HARTLAND, MICHIGAN—“A humiliating defeat,” the Associated Press story said. “Dealmaker fails to seal the deal,” read the headline in Herald Bulletin of Anderson, Indiana. “Trump’s presidency perilously off course,” declared the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, of all places.“I think he’s doing a great job,” said Everett Pitts, 45. “I think he’s trying.”Pitts, a quality assurance worker in the Ohio village of Columbus Grove, believes Obamacare has done “nothing but hurt the people.” But he does not believe Donald Trump is responsible in the slightest for his inability to fulfill his campaign promise to get rid of it.“I don’t see how anybody could be mad at Trump for trying to fix it,” he said. “It’s all about Congress. I think that Congress is just trying to fight everything that he does even though he’s trying to do right by the people, for the first time in years. The first time in years that we have a president that really cares.”In theory, Trump’s dramatic Friday failure hurts his image in all sorts of ways. A man who promised to “immediately” repeal the Affordable Care Act did not repeal it at all. A man who vowed to steamroll Washington was steamrolled by Washington. A man who portrayed himself as the world’s best negotiator was unable to cut a deal even with members of his own party.In practice, most of the people who voted for him are not inclined to lay blame at his feet.They stood with him as he mocked a man with a disability and insulted the family of a dead soldier. They were not wavering in the slightest, or seeing him in any new light, over a trifling legislative defeat. Interviews in three Trump-friendly counties in Michigan and Ohio on Sunday revealed a smattering of disappointment in the president. Some Trump voters on Medicaid, the government insurance program he had th ...
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