The AHCA is failing because Trump is a bad dealmaker

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Trump weakened his negotiating position by showing his hand

Trump's public comments about the healthcare bill gave individual Republicans in Congress two pieces of information that reduced their incentive to compromise with him about the bill's contents:

1. Trump doesn't really care what the bill does, exactly, so long as he can sign it and say that it "repeals and replaces" Obamacare.

2. Trump really, really wants to sign some bill quickly so he can get past this healthcare chore and move on to fun topics like trade and taxes.

You don't walk into a negotiation and tell your counterparty that you're desperate to make a deal fast and on any terms. But Trump did just that, which is why Freedom Caucus members knew the White House was bluffing when they claimed the bill was closed and wouldn't be amended further.

Trump invited the Freedom Caucus to squeeze him dry. Weak! Bad!

Trump eventually seemed to realize this error, claiming if no bill passed by Friday he wouldn't participate in future efforts to repeal Obamacare.

But that threat was implausible because of his prior admissions.

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Trump is too untrustworthy to make credible side-deals

Often, a member of Congress agrees to vote for the president's pet piece of legislation, and the president promises to advance the member's favorite regulatory initiative, or to advocate for another piece of legislation later, or to campaign for that member's reelection.

Trump might be making such promises. But because he has a decades-long reputation for reneging on his promises to counterparties, members are unlikely to trust Trump when he does so. This limits his negotiating toolbox; because he can't be trusted, his promises have to be made good in the bill text itself.

Trump's assurance that the bill's limitations — for example, its limited impact on insurance regulations under Obamacare — will be addressed through executive action and future legislation do not seem to be convincing enough of his party's own representatives to get this bill passed.

In a way, this is similar to the way Trump alienated mainstream banks with his reputation for not repaying debts, forcing him to seek increasingly creative means of financing his businesses. Screwing your partner in one deal makes it harder to get the next deal done.

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Trump's policy ignorance hinders his judgment about what terms to propose

"Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated," Trump declared in February.

Actually, a lot of people did know that, but Trump seems to have been personally unprepared for the interconnected nature of healthcare policy. Moving the wrong piece can cause the healthcare market to crash down like a Jenga tower, and Trump has no idea how to determine which blocks are loose.

This is how the White House apparently ended up offering Freedom Caucus members the repeal of Essential Health Benefits rules from Obamacare, as part of a last-ditch effort to win their votes.

This policy change — which would allow insurers to sell health plans that don't cover pregnancy, or even plans that don't cover doctor's visits at all — moves the bill to the "right" and looks at first glance like something that should help conservative members of the House Republican conference get on board.

But as I wrote on Wednesday, repealing the EHB rules while leaving other Obamacare rules in place would create a huge mess in health insurance markets that doesn't appeal to anyone. Rep. Justin Amash, one of the sharpest critics of Obamacare's healthcare regulations in the House, said repealing this specific regulation by itself "makes the bill worse, not better."

By making the EHB offer, Trump also scared away moderates like Rep. Charlie Dent and Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, but did not pick up the votes of many Freedom Caucus members who pointed out (not unreasonably) that if you're going to repeal EHB you also need to repeal Obamacare's rule that requires insurers to cover pre-existing conditions, as otherwise insurance markets could collapse.

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