Whether Trumpcare dies in the House or in the Senate doesn’t affect anyone’s health care, but it does affect Republicans. Failure in the Senate hurts, but failure in the House hurts much more. The Senate puts up enough procedural barriers to give Republicans excuses, but the House can’t hide when a congressional majority is tripping over its own feet. So Donald Trump and Paul Ryan have pushed hard to get House legislators to deliver something, anything, like Rosemary with her baby, and then leave it for others to oppose. Of course, Ryan knows too much about policy to argue his plan makes any sense, while Trump knows too little about policy to argue that it makes any sense. But that’s a small problem compared to the cost of losing face on a major fight. Meanwhile, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already vowed to move on the House bill next week, if it even gets there after Thursday's postponement, suggesting a determined effort to have it fail fast. Everyone’s happier that way.

Since we’re dealing with failure either way on this bill—Republicans know they can’t afford to succeed—let’s think about where Trump goes after this. One possibility is that Republicans, with Trump’s blessing, quietly aggravate all of Obamacare’s problems, driving it into crisis and forcing a bipartisan deal to fix it. This might work out for everyone, since no one denied that Obamacare had flaws, and until now Republicans preferred to keep them in place in order to sustain a campaign issue against Democrats. If Trump and the G.O.P. were to help rescue it in halfway good faith but call it Trumpcare, would anyone outside of Washington mind? Gaudy restorations of older structures under the Trump label are something Manhattanites have long since learned to live with, and the rest of us can, too. That’d be a happy solution. But it’s admittedly too hopeful a scenario.

Video: Why Trumpcare is Worse than Ebola

Another approach for Trump would be to ignore health care for as long as possible going forward. There’s no obvious reason for him to be making a priority of this effort. His signature promises relate to immigration—specifically, the border wall. Then come infrastructure, trade, and care for veterans. So speculation is rife about why he has taken this path. (“We had to go, had no choice,” Trump told an audience of Republicans yesterday. “Had to go with the health care first. You know how it works.” Enlighten the rest of us, please.) One possibility is that Trump had promised an easy repeal of Obamacare and felt he needed to swallow this frog early, to get it out of the way. Another is that Trump is responding to polls that show a plurality of Americans—many of them presumably Republicans—want Trump to tackle health care first. A third is that Republicans wanted to start by getting whatever they could out of a reconciliation bill—one that allows senators to sidestep a filibuster—since Democrats can be counted on to block other stuff, and that meant limiting legislative efforts to budget-related measures, such as cuts to Obamacare and, later, taxes.

But, still, are any of these incentives good enough for Trump? It’s likeliest that a hidden deal is at play. Paul Ryan, despite coming off as a luckless goofball, has a lot of power, and Trump needs his support. That means the two men must trade horses. Ryan wants cuts to social spending, and Trump wants a border wall. Both want tax cuts. So Ryan has promised to campaign hard for billions of dollars in wall funding this year, something Ryan doesn’t like, while Trump has campaigned hard for a regressive and unpopular health-care bill, something Trump doesn’t like. Both have undoubtedly shelved some additional favored policies. Trump hasn’t said much about tariffs, lately, while Ryan has long since gone quiet about privatization of Medicare. Only a few people know who has agreed to what behind closed doors, and, uncharacteristically for Washington, they’re keeping mum.