WASHINGTON—Minutes after the biggest initiative of his presidency collapsed, Donald Trump began claiming that he “would have gotten” Obamacare repealed and replaced if …

He got distracted by a photographer he thought was standing too close to a soldier. He never finished his sentence.

The president’s attention deficit was a major problem throughout the legislative process that all-but-officially ended in failure on Tuesday. It was far from the only problem.

Here are eight reasons why Trump and his party were unable to deliver on one of their most important promises:

They wrote a dreadful bill

Health reform is hard even when politicians are trying to increase coverage. Republicans were trying to pass a bill that would have left tens of millions more people without coverage. Almost no experts and almost no interest groups liked the thing.

Related: Trump suffers colossal failure as Obamacare repeal collapses

“It’s a terrible plan. It doesn’t fix any of the problems with Obamacare, it makes those problems worse, and it creates entirely new problems,” said Jonathan Oberlander, a University of North Carolina professor who studies health policy and politics.

Resistance worked

When Republican Sen. Jerry Moran held a town hall in a tiny Kansas town in early July, he was met by a group of disability-rights activists who told him how the bill would hurt people like them.

Similar scenes greeted almost every other Republican member of Congress. Grassroots “resistance” groups made it impossible for Republicans to turn away from the potential human and political damage.

“Some of these Republicans voted for a repeal back in 2015 because they knew it would have no consequence. They knew that it wouldn’t ever become law. And now they were faced with the prospect where, if they voted for this, it would harm their constituents — and then they were seeing those constituents, their faces, in their offices over the last two months,” said Angel Padilla, co-founder of the anti-Trump Indivisible network.

Trump didn’t sell

To get Obamacare passed, Barack Obama conducted a months-long parade of speeches, interviews, town halls and news conferences. Trump, renowned salesman, did almost nothing.

When he did speak about health-care, he spoke in unhelpful generalities — or, astonishingly, bashed the bill as “mean.” As the initiative burned, he was using his Twitter platform to scold the media.

From the beginning of the process to the end, he did not answer a single question about the specifics of his plan.

“The president is the largest megaphone in the world. The bully pulpit is his greatest asset. And he just completely misused it to the point of malpractice,” said Rick Tyler, a MSNBC analyst and former communications director for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.

Trump has little influence on Congress

With an approval rating below 40 per cent — 36 per cent, according to the most recent Washington Post poll — Trump just didn’t have the power to scare Congress into satisfying his whims. And his eagerness to pass any bill at all made it impossible for the White House to convince legislators that he cared about the policy specifics.

“The reason that Congress was excited about this was he’ll sign whatever you’ll send him. But if he’s willing to sign whatever you’ll send him, he doesn’t have the credibility to message on what he’s asking for,” said Republican strategist and lobbyist Liam Donovan.

“It cuts both ways. You can’t have him be an auto-pen if you expect him to lead the dance.”

Republicans have irreconcilable differences

Party unity was easy when members of Congress knew their repeal votes amounted to mere veto-fodder symbolism. When it came time to make law under a Republican president, they had to find a way to placate Medicaid-conscious moderates and damn-the-consequences right-wingers at the same time — losing two senators maximum.

“You’re handcuffed in what you can do with 52 votes. Which isn’t an excuse, it’s just a fact,” said Donovan. “And to cobble together those 52 votes … you have to come up with something that Susan Collins and Ted Cruz can agree on. That’s incredibly challenging.”

Obamacare is good for a lot of people

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Trump calls Obamacare a “disaster” and a “catastrophe.” In reality, the law is flawed but functional.

Millions of people buying insurance through Obamacare’s “individual markets” have experienced steep price hikes and limited choices. But millions have become insured for the first time, premiums have risen more slowly than they used to, and the number of health-related bankruptcies has plummeted.

In the absence of Obama himself, polling suggests more people support his Affordable Care Act than oppose it. It is hard to talk yourself into repealing a popular social benefit.

“When you’re six years into a program, to change it when people are relying on it, there’s a fear that it may affect their own policies or their own families,” Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake told Politico.

McConnell messed up

During his years-long run of anti-Obama obstruction, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell enjoyed a reputation as a master tactician. It is probably toast now.

It’s possible that nobody could have herded these cats into repeal-and-replace. But McConnell made a series of caucus-angering mistakes — writing the bill rapidly in secret, irritating hard-liners by attempting to privately promise moderates that the bill’s cuts would never take effect, and excluding Republican female senators from his health-care working group.

Three female senators ended up killing the bill.

“What we’re witnessing is an unprecedented, full-blown rebellion by Republican senators against their leader, McConnell,” Adam Jentleson, former deputy chief of staff to former Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid. He added: “Boy howdy, what a thing to witness. From the saviour of the Senate, no less.”

The conservative dogs didn’t bark

Opposition to Obamacare galvanized the conservative grassroots into action in 2010 and the years following. But influential right-wing groups were so unenthused about the Republican bill that they did little or nothing to urge legislators to pass it.

The Koch brothers’ network was critical; FreedomWorks, likewise, described the bill as “an amendment to Obamacare, not a repeal of it.” The Trumpified party grassroots, meanwhile, has moved on to such concerns as “fake news.”

Facing immense left-wing pressure and scant right-wing pressure, Republicans stopped fearing that saying no would cost them their careers.

Read more:

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