IMO, it’s a smart strategy as long as it’s an actual strategy. The main risk is further dampening minority turnout in future elections because Democrats are legitimizing a racist. But if we assume that the next few elections will be decided by how working class whites vote, it’s the best strategy. The best part is that it doesn’t require Democrats to actually move to the right at all. It just means finding common ground with Trump on some issues while fighting him on others.
It seems like in effect we may actually have an independent President. Republicans and Democrats seem ready to compete to put legislation on his desk, and neither side can really be sure what he’ll sign and what he won’t.
These are the reasons I’m not so worried about him. I do figure that will all change before long, but for right now the cat is neither dead nor alive and it could go either way.
Trump’s only hope to avoid a disaster to his brand, family and presidential legacy is to be the middleman playing the two parties against each other. Too bad for the hardliners in the Republican Party that the most achievable and potentially legacy-building promises he made will require them to bend a lot further toward the center than their opponents across the aisle. They may even be quoting Pyrrhus, come 2020.
The problem for Democrats is they can’t put legislation on Trump’s desk. They’re going to be a minority in both halves of Congress. So before they can hope to win over Trump they need to win over some Republicans in Congress. And my guess is Congressional Republicans will see no reason to assist the Democrats, even if they agree with some of the Democratic proposals.
They actually can put legislation on Trump’s desk if minority rights are respected as has been promised. Discharge petitions can get bills with majority support on the floor of the House, and Democrats only need two votes to pass legislation out of the Senate that Trump wants(assuming Pence doesn’t go rogue, which he might, then they need three.)
There are ways, plus Trump has the bully pulpit. If he wants a bill, it probably comes up for a vote at the very least. Clinton got NAFTA to pass with more Republicans than Democrats even though Democrats controlled Congress, because although they wouldn’t support NAFTA, Democrats weren’t about to deny their own President an up or down vote. Republicans will probably feel the same pressure.
While NAFTA was favored more by Republicans, it also had a substantial number of Democrats who supported it (besides Clinton). When it got brought to a vote, 102 Democrats voted in favor of it. (For that matter, 43 Republicans voted against it.)
Discharge petitions are useful if it’s a handful of people in committees who are holding things up. But if you don’t have a majority on the floor, there’s no point in bringing a bill to a vote.
Can you give an example of a proposal the Democrats might introduce that will get 23 Republicans to sign on? An infrastructure bill might be the best bet but if it comes down to it, the Republicans will just submit their own competing bill rather than support a Democratic bill.
That assumes Republicans can get their shit together well enough to even submit a competing bill. A majority in disarray is an opportunity for the minority, especially if Trump can get a few Republicans to be personally loyal to him. Industrial Midwestern Republicans are probably the ones who feel their fate is most closely tied to Trump’s success and will want to be able to run ads in 2018 about how they’ve fought for his priorities.
Democrats obviously can’t get anything done solely by themselves, but if the President wants a bill, there will be enough Republicans supporting it to at least get a vote, and that’s where Democrats can amend legislation and get it through with mostly Democrats. Ryan can obviously invoke the Hastert rule, but that might draw him into open warfare with Trump again.
Aside from infrastructure, Democrats will also get some Republicans for NAFTA reform. Down the road there are other opportunities. If Republicans drop the ball on health care reform, the President might decide that reforming ACA with Democrats is more fruitful.
He’s been elected. That changes things. Until he loses us again, which seems likely. His priorities will differ from ours. House Republicans have little interest in taking up trade and only some in taking up infrastructure. They want to do ACA repeal and tax cuts first.
It’s smart. Either he goes with their stuff, and keeps his promises, or he publicly makes a big deal out of not keeping his promises. I don’t see a loss.
And I don’t think there’s much risk of “being seen as working with Trump” being a bad thing, as who is going to spin that? The Republicans can’t. And the Democrats have no reason to. They can easily push the “we have to do what we can now” narrative.
Once you’re actually forced to work with a narcissist, the guidelines go to butter him up considerably, while looking for a way to leave later before it harms your mental health.
For all the straw-clutching above (and I do understand the reason, I myself did it after Obama’s wins) the hard reality is that the Republicans are setting the agenda here and Trump is far more in line with them than the Democrats. His appointments are already showing his rightward thrust, the latest being General Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor, previously ditched by Obama for daring to tell the truth about Islamic terrorism.
[Quote=New York Times]
But many of those who worked with General Flynn attribute his firing to management problems, saying his attempts to overhaul the sprawling agency had left it a chaotic, backbiting mess. They also question whether his tactical acumen — he was especially good at unraveling militant networks in Afghanistan and Iraq — can translate into the kind of strategic thinking needed at the White House.
“He is a very talented information gatherer,” said Sarah Chayes of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, who worked with General Flynn when he ran military intelligence in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011. “But his thinking process is not sufficiently analytical to test some streams against others and make sense of it, or draw consistent conclusions,” she said. “If you listen to him, in 10 minutes you’ll hear him contradict himself two or three times.”
[/QUOTE]
Sounds like his boss. Oh, and that’s not the only thing:
[QUOTE=Mike Flynn’s Twitter Account, posted February 27, 2016]
Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL: please forward this to others: the truth fears no questions…
[/quote]
I don’t think they actually expect to be able to put bills on his desk, they just want him and Republicans to be seen fighting against things he promised. It’s win win really.
Even if he’s not a textbook narcissist, he has enough narcissistic tendencies that it’s useful to keep them in mind.
Now that he actually IS the P-word (I can’t write it out), he WILL want to make a success of it. This is the supreme achievement of his life, and he will not want to go down in history as a failure, or as the one P-word that half the country hated. He wants to “make America great again,” whatever the hell that means, and part of it is to be remembered with a sparkly halo over his head. He will be motivated to try to make Congress play nice, while keeping his campaign promises (if he can sort them out), and not pissing off all the people who voted against him. Tall order? Narcissists think they are God. I said earlier that he will be a puppet of the Republicans, but now I’m thinking not so much. He said he doesn’t read because he already knows everything.* And he has also said that he thinks he’s smarter than all the generals, and I believe we can extrapolate that to Congressmen, too.
I agree. If the Dems get something across, it’s a win. If the Pubs collapse into a mudpit wresting match, it’s a win for the Dems, too.
*Does anyone think there’s a remote chance that he can’t read? I’ve read about executives who make it to the top of their companies without knowing how to read, because they’ve become experts at faking it by a variety of strategies. My google-fu has failed on this topic, but I recall an article in the WSJ years ago among others.
Considering that minorities didn’t turn out to stop Trump to this year, and that Trump just outperformed the last several Republicans among those who did vote, at this point this doesn’t seem to be much of a risk. Whatever anyone thinks of what Trump has said/done up till now, minorities aren’t voting as if they think Trump is uniquely racist.
Trump has also said repeatedly that rebuilding the inner cities and gaining support of minorities is a priority of his. If the Dems are convinced that Trump will say/do things in the future that will make him be perceived as politically toxic, then all the more reason to work with him now, and get what they can get while they can get it.