes, they were merely acknowledging a reality that had been apparent to most observers since the previous Friday, when John McCain announced that he would not vote for the bill. Susan Collins waited to announce her "no" vote until the CBO had weighed in the following Monday (though not with a full score of the bill, which would have taken weeks), and the next day Graham and Cassidy acknowledged defeat. (People had speculated that the bill might not be pulled until the voting was done in the Alabama primary for the Republican nomination to replace Jeff Sessions in the Senate, but in fact the bill was pulled in the middle of the day on that Tuesday, September 26.)

So it was startling when President Trump suggested that the latest effort had failed only because a key senator who supported the bill was hospitalized. Trump said this several times, forcing the senator in question, Thad Cochran, to clarify that he was recuperating from medical treatment but was not hospitalized.

Putting aside any quibble about Cochran's health status, the simple fact is that his vote would have made no difference to the bill's fate. With three Republican senators announcing that they would not support the bill (and with the Democrats unwavering in their opposition), the bill was dead whether or not Cochran voted. Trump's lie was an insult to the intelligence of his audience.

Now for all I know Trump is simply very incurious, and someone mollified him by telling him that Cochran's illness was a factor in the bill's defeat. In fact that seems like the likeliest explanation to me. Of course he also might have made a conscious decision to lie. Either way, it shows a shocking disregard for the truth. Either Trump is happy to say false things, or he's happy to run a White House in which he is routinely told false things and then repeats them. I actually don't know which would be worse.

But this brings me to my depressing conclusion, which is that all of those "Trump supporters are standing by him" stories actually do (or at least could) serve a purpose. What I would like to see is an interview in which a Trump supporter is shown irrefutable evidence that Trump lies constantly. My suspicion is that it would make no difference whatsoever. If anything, it would present another occasion to rail against the media. One of Trump's big innovations is that he doesn't bother to lie convincingly, or at least, he doesn't bother to try to convince anyone who is remotely intelligent or well-informed. And what has thrown so many of us for a loop is that we expected this behavior to come at a very high price. Maybe it has, maybe his low approval numbers really do reflect a kind of national revulsion.

But maybe not. Maybe we are entering a time in U.S. politics when adherence to the truth is only occasionally helpful, and tribal affiliations dominate everything. At least, that's the impression I get when I see something like the "hospitalized senator" lie, which I doubt 5% of voters could identify as such.