Socialist healthcare
It is all well labelling Obamacare as socialism before it is introduced. It is fine and dandy to warn of the dangers of an expanding state and tax base while fretting that American workers will go soft.
But once voters have got used to the measures - the subsidies for healthcare and the security of knowing that their insurance covers everything they might reasonably need – and discovered there are no Reds under the hospital beds, it becomes all but impossible to return things to the old ways.
Obamacare surges
During the past month a string of opinion polls have borne out this law of politics. For the first time since it was introduced, Obamacare is now popular with a majority of the population.
The second misconception is perhaps more worrying for Mr Trump and his supporters who celebrated putting the ultimate negotiator into the White House: This President is struggling to master the art of the Washington deal.
Senators would simply not fall into line behind the health proposals. Cajoling and threats did not help. As a result, the President is reportedly mystified that his Congressional leadership would not simply thrash out a compromise and bring him a big fat win to sign.
They, for their part, don’t understand why their President never bothered to get his head around the intricacies of healthcare legislation and help tweak the ideas. Instead of using his populist mandate to sell their proposals to a sceptical country, he resorted to his Twitter bully pulpit to harangue senators into passing a flawed bill.
And therein lies the problem. Mr Trump is still trying to run the government like his business. He doesn’t understand that Congress is not just separate from his White House but in many ways is set up in opposition to him.