House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer has a stilted way of talking sometimes, but it’s not too hard to understand the point he’s trying to make here:
“Look, you’ve had experience for 100 days,” said House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), as if he were speaking directly to Trump. “Your party is a divided party — you found that out. Some things you thought you were going to be able to do you haven’t been able to do, not because of Democratic opposition but Republican division.
He added: “That ought to tell you that on important, must-do issues, you’re well-advised on a bipartisan basis to get those done.”
At this point, I think almost everyone who tries to reason with President Trump is doing it mainly for appearances and not because they sincerely think he might listen. Steny Hoyer doesn’t really want to work with the president. After the insulting campaign he ran, it’s doubtful that many Democrats ever wanted to help Trump rack up legislative achievements, and any hope of that was lost when he started gathering Neo-Nazi advisers around him.
Still, we can at least craft an alternative recent history in which Trump pivoted after the election in recognition of the fact that he would not be able to govern independently of the two parties if he were completely dependent on either one of them. And if he didn’t get that basic point, he could have at least anticipated certain mathematical problems like the need to get eight Democratic senators to agree to go along with most of his legislative agenda so that he could avoid filibusters.
Hoyer points out a third problem, which is that Trump can’t depend on the Republicans because they’re too divided among themselves. None of this matters all that much anymore. The president can’t get a do-over.
At this point, he’s trying to make a show of keeping campaign promises, but there’s not a whole lot he can accomplish. He isn’t getting his big beautiful wall, and he certainly isn’t going to get Mexico to pay for it. He threatens to scrap NAFTA but backs down quickly. He’s gone from setting the record for disrespecting China to saying that they’re the most respectable government you’ve ever seen. Forget about his promise to label them a currency manipulator. He’s got no plan for passing his tax reform. Obamacare isn’t going anywhere and he isn’t going to stop paying for the subsidies. He’ll never get an infrastructure bill passed. He’s already been drawn into foreign entanglements in Syria, Afghanistan, and the Korean Peninsula. He said he’d cut deals, but can’t cut any deals. He isn’t draining the swamp; he’s filling it. The Courts are slapping down his immigration agenda.
Nothing is easy and nothing is happening fast. Almost nothing is going to happen at all that isn’t entirely within his discretion as the leader of the executive branch, and he’s even failing bigly to take advantage of his ability to get almost anyone he wants confirmed.
Here are some things that are going to confound him in short order. He got an extension to avoid a government shutdown but has made little progress on resolving the disputes that made the extension necessary. He’ll need to figure out how to get the debt ceiling raised by the end of the summer, at the latest, and he has no plan for how to make that happen.
A slew of other routine issues, but still pressing ones, are coming up on the congressional docket before the end of the year. Congress will have to decide whether to reauthorize a Veterans Affairs health-care program established in the wake of scandals across the agency. A Food and Drug Administration program that charges fees to drug companies seeking approval of new products expires by August. The Federal Aviation Administration needs to be reauthorized by September — as does the nation’s flood-insurance program.
There also is work to be done on the annual defense-policy bill — influenced this year by the ongoing showdowns with North Korea, Russia and Syria — a must-pass piece of legislation that is often used as a way to pass other unrelated items. And the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, but lawmakers in both parties warned in recent days that the House and Senate have not started working on a new budget plan.
Asked whether there is a plan to pass a budget for the next fiscal year, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said, “I’m sure there is, I just haven’t detected it.”
Those Veterans Affairs scandals are ginned up and phony, but the Republicans believe their own bullshit and have poisoned their base against the best health provider in the country. If Trump wants to keep his promises to vets, he’s going to have a problem and, let’s face it, he’s going to fail. The White House is going to show no leadership on the FDA, FAA or a realistic plan for next year’s fiscal budget. They’ll probably be annoyed that Congress is setting aside their agenda and wasting time on the nuts and bolts of basic governance.
Congress doesn’t have the time or the bandwidth or the competent leadership or a coherent governing majority to accomplish the must-do things on their list, let alone to keep wasting energy on doomed legislative efforts that have zero buy-in from the Senate.
Probably the only thing Trump has going for him at this point is his own cluelessness about just how desperately insane he appears and how screwed he is. And all of this would be true even if the Russia problem didn’t exist. But, of course, it does exist and it will plague him once the testimony starts rolling in. At the latest, things will take an ugly turn by May 8th:
Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates is set to testify May 8 before a Senate judiciary investigation into Russia’s interference in last year’s elections, her second congressional hearing at which she’s scheduled to testify within the span of a week.
Yates’ appearance before the Sen. Lindsey Graham-led Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism would mark her second time when the former Obama appointee has been called to the Hill to testify on Russia’s meddling. Yates has been invited to testify at a public hearing of the House intelligence committee to be scheduled after May 2. A date has not been confirmed yet.
James Clapper, director of national intelligence under former President Barack Obama, was also scheduled to appear before the Senate judiciary subcommittee in the same hearing as Yates.
Yates and Clapper can explain the whole Michael Flynn fiasco in painful and humiliating detail, and while they’ll probably be tight-lipped about the broader counterintelligence investigation, what they can confirm will be devastating to the administration.
That will just be an hors d’oeuvre for later testimony and possibly grand juries.
I can’t envision a single way Trump can win on anything, pretty much ever, under any foreseeable circumstances. And maybe what we’ll get is an impotent and stymied president explaining how everyone else is to blame. Our system is rotten. Both parties are colluding against him. The media is corrupt and fake.
Other presidents might find a way out in the unity that comes from a national security crisis. But he’s not capable of populating his own Pentagon and State Department, let alone talking about foreign policy in a way that might unite people behind his leadership. Bush was bad enough, but people felt like he had adults surrounding him and that we didn’t have a whole lot of choice but to give him a chance. Trump is at war with his own intelligence community and the State Department, and he couldn’t possibly have less credibility with the plurality of people who voted against him. That could become dangerous if the crisis is real and national unity is needed, but that’s all the more reason that he’s doomed.
There are still theoretical ways out of this mess, but they’re not realistic. He’s created a situation in which he’s wholly dependent on a party that is dysfunctional and that cannot and will not deliver for him. He can’t attack them or sideline them to approach the Democrats, and the Democrats wouldn’t have him if he tried.
He should quit. Honestly, he should see the writing on the wall and just quit. Parliamentary governments fail to form after elections all the time. It’s not all that unusual. This government isn’t going to work, and making us wait it out for three and a half years is as stupid as it is irresponsible.
There are no prospects for the Trump administration. It cannot and will not get better.
No can do — he and his kids are making too much money off the level of exposure that money can’t buy.
Money talks.
Completely agree.
I speculate that the main/only reason why Trump ran was to improve his brand and make money. I don’t think he expected to win, and now we witness that he’s a bit down/sad about having to “work so hard” (who knew Presidenting was hard??) and not do all the fun stuff that he used to do.
But back down and quit? Stop dreaming. Not gonna happen. Now way, no how.
It would be incredibly damaging for Republicans, and no matter how much many of them loathe and detest Trump, the last thing they want is for him to quit. They’re just working out how to work around him, and they’ll figure that out.
Plus why Trump just walk away from the Fatted Calf? R U Kidding me?? He and his kids are already raking in the bigly buck$ with ever more to come their way. No way is Trump gonna walk away from that.
Quit dreaming.
I sure hope you’re right. If Trump is as boxed in as you say, and if — big IF — there are no SCOTUS vacancies or Trump-manufactured national crises to address over the next few years, we may emerge from this debacle more unscathed that I thought possible.
Good and devastating analysis, Booman. One minor edit: shouldn’t that be “majority”, not “plurality”, in the 4th-from-the-end paragraph, describing those who voted against Trump?
Nah, a plurality means you got more votes but less than 50%+1.
Think Jungle Primary.
Where’s the damn reset button? Just re-read the paragraph in question.
Your probably right, Mass, I’m definitely wrong.
If the press would do its job and stop normalizing Trump and his idiot band of malicious minstrals, the public might see how truly screwed we are. For example, in our daily local newspaper today the top of the front page says, “A Truly Different Presidency”. It advertises the article which is at the newspaper’s online site and the article doesn’t appear in the print version. Without even knowing what the article says, the average reader won’t go to the site. They will just accept that Trump is unorthodox and move along.
Why not “A Truly Terrible Presidency”? Why not describe in detail the damage Trump has done, and given that the Republicans somehow unify, will manage to do in the future?
It’s a given that the diehard Trump fans won’t be persuaded, but if actual truths could be spelled out, like the jobs he’s killing, the damage to the environment he’s proposing, and the wreckage of immigration and of women’s rights he’s causing, then people who aren’t politically aware might start to understand.
Trump won’t give up the Presidency. He’s too vain and there’s plenty of money and connections for him as a “businessman” to walk away from. While probably most of the old conservatives would secretly like to see him gone, even they realize how damaging it would be to the Republican Party to have him leave before the end of his term.
When his policies result in fewer jobs, etc as you say, or a recession he will start to lose support. And if the business climate, aka the stock market retracts, there will be hell to pay.
We’re seeing some mixed signals on the economic front. The equities markets (Dow Jones, NASDAQ) are generally okay, but last quarter’s economic growth rate was lower than expectations. I don’t think any experts are starting to predict recession just yet, but we are reaching a point where a recession is more and more conceivable. In this case, probably is more cyclical than anything else for now. The current White House and Congressional leadership’s ability to cope with even a mild economic downturn is not one that would lead us to have any confidence. They’ll f*ck that up like everything else so far.
A recession would really mess him up. But at this point I agree that doesn’t seem in the cards, especially with tax cuts and infrastructure on the table. But he has made or is proposing cuts elsewhere even in health care.
America has become unattractive as a tourist destination. It is unattractive as a place to hold scientific conferences, international trade shows etc. Who wants there conference located somewhere people from some countries or of some ethnicities fear to attend?
There is a downturn in foreign students choosing American colleges.
I do not see any of that doing the economy much good, even Branson MO is having problems finding people to make beds and wash dishes.
NOne of this will do the economy much good. Nor will adding uncertainty to the health insurance markets.
There is not a single thing you wrote that his supporters won’t cheer for.
Shit, get me in the right mood, and I would cheer for some of it!
.
Making America great again can happen by subtraction just as well as any other way.
They get rid of half of us, and America is, by their lights, pretty damn great.
Ah dunno. I bet there are a lot of Trump supporters in Branson, Mo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qotwYEaT_To
Quite true. It’s unrealistic to expect Trump voters to suddenly have epiphanies. Few people want to accept, especially this soon, that they’ve made a big mistake.
But people vote from their stomachs. If the economy starts to significantly turn, or if it becomes obvious that nothing is going to change regarding new jobs and “jobs coming home”, there will be more and more defections.
All that is assuming no huge surprises on the Russia front.
No. We’ve reached the Masada stage of white resentment politics. Better the country be destroyed and them with it, than give The Other control over anything.
They’re content to watch their own children sicken and die first — via ACA repeal. Why would mass unemployment trigger a different response?
In a lengthy NYT article an Indiana woman who lost her job of 27 years when the factory closed (same parent company as Carrier), she said she still supported Trump and felt confident he had done everything he could to save her job.
If the press would do its job and stop normalizing Trump and his idiot band of malicious minstrals, …
They normalized C- Augustus and Trump is just the continuation. Do you remember when he hosted Rusty and other RWNJ shockjocks on the WH lawn? I do. Did Fox News ever give up on C- Augustus? Only in his last two years, if at all. BTW, did anyone see Pelosi’s appearance on ABC this morning? Yuck!! No wonder why the Democratic Party is in the mess it’s in.
This Week link. Main points: 1) Democrats are unified 2) Democrats walk the walk but have to improve the talk 3) a Republican in the WH means Democrats will win the House in 2018 because that’s how it always works. See no problem for Democrats. (Except for the minor technicality that Clinton and Obama lost the House within two years and GWB held onto the GOP House for six years.)
Learned something new today from the House minority leader: …We opposed him [GWB] on the war in Iraq vociferously. Well except for the 81 House Democrats that voted yea and the majority of Democratic Senators that did the same, two of whom were subsequently the Democratic presidential nominee and two of whom became Democratic VP nominees.
“…Parliamentary governments fail to form after elections all the time….”
This, except not this. The analogy with parliamentary systems is spot-on in one respect. We have three parties: two large and nearly equal, one very small but larger than the difference between the two big ones. This is the ultimate parliamentary antipattern. The splinter party holds the balance of power, because they can block anything they do not want.
But it is much worse than this, and this is also where the analogy fails, because there is no historical parallel for the splinter party dishonestly pretending to be part of one of the large parties.
The House Coercion Caucus are a third party. Paul Ryan has to negotiate with them in precisely the same way he would have to negotiate with a declared third party.
Opinion piece in WaPo last night that he’s into “consolidating power” and would like to see the Senate filibuster go. He thinks it’s dangerous for the country to have to depend on the minority party.
https:/www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/29/trump-is-now-talking-about-consolidating-h
is-own-power?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-politics%3Ahomepage%2Fcard
He has no other choice. Argentina was about to give Jimmy Carter an award and the donald told them to delay. Another bridge to the dems has been burned.
That WaPo “analysis” is alarmist in the extreme. It does not make clear that the President literally has no power to change the rules of the Senate. It reads as if Trump could make a unilateral decision to end the filibuster; you have to read the “analysis” carefully to discover that he cannot.
Any “analysis” talking about the rules of the Senate which fails to mention Majority Leader McConnell, or any Senator at all, is pretty piss poor “analysis”.
Somehow, the prospect of McConnell giving away power to the executive (which is EXACTLY what nuking the filibuster would do) isn’t really ringing my bells.
I don’t know if it will happen, but if called upon, I’d bet against it.
I guess he’s making the case that the rules/norms are “antiquated,” so they need to change. Trump is stymied by how slow legislating is, how many roadblocks there are. I see that as a benefit and the Senate was actually set up to function as a check on the hordes.
Trump is so devoid of knowledge of history that he doesn’t get the importance of founding principles. But he was thrilled that McConnell would nuke the filibuster for Gorsuch. Would he pressure to do it again? Or to pressure him to avoid or undo some other “rule of the Senate” that would suit their purpose?
I also wonder whether Trump is starting to understand how much he doesn’t know (and never knew). Maybe he’s beginning to see that his ignorance matters. How will he react to that?
The 1st and 4th Amendments are much more “antiquated” than the current rules of the Senate. Cheeto Mussolini is looking to bring those into malfunction, too.
Donald Trump is the best troll in all of politics
There won’t be higher purpose?
Calling DT an apprentice would be too kind: he is a bad actor and lousy politician. At least Ronald Reagan had some experience in bad politics [McCarthyism], Screen Actors Gild, governorship and had Nancy on his side.
Admittedly DT has been launched by a disturbed decade for the GOP, truly harvesting what they sowed. Trump is performing way beyond his capacity on all fronts. He stated it’s hard work, believe me it’s no fun job and he has unbearable responsibilities. He wants to “succeed” before he quits putting blame on the oher guy. Show him a narcist’s option for an exit …
As a provocateur, that’s play-acting the lessons learned from his good friend Roger Stone …
○ Bad Old Days | The New Yorker - May 2016 |
The political provocateur Roger Stone talks about his long friendship with Trump.
Recalls his meeting in 1979 with Roy Cohn, the notorious lawyer and fixer.
You assume the Popular Vote Loser’s goals are legislative in nature, that’s just the cover.
It’s always been and always will be about the grift. As long as money either directly (think the meetings he holds in Florida) or indirect (change the tax code so he benefits) flows into the family’s coffers, he ain’t going nowhere.
Plus, he does have one big achievement thus far: the stolen Supreme Court seat. Moreover, because the Senate GOP effectively blocked Obama’s change to makeover the judiciary, Twitler and the GOP Senate can now do that. My guess is the task of finding, vetting and them nominating rwnj judges will be left to Sharia Mike Dense. His fingerprints will be all over that.
I’ve no doubt Trump and the Republicans will continue to degrade the judiciary. Might be even worse under Pence.
As for what motivates Trump, the deepest issue is nothing more than ego. Money is a motivator only to the extent he sees it as providing validation of his self-professed greatness. On a practical level, this 70 years old man doesn’t need more money nor do his spoiled children.
Yes, the GOP definitely stole a Supreme Court seat. Trump’s participation in that theft was tangential. He won the election. That was his contribution. And then he appointed who he was told to appoint. The rest was done for him by far more skilled Machiavellians.
“On a practical level, this 70 years old man doesn’t need more money…”
That’s probably not true. Trump is way over-leveraged and deeply in hock. Course we haven’t seen his Income Tax filings yet. A lot of people think that’s why we haven’t seen them.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/guide-donald-trump-debt
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/302216-how-much-money-does-the-trump-org
anization-owe
>>Money is a motivator only to the extent he sees it as providing validation of his self-professed greatness.
in other words, money is EVERYTHING! He’ll stop wanting MORE of it when he’s dead and not one second before.
I am a bit apprehensive that we might be predicting the sudden demise of the Trump administration for the next three and half years… For one thing Republican voters, if not their representatives, still appear to be solidly with him, which I think means that he can continue to fail without much consequences. Remember, congress (and the Democratic party) polls much worse than he does. They will never accept that they elected a walking disaster. He has pretty much already lost everyone else, and he obviously doesn’t give a shit about doing anything to change that fact.
What will it take to turn Republican voters? My guess is that if he starts costing them some serious money (stock market crash, health insurance meltdown, trade war, etc…) they might turn against him, otherwise they just seem to be pleased that he ticks off Democrats so much. Plus, too many of them truly believe that government needs to be destroyed- and that’s exactly what Trump is doing with his incompetence.
I don’t see the Russia thing as having much effect on anything unless there is some hard evidence that turns up that directly involves Trump. Otherwise I think Republicans will be able to continue to tap dance and blow smoke up their voters asses about the whole mess.
I would be curious, given that you have I think quite excellently listed all the reasons why Trump won’t be able to accomplish anything, of how how you see things playing out in the future… I honestly have no clue. Possibly he starts a war with N. Korea? lets hope that there are enough sane people left to not let that happen.
If he starts a war with North Korea, Trump is likely out because we would be headed for a global depression as 25 million South Koreans are killed, much of their homeland becomes uninhabitable because of artillery strikes on South Korea’s Nuclear power plants leave radioactive and toxic waste everywhere, and I believe something like 1/10 of all electronic manufacturing in the world ceases instantly.
Something like 3 out of every 10 electronic devices in the world require parts that come from South Korea was the last I heard. That number could be bogus, but I wouldn’t bet on it being bogus because it’s too large.
War with North Korea ends badly for the whole world even without nukes.
i disagree with the idea that starting a stupid disastrous war gets Trump out. You’re right about all the other consequences, but he’ll play the war president and the whole country will chant U-S-A! and critics will be labeled traitors and locked up pronto.
I hate to tell you this, but the consequences of the vaporization of South Korea would be a lot worse than a mere global depression.
It looks that way. Since none of the Russiagate nonsense has produced any hard evidence after months of reporting, and because there would be major face-saving involved by Donald and the GOP, he is unlikely to just walk away out of frustration. To do so too easily would make him the laughing stock of the country, of the world. The Trump brand, including Ivanka’s clothing line, would be tarnished permanently.
No, he won’t leave unless there is some provable major scandal or calamity: 1) an Edwin Edwards scenario, 2) a major recession (cyclical or caused by one of Donald’s ill-advised economic measures) which Donald responds to with more tax cuts for the rich and big corps, or 3) if he plays the LBJ card — to look tough and manly, for political gain, a/o to further placate the Deep State — with a huge FP blundering commitment somewhere of hundreds of thousands of US troops accompanied by a military draft.
The latter two are more likely to happen than the first. And of those two, I’d bet on #2.
As for N Korea, it appears China and to a lesser extent Russia are getting more involved in trying to work out something diplomatically at the UN, which should put more pressure on Donald and the Pentagon to play ball.
I still think the risk of a WW3 is more to be found in our dealings wrt Syria, Iran, Ukraine and aggressive Nato activities in certain countries along Russia’s border.
But it has had a very large effect. It’s sucked up 90% of the oxygen available to the opposition. Consumed the attention of partisan Democrats. What does the ordinary person — left, right, and center — know more about, Russia-Putin-Trump or the initial acts of Trump’s wreaking crew?
The “ordinary person” knows more about Trump’s initial acts, by a wide margin.
Democrats aren’t following the Russia story — it’s too slow, confusing, and boring; they’re just waiting for blood in the water — and Republicans (especially Trump supporters) couldn’t care less.
Do you have a reference for your claim?
A problem is that your claim contradicts the claim of the DP that Russia-Putin interfered with the US election. And Democrats — ordinary, political elites, “liberal” media folks, and politicians in office — have continued to blare this claim.
I believe the “claim” of Russian interference in the recent election has been documented as fact. Now the extent and the effect of their interference can be rightly debated, but they have most definitely interfered.
Insofar as those who think staying focused on the Russia story is sucking all the air out of the room, I happen to be on an indivisible conference call right now. Many of us stay informed about the Russia story and take multiple small actions along the way, i.e. resist. I recommend the latter as a way to keep one’s spirits up. I’m personally motivated by these calls and by my own calls to my GOP Rep and my GOP senators.
Are you not concerned about what happened last November? It was not normal. And it wasn’t all Hillary’s fault.
It wasn’t ‘interference’ — it was just a few overzealous low-level functionaries who, in in pursuit of peace and friendship between our two great peoples got a little carried away.
Don’t call it ‘interference’! Something like ‘fraternal exuberance’ would be better.
Mir i druzhba!
Please provide the reference for this documented fact because your belief is irrelevant. And not “fact” based on some BS definition of interference such as Putin said something indicating that he preferred Trump to Clinton because a) Americans don’t vote based on what Putin prefers and b) other heads of state indicated a preference for Clinton and they aren’t being accused of interference. Also, claims and/or allegations aren’t facts regardless of how much anyone wants to believe that they are.
Marie, I seriously don’t know what universe of news you inhabit, consume, or disdain, but here goes:
Russia’s Interference in the U.S. Election Was Just the Beginning – The …
https:/www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/russia-election…/524208
Senate Russia hearing: Rubio divulges hack attempts – CNNPolitics.com
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/30/politics/senate-intelligence-committee-hearing-russia/
https:/en.wikipedia.org…Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_election…The United States Intelligence Community officially concluded that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 United States elections. In January 2017….
Russian Hacking in the U.S. Election – The New York Times
https:
/www.nytimes.com/news-event/russian-election-hacking
Complete coverage of Russia’s campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.
Of course, Americans don’t vote for whatever American candidate Putin might favor but they can darn well be influenced by his wide scale efforts to influence voters to choose Trump and to disdain Hillary Clinton whom he despised because of her humiliating (for him) criticism of his country’s 2011 elections.
dw,
Here is a site that will explain how to do hot links,
how to make a hotlink in HTML
It’s super easy, and saves people from the scourge of copy and paste.
.
I’m guessing she gets news from Russia Today, Sputnik, The Intercept, The Young Turks, and other crackpot sites.
Marie!
All I can say is Thank You!
It’s been very frustrating here with all the neoliberal defenders. And their obvious bias towards the Democrats is unbearable. It’s a breath of fresh air when you bring your unbiased analytical skills to the pond. I do worry though, I know you don’t like speculation, and I know you prefer unbiased analysis. But people who are new here might see This , where you call a successful, accomplished Hispanic male a ‘nothing’ and think you are allowing your biases to show. Or here, where you attempt to tell a successful accomplished black man whom he can call on the phone. The new people might get the wrong idea, and think a pattern is developing, particularly when you add it to this. Yes, I know you have analyzed African American voting history closely, and there is no speculation involved, that you have proof that all African Americans vote for the same reason. But newcomers don’t know your meticulous nature, and how you abhor speculation. It would be helpful if you reminded us more often.
Anyway…I wanted to thank you for your unbiased posts, that are completely lacking in speculation. When I see your posts, I hear the fluttering of angels wings.
As usual, I will let our esteemed host have the last word.
seriously?
Now Nalbar, you know a phone call is absolutely more interfering in a national election when it’s a former head of state than when it’s an active head of state.
You also know damn well that phone calls are absolutely interfering in another nations political affairs and trying to influence an election but having a nation’s ambassador, say the Russian Ambassador, at a different nations major party’s national convention, say the Republican National Convention, is absolutely not interference by a nation in another nation’s affairs or an attempt to influence an election.
Jeez man. Get with the program here. Ever body knows the problem isn’t the Republican voters, it’s the spineless Dem’s failure to be insufficiently pure in their opposition that is the problem.
And we all know the French election is the most important issue facing America right now, and to discuss it in all its glorious detail is in no way an attempt to distract commenters at the Pond from the perfidy of Trump, and Russian interference in the election (which never happened, anyway).
.
We’re talking about two totally different things.
The Russian influence on the election itself, obviously, was huge — possibly decisive, even if it wasn’t illegal and treasonous and just generally awful. I take a back seat to no-one in condemning the whole sordid sequence of events.
But the power of the “Russia story” to influence domestic politics, today, is a totally different story. And that’s where I’m saying it falls short — for whatever reasons, it just doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere.
Do I deplore this state of affairs? Of course I do. I’m simply saying, the American public doesn’t seem to care.
Funny now that this “it’s impossible to walk and chew gum” line has been show decisively to be wrong, and Trump has been blocked from instituting his program at nearly every pass while never getting a polling honeymoon period but in fact seeing his popularity continue to fall… opposition to Trump in congress, the courts, in town hall protests and in the streets producing the least successful and consequential first 100 days in recent history… all successfully proceeding in parallel with investigating Putin’s criminal interference…
You’re still doing the best you can to keep f*cking that chicken. Thanks for the help.
Mir i druzhba!
right. And Полетят головы — Heads will roll. In fact heads already have rolled. Sad!
Compared to today’s insanity, Tricky Dick Nixon sounds … sane!
○ Frank Gannon’s interview with Richard Nixon | May 27, 1983 – audio |
Do you think that the—-that the Russian people really have the same desire for peace that you feel the American people have?
Republican presidents have two jobs : cut taxes and regulations, and appoint conservative judges . The rest is smoke and mirrors (including starting small wars, which involves a lot of smoke). Trump will do just fine on regulations and judges. I wouldn’t be surprised if he can get his tax cuts through as well. So I doubt he’ll be going anywhere soon (other than mar a lago on weekends).
Boo I would be interested to hear your opinion of whether trumps tax plans have any chance of passing.myself, I bet something will get through the house, and I would not be surprised if 8 dem senators can be found to support big tax cuts.
No chance in hell.
Which is why he wants to end the filibuster.
For tax cuts he doesn’t need to break a filibuster, though the cuts only last for 10 years under reconciliation rules IIRC.
This is my take. True tax reform, or even the tax deform they want, is hard. They can’t get it done with a narrow majority, a large number of delusional nutcases on their side, and a Dem party that has the sense to stay away from the mess. But W-style tax cuts for the rich are doable via reconciliation, just like last time, and I think in the end that’s what we’ll get. I think it won’t happen until 2018, though, because the Republican don’t seem to realize how incompetent they are and they’re going to keep trying for that mythical Laffer Curve driven Randian utopia of tax cuts to free
rich whitesjob creators from the awful burden of paying less in taxes than any other developed country in the world. Only when it become apparent even to the fools in the FreeDumb caucus that that’s not going to happen will they finally panic and shove out a capital gains tax cut before 2018 takes away their ability to pass anything in the House.Even that isn’t easy because there’s not a spare surplus lying around like with Bush. The baseline is totally different. It’s why “health care needed to come first”. They had to change that baseline to make the temporary ones good and deep — and as we saw with Obama, even temporary ones are tough to get rid of. They were never going to make them permanent without the momentum of health care to give their conference the confidence to do it. They might get something, but I wouldn’t gamble on it.
Good! Happy to hear it.
The whole reason Trump is POTUS is because he hates the same people the people who voted for him hate. His campaign started with ‘they are rapists and criminals’ when speaking about brown people. His immigration restrictions are based on keeping brown people from the Middle East from coming here. His attacks on democrats (Hillary SMASH) got wild cheers. His attacks on the media and ‘fake news’ got his crowds excited. And of course, attacks on black people at his rallies, some of whom were actually republicans, got his crowds physically attacking them. Mention Black Lves Matter? They would go nuts.
He thrives on hate…it’s his reason for being POTUS, and his reason for continuing on. Because so much of immigration policy is Executive branch driven….he can do what he considers his main job very effectively. Because Session is head of the Justice Department…he can accomplish what he considers great deeds against the black community, and it’s ability to vote.
THAT is his super power. Hate.
.
‘He hates the same people I hate. Hand me the goddamn ballot.’
That’s all the election post-mortem any one needs.
That is the whole of the law and the prophets.
The rest is commentary.
Tell me, whom did Hillary hate?
And yet ……..
When at least 2 of the following 3 justices need to be replaced – Ginsburg, Kennedy, Breyer – the conservative dominance of the Supreme Court will be extended in reach and 25 years in length.
That alone is worth the Trump win for evil.
The real reason is that he’s 70 something and he’s going to start weighing his distaste for the demands of the position against his enjoyment of the pomp and perks. I wouldn’t be surprised if he decides it’s not how he wants to spend the precious few years of vigor he’s got left.
He doesn’t seem to be doing much of filling the demands of the position. His staff reportedly doesn’t even offer him decisions anymore – they just give him a policy and he agrees to it. Basically he signs vapid executive orders on TV and plays golf at Mar-a-Lago with heads of state coming to meet with and flatter him. That’s not demanding and probably more or less what he wants, and not very different from a high-profile retired life. No reason to quit, unless Congress actually probes how much he owes the Russian mob.
Agree. Trump may truly be sad that he’s lost some aspects of his former life, but where’s his beef? He gets to go in front of the adulating crowds at his ongoing “campaign” rallies. He LOVES that.
He gets to fly to Mar El Largo every weekend on the US Taxpayer’s dime, and he LOVES that (and his idiot base love paying for it, too, go figure).
If he can appoint some more Supreme Court Justices, he’ll be in hog heaven. If the rest of his campaign promises come to naught? So? He and his spawn are making yuuuge bucks. So what if he has no big legislation as his legacy? His legacy will be the yuuuuge Grift.
Trump’s not quitting anything. Stop dreaming.
I was at a climate change event yesterday. No one there would agree with the idea that Trump is getting nothing done.
When it comes to the environment, which always tends to get lost in the shuffle, Trump is a conservative’s dream.
I don’t think any of the people living in fear of deportation would agree nothing is being done either.
There is a lot of energy right now in politics on the Democratic side. There is money that has gone into field staff for various organizations.
Activists stars are being created. There is this woman working on the Maine and NH seacoast that is rather amazing. She is speaking – you can’t see her well because I got sent to try and take pictures to show the size of the crowd, but she is exactly the type of person who we find in every county.
All of that is good. This is a picture of the March in Portsmouth NH – there were marches all over the country yesterday. The press focuses on the larger ones – for good reasons – but ones like this are arguably more important.
Folks for a Saturday in April of a year where there is no election that is an amazing crowd.
Tarheal always posts about the need for the focus to be on local politics.
Here it is. Will it last? The woman running the seacoast resistance wonders about that. The truth is the only think you can do is keep holding events in the hopes that you build a community that is capable of winning elections at the grass-roots.
Maybe events will take Trump down. Maybe the FED will jack rates up too soon and create a recession (that otherwise seems unlikely)
Who knows. But Trump is getting plenty done.
There’s too much emphasis being put on his lack of legislative achievements and not enough on the disastrous executive orders he’s issuing.
“Our system is rotten. Both parties are colluding against him. The media is corrupt and fake.”
It’s not that this is not true. It’s just that Trump has no right to complain about it, since all these factors helped him win the election.
{Bush} ” … people felt like he had adults surrounding him”
I guess some people did, but they were wrong.
If Trump were the “smart person” he counter intuitively brags that he is, he might consider all this, take this advice and resign. When he says the job is harder than he thought, and that he likes his old life, these are tells that being president isn’t what he thought it would be, the adulation he gets from the campaign-style rallies notwithstanding. He talks like he’d like to take his toys and go home to Trump Tower, and blow up on Fox, KFC and taco bowls.
But this is yet another situation that Trump dooms himself. His id is 100% ego and narcissism, which won’t allow him to resign for fear of being a “loser.” He’s going to ride it out until the bitter end, and then expect to have his balls pulled out of the fire by somebody, as they’ve always been being the spoiled, rich do nothing loser he’s been. I suspect that Trump will go down hard, and be the last person to realize what’s happening.
Of course, Pence is waiting in the wings, but nothing gets better for the GOP with Pence as they will still have the same problems they have now. Which is why I suspect Chaffetz is hanging it up, and why Ryan’s shelf life is just about up as well.
The cracks and fissures in the GOP are being papered over by the media they love to hate right now, but eventually its going to catch up with them all, what with Russia investigation looming and not going away.
I just hope that when the GOP implodes they don’t take us all down with them.
You may have forgotten this, but it was real hard work for Dubya too, and he went the whole eight years …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ38wu5Fp6w
Lulz.
Heh.
Heh heh.
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehe.
Snort.