Having closely watched congressional developments over the last few weeks, I’ve concluded that one much-discussed Democratic tactic for dealing with Trump 2.0 is probably mistaken, as I explained at New York:
No one is going to rank Mike Johnson among the great arm-twisting Speakers of the House, like Henry Clay, Tom Reed, Sam Rayburn, or even Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, he still resembles Winston Churchill’s description of Clement Atlee as “a modest man with much to be modest about.”
But nonetheless, in the space of two weeks, Johnson has managed to get two huge and highly controversial measures through the closely divided House: a budget resolution that sets the stage for enactment of Donald Trump’s entire legislative agenda in one bill, then an appropriations bill keeping the federal government operating until the end of September while preserving the highly contested power of Trump and his agents to cut and spend wherever they like.
Despite all the talk of divisions between the hard-core fiscal extremists of the House Freedom Caucus and swing-district “moderate” Republicans, Johnson lost just one member — the anti-spending fanatic and lone wolf Thomas Massie of Kentucky — from the ranks of House Republicans on both votes. As a result, he needed not even a whiff of compromise with House Democrats (only one of them, the very Trump-friendly Jared Golden of Maine, voted for one of the measures, the appropriations bill).
Now there are a host of factors that made this impressive achievement possible. The budget-resolution vote was, as Johnson kept pointing out to recalcitrant House Republicans, a blueprint for massive domestic-spending cuts, not the cuts themselves. Its language was general and vague enough to give Republicans plausible deniability. And even more deviously, the appropriations measure was made brief and unspecific in order to give Elon Musk and Russ Vought the maximum leeway to whack spending and personnel to levels far below what the bill provided (J.D. Vance told House Republicans right before the vote that the administration reserved the right to ignore the spending the bill mandated entirely, which pleased the government-hating HFC folk immensely). And most important, on both bills Johnson was able to rely on personal lobbying from key members of the administration, most notably the president himself, who had made it clear any congressional Republican who rebelled might soon be looking down the barrel of a Musk-financed MAGA primary opponent. Without question, much of the credit Johnson is due for pulling off these votes should go to his White House boss, whose wish is his command.
But the lesson Democrats should take from these events is that they cannot just lie in the weeds and expect the congressional GOP to self-destruct owing to its many divisions and rivalries. In a controversial New York Times op-ed last month, Democratic strategist James Carville argued Democrats should “play dead” in order to keep a spotlight on Republican responsibility for the chaos in Washington, D.C., which might soon extend to Congress:
“Let the Republicans push for their tax cuts, their Medicaid cuts, their food stamp cuts. Give them all the rope they need. Then let dysfunction paralyze their House caucus and rupture their tiny majority. Let them reveal themselves as incapable of governing and, at the right moment, start making a coordinated, consistent argument about the need to protect Medicare, Medicaid, worker benefits and middle-class pocketbooks. Let the Republicans crumble, let the American people see it, and wait until they need us to offer our support.”
Now to be clear, Congressional GOP dysfunction could yet break out; House and Senate Republicans have struggled constantly to stay on the same page on budget strategy, the depth of domestic-spending cuts, and the extent of tax cuts. But as the two big votes in the House show, their three superpowers are (1) Trump’s death grip on them all, (2) the willingness of Musk and Vought and Trump himself to take the heat for unpopular policies, and (3) a capacity for lying shamelessly about what they are doing and what it will cost. Yes, ultimately, congressional Republicans will face voters in November 2026. But any fear of these elections is mitigated by the realization that thanks to the landscape of midterm races, probably nothing they can do will save control of the House or forfeit control of the Senate. So Republicans have a lot of incentives to follow Trump in a high-speed smash-and-grab operation that devastates the public sector, awards their billionaire friends with tax cuts, and wherever possible salts the earth to make a revival of good government as difficult as possible. Democrats have few ways to stop this nihilistic locomotive. But they may be fooling themselves if they assume it’s going off the rails without their active involvement.
If John Kerry had won, it would have been close; we know that. He knew that all along. So what was he supposed to do (and Bush as well): stand up in the debate and say, “Well, I know if I win, it won’t be my much, so I probably won’t make any significant changes, since I won’t have a mandate.” What sort of leadership are we asking of any of our winning presidential candidates, be they in ’08 or 2032, or whenever, if we demand that they need to win by an enormous amount for them to believe they have a mandate to implement their policies? In a closely divided electorate, which the US is likely to be for the foreseeable future, this is a formula for endless paralysis.
Obviously, if a candidate wins by a little, but governs like he won by a lot, he is risking significant political capital. But I’d far rather see that than have an occupant of the Oval Office decide that his victory was by the hair of his chinny-chin-chin, so he better play it safe for the next four years. The President, Republican or Democratic, needs to be a leader. All this carping about Bush not having a mandate is telling him not to be a leader. The same standard easily could have been applied to Kerry if he won. This is a formula for disaster, not just now, but in the future.
Please! Let’s not forget that Ohio is still in recount mode. Just because the main stream media are not properly covering it, doesn’t mean it is isn’t happening.
Marty
if ohio is the breaker
bush only won by 100k
back in 1988 the first bush won in states that would have made the difference by 500k
and the second bush won by 538 in florida
3% is not nearly as large as clintons 5% and 8% wins in three way races
and much larger when nixon barely won in 1968 with 43%
bush has no mandate!!!
These are the actual vote totals:
Bush: 62,027,466 (50.73%)
Kerry: 59,027,612 (48.28%)
Nader: 456,356 (0.37%)
Badnarik: 396,888 (0.32%)
Others: 361,079 (0.30%)
As you can see, Bush beat Kerry by 2.9+ million votes but he won the election by just under 1.8 million votes. Seriously, why just post his margin over Kerry when it’s clear he won by much less than the MSM is telling us if all the votes are included in his “mandate”?
These numbers can’t be final – Washington State is still in the middle of a statewide recount which has already added over a thousand votes to the state total.
You’re buying into the Republican frame with this….Bush actually won by less than 1.8 million votes if you take into account the fact this was more than a 2-man race. More than a million people voted for third party candidates this year….Bush’s mandate is smaller than it appears, shouldn’t we be the first to point this out?