Democrats helped crush the GOP’s Obamacare repeal push by maintaining total unity and generating broad public outrage. It’s a powerful formula that fractured Republicans — but one that will be harder to replicate against the GOP tax bill.

Already a handful of vulnerable Democrats in the House and Senate say they remain open to whatever tax legislation is ultimately produced. And while progressive groups and lawmakers are deploying plans to rev up the base, it’s not clear taxes will energize people outside the Beltway as the more visceral topic of health care does.


The stakes couldn’t be higher for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Not only do most Democrats loathe the Republican tax plan, but leadership believes torpedoing it would significantly boost the party’s chances of taking back the House and holding steady in the Senate in 2018.

Pelosi is particularly driven to deny Republicans any votes from her side of the aisle if the GOP margin for victory on taxes will depend on some of her moderates.

“Our unity internally is good for our own maneuvering,” Pelosi told reporters Thursday. “And while the health bill was life and death, this is really everything on the line.”

Even so, some moderate and conservative Democrats haven’t ruled out backing the Republican plan, saying there’s a lot in there to like, including a lower corporate tax rate.

“I have to sit down and review it, but I certainly want to take a look at it,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), co-chairman of the centrist House Blue Dog Coalition, adding that other members of his group are doing the same thing.

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Cuellar and other conservative Democrats were courted by the White House on taxes earlier this year but were excluded from House Republicans’ bill writing process.

In the Senate, red-state Democrats up for reelection like Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Joe Donnelly of Indiana are considered gettable for Republicans on an upper-chamber tax bill that’s expected to come out next week.

“I’m not ruling out supporting it — heck, no,” Manchin said in an interview. “If I find a pathway forward, I’ll be for it.”

Schumer is working hard to bring down the GOP tax plan before it even gets to his side of the Capitol.

He has held five events in his home state so far aimed at spooking the New York delegation’s nine House Republicans into opposing the bill because it limits the ability to deduct state and local taxes — a crucial provision in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California.

Schumer on Friday described “a push-pull” that he predicted would bedevil Republicans. “To get it passed in the House, they have to move in one direction,” he told reporters. “But to get the same bill passed in the Senate, they have to move in another direction.”

Pelosi is pressuring California Republicans, many of whom are on Democrats’ 2018 target list, to oppose the bill because of the state and local tax issue as well. She brought a cadre of California Democrats to her weekly press conference — normally a solo affair — on Thursday to call out Republicans by name in neighboring districts whose constituents could be negatively impacted.

House Democrats’ campaign arm is also launching a series of digital ads targeting vulnerable California Republicans for supporting the bill. Out of the 14 Republican lawmakers in the delegation, nine are on Democrats’ potential pick up list for 2018.

Schumer and Pelosi are also coordinating closely with progressive groups, who are eagerly painting the bill as a giveaway to corporations and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

Schumer has held conference calls with liberal allies off the Hill to mobilize them for in-state activity in the next few weeks. Pelosi held a call on Thursday with two dozen activist groups, including several that provided critical grassroots muscle for the Obamacare repeal fight. She’ll be holding weekend events in Maryland and Rhode Island with Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and David Cicilline (D-R.I.) to rally against the bill.

Stoking grassroots resistance to the tax bill “is a bigger lift” than health care, acknowledged Angel Padilla, policy director for the liberal group Indivisible.

Still, he vowed that the Democratic base would turn out in droves to oppose the tax bill, particularly as liberal groups ramp up their warnings that the massive deficits fueled by Republican tax cuts would set the stage for future attacks on Medicare and Medicaid.

Indivisible is planning a series of in-district protests next week, urging activists to show up at lawmakers' offices with giant, Publishers-Clearinghouse-style "Trump Tax Scam Payout" checks.

Democratic leaders have made no secret that they’re relying on a playbook similar to the one they used in the Obamacare fight, during which Schumer and Pelosi ensured that Democrats hung together throughout a seven-month roller coaster of GOP repeal attempts.

But taxes are a different animal because Republicans’ end-game is more of a moving target, as one Democratic aide put it, rather than the ultimate goal of demolishing Barack Obama’s signature health care law.

That makes the non-committal status of red-state incumbents like Manchin and Donnelly a smarter political play, the Democratic aide added. Vulnerable Senate Democratic incumbents also privately reported being unmoved by the GOP ad barrage pressing them to vote for the tax plan.

Not to mention that Republicans may soon be making the battle a little easier for wavering Democrats.

Trump and conservatives in both chambers have been pushing to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate in the GOP’s tax bill. While House GOP leaders initially resisted, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said Friday he’s asked congressional scorekeepers about the budgetary impact of doing so — in a sign the idea isn't dead.

"The president feels very strongly about including this at some step before the final process and he's told me that twice by phone and once in person,” Brady said at a POLITICO Playbook event Friday. “No decisions have been made.”

Senate Republican leaders have already balked at the suggestion of including a repeal of the individual mandate, saying it could sink the tax reform effort altogether.

GOP lawmakers face immense pressure to deliver a legislative achievement after their Obamacare collapse. Many Republicans have said tax reform is the linchpin to keeping their majorities in the House and Senate.

Democratic aides say they’re confident the party will hang together against the tax bill.

“I think the more it becomes clear about the provisions that are in this thing … I don’t think there’s going to be Democratic votes at the end of this day,” one Democratic leadership aide told POLITICO.

But for now, conservative Democrats are keeping their options open.

“I will thoroughly review any tax proposal that comes before the Senate and continue to engage with my Senate colleagues and the White House,” Donnelly said in a statement.

Manchin and Heitkamp both released statements critical of the House GOP bill after its Thursday release. But Heitkamp also made clear that “unlike the House bill, I’m hopeful Democrats will be part of the discussions as it’s crafted” in the Senate, even though there’s no evidence the GOP is working with Democrats to write the bill.

Cuellar said the 18-member Blue Dogs hope to put out a group statement either in support or against the tax bill before it heads to the House floor.

Republicans are working at a breakneck pace, hoping to get the bill through committee next week and passed on the House floor by Thanksgiving.

“Let’s see what happens in committee, and then we’ll see what happens on the floor,” Cuellar said.