- Joined
- Apr 18, 2013
- Messages
- 94,136
- Reaction score
- 82,405
- Location
- Barsoom
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Independent
Why Trump Will Lose The Government Shutdown Fight
Via polls and protests in front of the White House that are growing in size, Trump is coming to the realization that he is in a very weak position politically regarding the shutdown and the wall. The vast majority of Americans want the former ended immediately and want no part of the latter. Trumps base is neither large enough nor powerful enough to sustain his demands. A segment of this base, uneducated white males, is now shrinking. As the negatives of the shutdown begin to increase exponentially with the passing days (over 1 month now), TheDonald is going to have to increase his concessions dramatically. We're getting close to the political tipping point. If Trump vacillates much longer, he can forget any notions of running again in 2020. His power play with Pelosi never had the juice to succeed. That it has taken him this long to realize this truism speaks volumes on his political ineptness and his historical callousness towards employees.
1/20/19
President Donald Trump’s latest offer of a deal to resolve the government shutdown was an inept playing of a weak hand. It was never in the cards for Democrats to agree to Trump’s $5.7 billion wall demand in exchange for just three years of protection for the Dreamers plus temporary reprieves for some other immigrants. Trump obviously knew this when he made the offer. He is still betting that the public will accept his argument that a physical wall is needed to protect Americans from an invasion of refugees and an inflow of illegal drugs. But public opinion isn’t buying it. There is no such invasion. Flows of undocumented migrants have dramatically slowed in recent years, and most illegal drugs are smuggled in on commercial flights, not via illegal border crossers. The main driver of the opioid epidemic is not illegal imports across the Mexican border, but a commercial U.S.-based drug company, Purdue Pharma, which hyped demand for its product OxyContin. A wall would stop migrants and drugs only in some parallel universe imagined by Fox News. Public opinion is getting away from Trump, both on the case for the wall and on citizen weariness with the government shutdown. Yes, some portions of Trump’s base buy his story, but that’s not enough to satisfy a growing number of Republican senators who would be happy to take the short-term budget deal that’s been on the table for weeks: Open the government and then keep negotiating about border security.
Trump has already demonstrated weakness in other ways, in raising and then discarding the idea of using presidential emergency powers to order construction of his wall. That shows that there must be some grown-ups to whom Trump pays some attention, perhaps his much abused chief of staff and jack-of-all-jobs Mick Mulvaney. Or maybe Javanka. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has dutifully promised a Senate vote on Trump’s proposal next week, but be careful. Several Republican senators are fed up with Trump’s shutdown antics, and the measure could fail. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma referred to Trump’s proposal as a “straw man” in an interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz. Democrats have been united while Republicans have begun defecting. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, one of the more centrist and bipartisan Democrats, declared on “Meet the Press” that the Trump offer was only a “starting point” and that Democrats would not reward “hostage taking,” meaning the shutdown. There is one small silver lining in Trump’s proposal. It shows that a new phase has begun, in which the president is willing to start bargaining. This was just his opening gambit.
Via polls and protests in front of the White House that are growing in size, Trump is coming to the realization that he is in a very weak position politically regarding the shutdown and the wall. The vast majority of Americans want the former ended immediately and want no part of the latter. Trumps base is neither large enough nor powerful enough to sustain his demands. A segment of this base, uneducated white males, is now shrinking. As the negatives of the shutdown begin to increase exponentially with the passing days (over 1 month now), TheDonald is going to have to increase his concessions dramatically. We're getting close to the political tipping point. If Trump vacillates much longer, he can forget any notions of running again in 2020. His power play with Pelosi never had the juice to succeed. That it has taken him this long to realize this truism speaks volumes on his political ineptness and his historical callousness towards employees.