Delusional Democrats Yearning to Prove They Can Work With Trump

[DonViejo]

By Jonathan Chait

January 24, 2017
1:48 p.m.

Senate Democrats today unveiled a plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure. What is noteworthy about this proposal is less the substance than the underlying strategic rationale for it. Democrats are “eager to drive a wedge between the new president and congressional Republicans” and “persuade [President Trump] to adopt ideas that would put him at odds with GOP leaders,” reports the Washington Post. A senior Democratic Senate aide, speaking with the Atlantic’s Michelle Cottle, lays out the party’s strategery in more explicit detail:

“We are presenting a choice to the president,” said the senior Senate aide. If he pursues issues that align with Democratic priorities, “he will find Democrats eager to work with him.” This will, however, require Trump to “buck the Republicans in Congress,” stressed the aide. Democrats’ selective cooperation is not aimed at “finding middle ground” with GOP members, the aide clarified, but about Trump’s “upending decades of Republican orthodoxy” and “going around congressional Republicans” on particular issues. The goal: deny the majority legislative wins while positioning Democrats as the party that can work with Trump to get stuff done.”

So that’s the plan: force Trump into a choice between either failing to uphold his campaign promises or else proving that Democrats, not Republicans, are the ones who can make governing work. Alas, this theory rests upon numerous assumptions that are almost certainly false.

1. It assumes Trump will not really want to sign a huge infrastructure bill. Trump promised a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan during the campaign, but proposed a plan based on tax credits that would mostly confer windfall benefits on existing proposals. Democrats think this is because Trump doesn’t really want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure. I suspect otherwise. His chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has made it clear that a massive infrastructure plan is a key, and perhaps the key, element in Trump’s plan to cement the loyalty of white working-class Democrats. The notion that Trump would refuse to spend the necessary funds on such a plan because he cares too much about the deficit seems fanciful.

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http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/01/delusional-democrats-want-to-prove-they-can-work-with-trump.html

[Angry Dragon]

1. how can one work with an insame person??

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. I don't think any Democrat (save for maybe Manchin & Sanders?)

seriously believes that they'll be able to work with him. But Democrats are not like Republicans in that they still believe in trying to help govern and help people instead of mindlessly obstructing government. Actually, I'm wondering how many Republicans might be starting to doubt their ability to work with him.

[Angry Dragon]

7. We can only hope that anyone that works with him pays the price at the ballot box

[triron]

2. wtf?

[dalton99a]

3. Republicans will claim all the credit, and assign all the blame to Democrats.

[Eleanors38]

5. Yep. You can see this a mile away. He can build a 2nd term around this, if he wants it...

IMO, this is a big reason for Obama's 2 victories: The hope an FDR rebuilding program could be pushed through. It didn't happen due to GOPer scorched earth policies, and Obama's style of not leading from the outside. In large measure, tRump can capitalize on the same hopes, including cementing working class voters around him (though maybe not the GOP). I don't know if he cares about either party's viability, but if played right, the Democratic Party will have to scramble to earn both the allegiance of disaffected voters, and the populist issues which have underwritten the Party since FDR.

Curious isn't it that a group of Democratic senators (from DNCers to Sanders) are putting their infrastructure rebuild programs front and center 4 days after the swearing?

[Skidmore]

6. Leaders of construction unions met with him

today and are all aglow. Will hop on board to ride while GOP strips collective bargaining rights away.

[Old Vet]

8. Obama tried for years to get a infrastructure bill passed BUT.......

The republicans kept attaching admendments having to do with either abortion or some other off the wall bullshit constantly.