At around 1:30 in the morning, after he was sure that he finally had the attention of the Senate clerk and of his nervous, exhausted colleagues who had been watching his every move, John McCain dramatically plunged his outstretched arm downwards, finally sealing the fate of Mitch McConnell's "skinny repeal" bill in a gesture that had all the drama of a WWE heel turn. It was a wild, shocking moment that drew gasps from the gallery, and the only reason it mattered at all is because, from the very beginning of this debacle of an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, two women Republican senators—Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—never gave a fucking inch.

This is normally where I'd say that their steadfast refusal to support the bill wasn't for lack of effort from Mitch McConnell and company, but strangely, it kind of was. McConnell handpicked a group of 13 GOP senators—you'll never believe this, but they were all men—to craft his chamber's version of Trumpcare, meeting in secret and leaving Republican colleagues and Democratic counterparts alike in suspense. It wasn't until this week, really, after Collins and Murkowski voted no on the motion to open debate on the Senate floor, that party leadership really seemed to take notice. (While McConnell had tried to sweeten the pitch for Murkowski by setting aside extra money for Alaska, Collins says that President Trump never even tried to persuade her to fall in line.) Trump tweeted his feelings and deputized a member of his cabinet to call Murkowski and threaten retaliation against her state, and some idiot in the House got so angry that he challenged Collins to a goddamn duel.

Even then, the two women were having none of it. From the New York Times' account of the president's last-minute overtures to Murkowski:

As President Trump pressed [Murkowski] and her fellow Senate Republicans last week to fall in line behind a repeal of the Affordable Care Act in the interest of party loyalty and protecting the Republican brand, she felt compelled to speak up.

“With all due respect, Mr. President,” she said, according to some of the people at the private White House lunch, “I didn’t come here to represent the Republican Party. I am representing my constituents and the state of Alaska.”

I am super glad that John McCain, an 80-year-old man who is in the middle of treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer, and who had already voted for iterations of repeal that he solemnly swore he wouldn't support, ultimately decided to change his mind. Good for him. But the press accounts describing McCain's courage in breathlessly laudatory terms—the Times already has an op-ed up praising him for having "single-handedly seized the moment and set the course of the Senate"—have less to do with the substance of his actions than they do with the fact that it was him who cast that elusive third nay vote. (Some even suspect he's the perfect guy to fall on the sword for Republicans.) Meanwhile, Murkowski and Collins were unshakeable from the beginning, quietly voting no on all three of the Majority Leader's attempts to muscle a bill through the chamber he controls. All along, Democrats counted on those women to make McCain's big "moment" possible, and they did not disappoint.

It's a grim reminder of how low our standards for political courage have sunk that we are legitimately thrilled that Democrats managed to convince three whole members of the other party to... not support a proposal, written and published a few hours before the vote, which would have taken health care away from 16 million Americans. I have plenty of beefs with Collins and Murkowski on issues that are not defeating this particular harebrained attempt to take a blowtorch to this country's health care system, and I do not endorse erecting a statue to either legislator in front of the DNC headquarters anytime soon.

But even so, the people who defied their party and never endorsed its efforts to take insurance away from poor people are at least as heroic—if not much, much more so—as someone who did vote to do it and then, at the last minute, abruptly reversed course, soaking up the thunderous applause and critical acclaim that he knew would follow. The Affordable Care Act is safe because of the courage of two women who were not swayed by threats, bribes, and every brand of public and private pressure. They might not be getting as much shine as John McCain today, but they are far more deserving of it.

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