The closest President Barack Obama came to fully breaking faith with progressives was in 2011, when he and then-House Speaker John Boehner inked a plan to cut trillions of dollars in Medicare and Social Security spending in exchange for a relatively trivial tax increase on wealthy Americans. Boehner ultimately scuttled the deal when he realized his fanatical GOP conference would likely depose him over it, and Obama ended up pocketing his tax increases for free after winning re-election.

The failure of this “grand bargain” saved Obama from himself, not least because there was little justification at the time for a multi-trillion dollar austerity measure. The economy was weak, interest rates were low. Obama would have made good in some metaphysical sense on his pledge to “unite” the parties, but at great political and substantive cost.

It was a bad idea, but at least it was an idea. It isn’t impossible—it’s pretty easy, in fact—to imagine a national policy environment that called for considered, phased-in budget consolidation that, for political reasons, required buy-in from both parties.

What’s remarkable about the Republican health care bill—whether it’s the updated Senate draft, or the one that passed the House two months ago—is that it can’t even be supported on those narrow grounds. Trumpcare, of course, isn’t right for the moment. There is no clamor for millions to lose insurance, for Medicaid to be gutted, for enormous risks and costs to be placed back on sick individuals, to finance tax cuts for wealthy people. But beyond the current milieu, it is hard to think of any hypothetical pressing national need that Trumpcare would address.

Republicans used the right’s opposition to Obamacare, mostly propelled by forces of reaction, as a mobilization tool. Their pandering to that base, mixed with their fanatical commitment to tax cuts, has brought them to the cusp of passing a bill that is a political and substantive orphan.