THE DEALMAKER & THE DEMOCRATS: WHO WILL BLINK FIRST?

…The false “Dealmaker”

The US government today is in a constitutional crisis.

You may recall when, during the 2016 campaign, that Trump declared about our nation’s problems: “I alone can fix it.”

Well, it was recently declared by a nation with 800,000 federal employees not being paid; with a president and administration being investigated for massive illegal actions; the increasing of our national deficits; and with a trade war with China and others; the US government today is not simply needing to be “fixed”, it is in a constitutional crisis.

President Trump’s management of just the current partial government shutdown (his first involvement in dealing with a divided government), it has exposed as never before Trump’s shortcomings as a so called “dealmaker”.

America has a self-proclaimed presidential “dealmaker” that can’t make a deal.  Trump is still grappling with the reality that he alone “cannot” fix it.

The president has been demanding the $5.7 billion down payment in American public money (no, not from Mexico), to construct his long-promised border wall.  However, he has gone nowhere in winning over congressional Democrats, who call the wall “immoral” and “not America”, and they have refused to negotiate over border security until the government re-opens.

The current 30+ day shutdown is defining the second half of Trump’s first term and it has set a foundation for the up-coming 2020 presidential campaign.

But before Trump even made it to the presidential lectern in the White House’s stately Diplomatic Reception Room to announce what he called a “straightforward, fair, reasonable, and common sense” proposal for extending the “Dreamer’s” 3 year extension and other positive items, the Democrats quickly rejected it as a non-starter.  They aren’t talking until the government shutdown is opened, and then they may sit down and perhaps talk turkey.

Vice President Pence vainly tried to sell the president’s proposal, but as usual, all he did was sound ridiculous in trying to make Donald Trump look like a statesman.  (It was all as ridiculous as when Pence tried to compare what Donald Trump is currently proposing, to the actions and proposals from Dr. Martin Luther King…..ridiculous.)

“What really drives him [Trump] is his ‘Art of the Deal,’ that he could get stuff done in D.C. and deal with the Washington knuckleheads.” This was from the Republican strategist Mike Murphy, a sharp Trump critic.  He was only referring to Trump’s old ridiculous book on negotiating. “People saw him as some sort of business wizard. That’s all disintegrated. Trump today is like McDonald’s not being able to make a hamburger.”

Trump’s advisers try to argue that the president has been successful at persuading Americans, but where is there any proof of those claims?  None of his efforts to date has led to a bipartisan deal.

“You can’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime,” said one White House official who as usual, only spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But the data tells a much more troubling story for the president. One month into the shutdown, the longest shutdown in US history, most of the public polls show Trump is losing the political fight.  For instance, a Jan. 13, Washington Posy-ABC News Survey found that many more Americans blame Trump than blame Democrats for the shutdown.  A whopping 53% to 29%.  And the president’s job approval ratings also continue to decline.

“Even though he thinks he’s doing a great job for his core, it’s ripping the nation apart,” said one Trump friend, who of course also spoke on anonymity. “I don’t think there is a plan. He’s not listening to anybody because he thinks that if he folds on this, he loses whatever constituency he thinks he has.”  Behind the scenes at the White House, a number of aides have acknowledged the difficulties.  “The president is very much aware he’s losing the public opinion war on this one,” one senior administration official said. “He does always look at the numbers.”

John McLaughlin, a pollster on Trump’s 2016 campaign, said Trump’s suggestion to temporarily extend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program is his key to increasing his popularity.  But no one else is supporting that as a cause for Trump’s popularity.  It’s the shutdown and not paying federal workers that is making its mark against the president.

However, some political professionals cautioned against rushing to judgment about the shutdown’s impact on Trump’s re-election in 2020, saying that November 2020 is “a virtual eternity from today”.

“This could all be forgotten in a week if and when we come to an agreement, the government opens and the wall is built,” Republican pollster Neil Newhouse said. “Nobody knows how this is going to turn out until we get a resolution. So it’s a national game of chicken.”

But the $5.7 Billion that Trump is asking for is just a “down payment” on a “Wall”, that will cost many more billions and it could take 10 years to build.

The instability in Washington due to Trump’s efforts is threatening to wreak havoc on the economy.  There are already new moves in the stock market amid concerns about Trump’s trade war with China and the current fears of a prolonged government shutdown.  It was recently announced that 18% of the federal employees today are eligible for retirement.  If the shutdown is seriously extended, you could see major numbers of federal workers leaving important positions such as government inspectors, airport TSA workers and/or air traffic controllers, which could shutdown major US airports.

In addition, inside the White House West Wing, morale has been extremely low in recent weeks.  This is according to a number of White House aides. Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, has not sought to impose the same level of discipline on the staff as his predecessor, John Kelly.  Therefore, aides flow in and out of the Oval Office.  This is reminiscent of those devastating early months of Trump’s presidency.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has become an increasingly powerful figure who has asserted himself, along with Pence and Mulvaney, in negotiations with lawmakers.  Two senior Republican aides said key senators are skeptical that Pence speaks for the president.  That is, after Trump undercut him early on in the shutdown.

Trump has been preoccupied by the political messaging and stagecraft of the shutdown showdown, not on actual government policies.  This is also according to White House aides.  Trump has personally met with outside allies to ask them to go on cable television to defend his position.  And as a perfect nervous narcissist, Trump has spent time calling those who have been praising him.

Lately, Trump has accused Democrats of being insensitive to the dangers of illegal immigration. “They don’t see crime & drugs, they only see 2020, which they are not going to win,” he tweeted Sunday. He went on to single out Pelosi for behaving “irrationally” and acting as “a Radical Democrat.”  The president is losing it.

Pelosi and other Democrats have responded by saying that Trump is immune to the hardships of federal workers who are going without paychecks.

“I don’t think that he understands the real-life impacts,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D), whose home state of Montana has one of the highest concentrations of federal workers. “Look, the guy was born with a lot of money, and that’s great. I wish I was born with a lot of money, too.  I was born with great parents, okay?  And so, I don’t think he really can relate with people who live paycheck to paycheck. That’s why I don’t think there’s urgency on his part.”

There is no telling how long this shutdown will continue as Trump has no compassion for those being affected by the shutdown.

It has now come down to: ”Who is going to blink first?”

Copyright G. Ater 2019