Mike Johnson helps Kamala Harris and vows to kill Obamacare

As you probably know, we enter the final week of a dead-even presidential contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, with Pennsylvania's 19 electoral votes the most sought after prize by both campaigns. Team Trump is already having a difficult week in the Keystone State, thanks to a crude racist joke about Puerto Rico told by one of Trump's comedian friends at his wild rally at Madison Square Garden, which is not going over well with Puerto Rico's core voter base in the northeast Pennsylvania. Now Harris has received help in the same area from none other than House Speaker Mike Johnson, as NBC News reports:

House Speaker Mike Johnson took a swipe at Obamacare at an event in Pennsylvania on Monday, telling a crowd that there would be “massive” changes to health care in America if Donald Trump wins the election.

“Health care reform will be an important part of the agenda. When I say we're going to have a very aggressive agenda for the first 100 days, we still have a lot of things on the table,” Johnson, R-La., said in Bethlehem while campaigning for Republican House candidate Ryan Mackenzie Video footage from NBC News.

“No Obamacare?” one attendee asked Johnson, referring to the law that Democrats passed in 2010, also known as the Affordable Care Act.

“No Obamacare,” Johnson replied, rolling his eyes. “The ACA is so entrenched that we need major reforms to make this work, and we have lots of ideas about how to make that happen.”

Health care is not at all an issue Trump wants Republicans to talk about. The attempt to repeal Obamacare was one of the less popular initiatives of his presidency and, not coincidentally, one of his greatest failures. It's also one of the areas where Harris has overtaken him. He compounded his problems during the September debate with his rival when he could only mention “the concepts of a plan” to replace Obamacare, despite reportedly having been working on his own, as-yet-unpublicized proposal for many years.

Worse, Johnson's comments strongly suggest two things that are potentially dangerous for Trump in the eyes of swing voters: (1) He plans to make repealing Obamacare an immediate priority if Trump wins and the Republicans win Congress control, which likely means it would be rejected and turned into a gigantic budget reconciliation bill and, if possible, passed, and (2) his party's health care policy proposals are radical and aimed at enforcing the provisions central to Obamacare's coverage guarantees to replace “free market” provisions that will almost certainly revert the health care system to the days when insurers aggressively discriminated against anyone who was old, sick or poor. Johnson's rhetoric will also give Democrats a chance to remind voters that the last Obamacare repeal package aimed to decimate Medicaid, the federal health program for poor people and a key part of the country's social safety net. Additionally, Johnson appeared to tell Pennsylvanians that a re-elected Trump wouldn't care if his health care plans made Americans unhappy, according to NBC:

“We want to attack the regulatory state with a blowtorch. These agencies have been used as a weapon against the people, destroying the free market; It is like a boot on the neck of job creators, entrepreneurs and risk takers. And so healthcare is one of the sectors and we need this across the board,” Johnson said. “And Trump will be big. I mean, he'll only serve one more term. Cannot run for re-election. And so he’s going to think about the legacy and we’re going to sort these things out.”

It's probably not what swing voters want from a Trump administration that promises a return to American greatness. And the Harris campaign is certainly grateful that Trump's loyal ally in Congress is making the announcement. Could this be the “little secret” that Trump and Johnson would cryptically reveal after the election? If so, then the speaker screwed things up in the wrong place and at the wrong time.