September 7, 2017

Trump and the Democrats Are Not a Match Made in Heaven

Matt Yglesias says Donald Trump should try working with Democrats more often:

Why not cut deals with Democrats, jam the GOP establishment up, and let them whinge to their reporter friends about it?

It’s not, after all, like cutting deals with Democrats on legislation means that Trump will suddenly be a liberal or conservatives will have no reason to support him. Obviously Trump and Democrats will continue to disagree about immigration and gun control [etc.]….But on the other stuff, why not do the things he said he was going to do? Cut a deal with Democrats on infrastructure. Cut a deal with Democrats to reform the tax code without making a huge giveaway to the rich. Cut a deal with Democrats to lower premiums and deductibles, thus addressing actual people’s actual gripes with Obamacare.

It would work. It would be popular. It would be a legislative legacy. And while it would make Ryan and McConnell angry, they’d no more be in a position to stop it than they were in a position to stop Trump and Schumer from making a deal on the debt ceiling.

I don’t get it. This would only work if these bills got to the floor of the House for a vote. But they wouldn’t. Paul Ryan would just toss them in the waste bin and move on.

Now, it’s possible this could work if the bills were so popular, and Trump pushed them so skillfully, that Republicans began to fear losing their seats if they opposed them. But what are the odds? Trump doesn’t have the attention span to really sell this stuff. The vast majority of Republicans are in safe districts that they don’t have to worry about. And the first time Democrats crossed Trump, he’d dump them.

Republicans control Congress. Like it or not, that’s who Trump has to deal with.

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