Many years ago we accepted the UniParty.  Shortly thereafter CTH broke away from political identity framed around arguments of party and personality; we chose to focus on policy and outcomes.  Washington DC is a singular party, a UniParty. We have been explaining, countering and fighting “The Big Club” in DC for years; always following the money.
President Trump is the first political entity in our lifetime that not only comprehends the faces of the false arguments (the personalities of false choice and controlled opposition), but more importantly sees the architects behind the Potemkin villages represented by those faces. When it comes to domestic economic policy, the architects are the BIG CLUB.
So, what is “The Big Club“?  …What “Deep State” is to intelligence, military intervention and foreign policy – the “BIG CLUB” is to matters of domestic economics…
Politicians do not write laws. Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer do not sit in their offices writing out scripts of laws and legislation; no politician does. Politicians are the faces who sell legislation that unseen hands create. The Big Club represents the hands that actually create legislation; lobbyist hands.

As such, it makes no sense to argue about the salespeople Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz or Elizabeth Warren when none are creating the legislative constructs they are selling.  How’s that bill to ‘confiscate El Chappo funds to build the wall’ coming?
Indeed, it makes much more sense to focus the attention on the unseen hands that are never discussed – These are the roots of the issues, the politicians are merely the expendable and interchangeable sales force.

The Big Club are massive and complex networks of lobbying groups who actually write legislation.  After lobbyists have written the law, depending on their own evaluation of importance therein, they pay the politicians to support and sell their construct.
The amount of payment varies depending on how valuable the construct is to the interests of the Club. Big legislative constructs that provide the Club large income increases are worth more than smaller ones.
This is the accurate background framework to consider ObamaCare.
Within The BIG CLUB there are, essentially, two larger factions with interest: Big Labor and Wall Street (big crony-business). There are other factions like Big Green (Al Gore) etc. However, for the sake of ObamaCare the two that matter are “Big Labor” (AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW etc), and Wall Street (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tom Donohue).
The Big Club has paid for ObamaCare’s construct, and they are not going to allow their sales force to walk away from it. From their position, this is a massive ‘multi-multi-hundreds-of-millions’ expenditure that has already taken place.
Tom Donohue (U.S. CoC) already lost hundreds of millions when his construct (his team actually did the writing) of TPP was lost due to Donald Trump. Donohue’s TPP loss followed the loss of Comprehensive Immigration Reform (2014 Dave Brat), and his loss of Common Core Education standards, again with Donald Trump.
Multinational corporate lobbyist Tom Donohue spent hundreds of millions on Gang of Eight, Common Core, TPP and ObamaCare.

Donohue paid off AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka to get him to stop being public about his opposition of TPP. The quid-pro-quo was transparently evident in 2016 when Trumka endorsed candidate Hillary Clinton who was supporting Donohue’s TPP.
Having lost TPP, Go8 and Common Core, there is no way Tom Donohue (the financial interests behind him) is going to accept losing the biggest investment to date, ObamaCare.
♦ Big Labor support ObamaCare for a few reasons. #1 it granted fiscal stability to their retirement programs which were failing with the increased costs of providing healthcare coverage. #2 it creates additional profit margin space within union companies for more lucrative compensation contracts. And #3 ideologically it was constructed to eventually end up with a single-payer system. All three points are great for Big Labor.
♦ Wall Street supports ObamaCare because it: #1 removes the cost of providing healthcare from the cost of producing products in the U.S. [However, you’ll note the consumer price of manufactured goods never actually decreases, instead the savings go to the profit margin.] #2 allows the manufacturing cost equity to streamline globalization efforts.
Both primary factions within the BIG CLUB stood to gain substantially if they could shift the cost of healthcare from their corporate ledgers into the personal checkbooks of the individual U.S. consumer.   Hence, they looked at the lobbying cost of ObamaCare as a long-term legislative investment with a massive upside for profit.

After the GOPe wing of the UniParty was voted into the majority in both houses (2014), the Big Club sales people (politicians) needed to give the illusion of “repeal” or “removal”, but not actually do anything which would remove it. So long as Obama was in office the optical games were easy; with Clinton later in office the games would be no longer needed.
Big Club spends to make sure Clinton wins the Presidency.
#NeverTrump making sense now?
Rut Roh.
Now, fast forward to 2017 and President Trump is in office on a promise to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
Oh snap, NOW what is the Big Club going to do?
Stall for time…. Quick construct plan to deal with the unexpected. Stall, block cabinet and down-stream confirmations… Activate astroturf to provide Sales Force cover… Paul Ryan lies to Sean Hannity… etc.
More things reconciling now?
Once you see the strings, it’s almost impossible to watch the marionettes and not see them.