Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

As a policy, threatening 800,000 people with exile from the only country they have ever known, whose laws and norms most have scrupulously followed, is a terrible idea. As a legal matter, the status of the “Dreamers” is a very different question. Congress never codified their right to stay in the United States, and it’s far from clear that President Barack Obama had the constitutional power to shield them from deportation. What is clear is that, since DACA was the creation of one president and his administration, it can be rescinded by another administration. And so it was.

As a policy, cutting off subsidies that enable insurers to provide affordable policies for low-income Americans is a terrible idea. As a legal matter, it’s by no means clear that the Obama administration had the authority to provide those subsidies, since Congress never appropriated such funds. At least one federal court has said they’re unlawful. What is clear is that, since those subsidies were summoned into existence by one president, they can be eliminated by another president.


Are you glimpsing a pattern here? The threat to the Dreamers, and to the health care of millions of low-income Americans, as well as to those affected by the rash of environmental rules and regulations now being erased by the Trump administration, is a cautionary tale for Democrats and their progressive allies. How you shape public policy can often be as important as the policies themselves. In both the immigration and health care arenas, the Democrats’ loss of power at every level below the presidency has meant that even some of the signature achievements of a progressive president have been built on structurally weak foundations.

Consider a striking contrast: When Medicare was passed in 1965, with huge Democratic majorities in both houses, it created a single-payer system, codified into law. Sixteen years later, a conservative president took office. As a candidate and political leader, Ronald Reagan had been a vigorous voice against Medicare, calling it a step toward socialism. But President Reagan never made a move to rein in, much less abolish, the program, not just because it was popular, but because it would have required an act of Congress to do so. Nor would even a conservative Supreme Court have struck down the law, because it used the taxing power of the federal government, to which the courts give enormous deference. (When Chief Justice John Roberts saved the Affordable Care Act, he cited that taxing power as the basis for its legitimacy.)

Further: If a future Congress decided to create a single-payer system by simply striking the “over 65” language of Medicare, it would almost surely survive constitutional scrutiny even by this conservative court. Only the most unhinged of conservative activists would find something in the Constitution to challenge Medicare for all.

Similarly, if the Senate back in 2010 had found 60 votes instead of 55 to break a filibuster, the Dreamers would have been protected by a clearly constitutional measure; there would have been no credible legal challenge to the policy, because it had been enacted by the legislative branch and signed by the chief executive. (Five democratic senators voted not to end debate, which illustrates that even nominal supermajorities don’t ensure success.) Nor could Trump, his hard-line attorney general, or the combined demands of Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller and the radio gasbags have done anything about that policy, other than to persuade Congress to rescind it—which, it is clear, would be a political impossibility.

Does this mean Obama shouldn’t have done it? It’s likely true that he had no choice but to stretch executive authority to—and perhaps past—its limit, to fulfill his promise to provide health insurance for poorer Americans, and to protect those who were brought to the United States as children. What we’re learning now is that Republicans’ process gripes about these moves were never really the issue, as such complaints rarely are in Washington.

But what Obama’s desperation highlights is the abject failure of Democrats and progressives to undergird their policies by maintaining their majorities in Congress and in state legislatures. I wrote here two years ago that the Democratic Party was in its worst shape since just before the Great Depression. And things have gotten only worse. Since Obama took office, the party has lost a dozen Senate seats, 60 House Seats, a dozen governorships, and more than 900 state legislative seats. Half of the states are under total Republican control, which means that in arenas from labor law to civil liberties to tax policy, Republicans hold the whip hand.

It comforts some Democrats to believe that gerrymandering and voter suppression are behind this debacle. That’s a rationalization, not an explanation: You can’t gerrymander Senate seats and governorships, and before Republicans could use such tactics, they had to win control of state legislatures in the first place. The GOP gains in these areas have come partly from a concerted effort, more than a dozen years old, to invest money and effort in winning these races. This is slow, unglamorous work, but it is paying off. By contrast, Democrats are more than eager to attend fundraisers for the next bright, shiny presidential contender or hot special-election candidate. Organizing to win back the North Carolina legislature? Not so much.

The consequences of Democrats’ top-down approach to politics is now apparent. Yes, Obama was right to protect the Dreamers. What else could he do? But as he said in announcing the plan back in 2012, it was a “temporary, stopgap” measure—just as the decision to deliver health insurance subsidies was. What we are left with on the immigration front is the unlikely possibility that Congress will provide the fix it has not been able to provide for more than a decade. What we’re left with on the health front is the feeble hope that the Trump administration will keep alive a health-care policy it has repeatedly and ferociously denounced.

The end of DACA and the evisceration of the ACA would be dreadful outcomes. But they would both serve as chilling reminders of what can happen if you lack the political clout to ensure that your policies rest on a rock-solid foundation.