Trump is Winning

Notice to Progressives in a media bubble:  Trump is Winning

Readers who mostly consume mainstream media assume Trump is on the ropes.  

He isn't.

There is a view of the country that is consistent with the observed facts, is plausible on its face, and is politically palatable for a slight majority of the public.  It is that Trump is in big trouble because:

   

He is extraordinarily unpopular, having offended nearly everyone with bad policies and petty tweets.

Trump is failing legislatively, and even with GOP majorities in the House and Senate he is unable to pass healthcare repeal and replacement.

Trump is too disorganized to appoint people actually to run the agencies he wants to change, leaving key vacancies six months into his term.

What is important is that this does not matter

Trump has lost credibility with foreign governments, with the GOP legislators, with the majority of the voters.

These things are true.  But what is important is that they are irrelevant.  Trump is winning anyway despite all this, which shows how successful he really is.

Donald Trump leads a governing plurality, a block of voters who are enthusiastic supporters.  Meanwhile, he has disorganized opposition with no real alternative vision for the country.  The GOP is fractured; the Democrats are divided and leaderless both.

Trump has defined the terms of the public discourse:  Trump versus resistance.  Notice that frame and reflect on its implication: Trump is on offense, everywhere.   It is all about Trump.

Democrats are resisting but are not shaping an alternative comprehensive view of the world.       Democrats are winning skirmishes on the edges and thinking those are victories, but they are actually just consolation prizes at the margins as they retreat in a political world defined and dominated by Trump.   

The opposition to Trump is abuzz with supposed Trump flaws.  They aren't flaws.  They are just more iterations of Trump being in the center of things.  Aren't you shocked about what he said about Mika?  Did you see how John McCain scoffed at Trump? Did you hear what Comey said about Trump?   These are just diversions, with Trump in the middle.

From Trump-friendly Washington Examiner

Trump is winning the big war, the war for the minds of a governing plurality.   [A mere plurality can and frequently does has the power to govern.  Trump dominates the communication systems of the Republican party, via his tweets, the Fox/talk radio media, and his domination of the news.  Republicans are afraid of him, as they should be since his condemnation of them might add them to the pile of Republican casualties.  Trump's plurality within the Republican caucus gives him control of Republican thinking.  Trump's 40% gives him control of Republicans.   Republicans control the seats of power, even though those victories, too, represent minority power.  More people vote for Democratic senators than Republican ones, what with California and Idaho having the same number of Senators; same with Congress, thanks to Democrats being concentrated in cities and having wasted votes; same with the electoral college.   This is the way the power leverages up.   If all the Trump skeptics got together in opposition, or especially with a coherent alternative position, then Trump's minority would not govern.   But as it is, Trump controls, or at least intimidates, Republicans, so the 40% (Trump-lovers) controls the majorities in government.] Failure to pass a healthcare bill will be a victory for Trump, because now that he has become somewhat informed about the ACA he doesn't dislike it all that much, and neither do most GOP lawmakers.   They hated that it was Obama's, not that it was all that terrible versus the prior status quo or any realistic alternative.   

This may well sort out as a repeal of "Obamacare", to be replaced with the ACA (the formal name for Obamacare.)  It will just be a re-branding.   Or, maybe they won't repeal Obamacare, and instead will exacerbate its problems, and then campaign against it just like they did in years' past, very successfully.  

Whatever happens, Trump will call it good, very good, and sell it with enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, Trump has gone around the media with his own direct-to-voter media outlet, his twitter account, plus Fox News, the trusted news source for his Republican majority.  His voters believe him--and Fox--not the mainstream media.  The polls that show Trump with an approval rating of 40% also show the general media with an approval rate of 36%.   

Trump is winning.  Trump is on track to remake the Supreme Court, on track sharply to reduce legal and illegal immigration, on track to deport Dreamers, on track to cut taxes and increase the deficit, on track to redirect the energy policy back toward fossil fuels, on track to continue dismantling Obama era regulations of the financial industry and the environment.

Democrats can console themselves, and think they won a big victory, because gays will be able to stay married, which, as it turns out, not very many people object to now that they have gotten used to it. 

Whistleblower attorney Thad Guyer observes that the situation is even more dire for Democrats and progressives than I report:

Thad Guyer Guest Post:  “Trump’s Staggering Momentum vs. the Resistance”

Thad Guyer

Rachel Maddow reminded us Friday night that Trump’s offensive tweets against the MSNBC on-air lovers “Crazy Joe” and “Dumb as a rock Mika” are intentional and strategic, calculated to do exactly what they do:  Dominate a news cycle, undermine media credibility, and feed his base.  With the firing of three CNN journalists for “fake news” about a retracted story on “Russian ties” (WaPo https://goo.gl/dxH5KJ), and now the Associated Press under fire for retracted false reporting of a secret cabinet meeting with Dow Chemical that never happened (NYT https://goo.gl/stmbM4), the liberal media is being brought low. But this was just icing on the Trump cake last week.

First, the Supreme Court reinstated Trump’s Muslim travel ban.  Despite disingenuous pronouncements by the left that “its not all that big of a win”, the aftermath of the State Department’s issuance of rules shows Trump holds all the cards on how that ban is implemented.  Sober legal voices are urging Democrats to wise-up because action is required, not fantasy. See, “Lawyers alone can’t save us from Trump. The Supreme Court just proved it”, WaPo, June 27, 2017 (https://goo.gl/MgfVBi).

Second, 24 democrats voted with Paul Ryan and against Nancy Pelosi to adopt Trump’s immigration crackdown on “criminal aliens”.  These weren’t just Bible belt Democrats, but included “statistically notable” Democrats from California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York etc. “Statistically notable votes” means those that are “most surprising, or least predictable, given how other members of each voter’s party voted” See, GovTrack, H.R. 3004: Kate’s Law (https://goo.gl/juBgQY).

  

Third, ten Republican-led states just threatened to bring a lawsuit against the Trump administration for continuing Obama’s executive order protecting 788,000 "Dreamers". See, “Texas AG leads push to end DACA”, Politico, June 29, 2017 (https://goo.gl/6kPuFL).  This is undoubtedly intended to position Trump to use the Dreamers as legislative bargaining chips sometime this year.  It allows him to simply instruct the Justice Department not to defend the lawsuit, rather than the brutal revoking of Obama’s order himself, as he did with transgender rights in public schools.

And forth, perhaps the most politically potent of all, Democrats are getting maneuvered into a no-win trap of obstructing the bipartisan Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (with four Democratic members) charged with reassuring Americans of the integrity of our national elections.  While Democrats are spinning it as best they can, the inevitable optics will be refusal to cooperate in turning over publicly available data regularly used by political campaigns of both parties.   See, “Pence-Kobach voting commission alarms states with info request”, CNN, July 1, 2017 (https://goo.gl/xg6bfy).  With the notable exception of a Mississippi Republican with his own agenda in keeping prying eyes out of that state’s notoriously corrupt voting processes, the “hiding of voter data” will be pinned on the Democratic “resistance”. See, “Dem state officials refusing to cooperate with Trump voter fraud probe”, FoxNews, June 30, 2017 (https://goo.gl/1BbSeg).  This resistance, combined with Trump having weakened the liberal media, serves his unsubstantiated assertions of widespread voter fraud. 

So, what’s Trump’s next momentous step?  Off to Europe amid these headline: “Trump effect? Europe's defense spending to rise faster in 2017”, Reuters, June 28, 2017 (https://goo.gl/w4otuq); and “Trump's surprise Paris visit marks shrewd political calculation”, CNN, June 29, 2017 (https://goo.gl/S959eq).

As the 2018 midterms rapidly approach, one thing should be clear to us:  Our rhetorical and diffuse “resistance” is a poor match for this kind of Trump and Republican momentum.