What comes after "catastrophic success"? Larry Jacobs on Democrats' healthcare choices

Now that the Republicans' main thrust to repeal the ACA's core benefits has failed for the present, what should Democrats do next?

I asked Lawrence Jacobs, a professor of politics and policy at the University of Minnesota who has closely studied the dynamics and incentives of legislative and presidential politics.

Here were the core questions:

Given unrelenting Republican hostility toward the ACA, and given that Republicans control the administration of its core programs as well as both houses of Congress, can Democrats do anything to shore up a stressed marketplace that needs a) competent administration committed to making it work and b) legislative fixes to improve the risk pool and keep insurers from bolting?

Should Democrats pursue legislative compromise that would alter marketplace structure more to conservatives' liking in exchange for, say, federal funding for reinsurance or other state programs designed to foster stability? (for more about possible components of such a deal, see my prior post.) Or should they step back and declare, in effect: the marketplace was more or less stable before the Trump administration began sabotaging it. Republicans now own it. We are going to look forward and propose bold measures to make insurance affordable for all that can be implemented when the American people return us to power.

Authenticiness

What quality would you ascribe to a public official who is willing to toss out any lie or unfounded accusation to whip the extreme fringe of her party into a frenzy?  One political scientist, perhaps a little too immersed in the political culture he studies, has an answer (my emphasis):

“Michele Bachmann does not have a strong record as a legislative strategist, and that’s never been her forte,” said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor. “She says things that are kind of off the wall, but these are often calculated statements on her part, to register with conservative, grass-roots people, and that’s very hard for folks who are not grass-roots conservatives to understand,” he said. “Some of the things she says are zany and embarrassing to other Republicans, but that’s part of what has given her this authenticity.”

"Calculated statements" -- like accusing your political opponents of "un-American values" or conjuring "death panels" out of thin air or retailing invented cost estimates for presidential travel -- confer "authenticity."  I'm afraid the good professor has caught the zeitgeist.