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.
I agree that it was the Obama campaign that injected race into the primaries. Why would the Clintons want to deliberately alienate African-Americans who have long been loyal to them and set up a situation where even if she gets the nomination she loses in the general because disgusted black voters stay home? And didn’t Obama just say something like he knows her voters will vote for him, but he doesn’t see his voters voting for her?
On the other hand, I would guess that there is a faction of the party who would love the scenario I just mentioned because then they could blame it all on the dreaded DLC. It’ll be all about how the Democrats lost again because we “forgot” our base and chose another “DINO”.
People,
Why are so many so sure that insertion of race into the Dem primaries was Clinton’s doing? Rep. Rangel in his interview with NYTimes said otherwise. See e.g. this disgusting (and obviously scripted and coded) rant by Obama’s national co-chair Jesse Jackson Jr, made the morning after NH: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNrlSn7ndAA
Ed Kilgore explains with his usual clarity, why that might have been a risky, but possibly good move for Obama. Destructive for the Dems, of course, poisonous for all of us, but good for his nomination. Ed, I would be very interested in your opinion on who really started this particular ugliness.
Papadave,
I agree with your analysis. The Clintons are during a lot of damage to the Democratic party. Not only will Hillary’s name at the top of the ticket galvanize lots of GOP ers to the polls, but because of the race baiting she & Bill have engaged in many African Americans will likely stay home, if McCain is not at the top of the ticket as well. If McCain is at the top they will vote for him.
I think this Schneider analysis, while a few years dated, still applies to today and the Clintons have done irreparable harm to the Democratic party.
CNN’s Bill Schneider gave an almost textbook version of this line a couple years ago on CNN …
Judy, how dependent are Democrats on the African-American vote?
Without black voters, the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections would have been virtually tied, just like the 2000 election. Oh no, more Florida recounts!
What would have happened if no blacks had voted in 2000? Six states would have shifted from Al Gore to George W. Bush: Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Oregon. Bush would have won by 187 electoral votes, instead of five. A Florida recount? Not necessary.
Right now, there are 50 Democrats in the Senate. How many would be there without African-American voters? We checked the state exit polls for the 1996, 1998, and 2000 elections. If no blacks had voted, many Southern Democrats would not have made it to the Senate. Both Max Cleland and Zell Miller needed black votes to win in Georgia. So did Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Bill Nelson in Florida, John Edwards in North Carolina, and Ernest Hollings in South Carolina.
Black votes were also crucial for Jon Corzine in New Jersey, Debbie Stabenow in Michigan, and Jean Carnahan in Missouri. Washington state and Nevada don’t have many black voters, but they were still crucial to the victories of Harry Reid in Nevada and Maria Cantwell in Washington.
Nebraska and Wisconsin don’t have many black voters either, but Ben Nelson would have lost Nebraska without them and Russ Feingold would have lost Wisconsin, too, in both cases by less than half-a- percent. Bottom line? Without the African-American vote, the number of Democrats in the Senate would be reduced from 50 to 37.
A hopeless minority. And Jim Jeffords’ defection from the GOP would not have meant a thing — Judy.
I fear (and fear is the right word) that the Clinton racialization strategy will backfire. The obverse of the notion that whites and latinos won’t support a candidate who is both actually black and is seen as the “black candidate”; is the possibility that blacks will not support a candidate whom they see as uniting those groups against them, in the general election. If the GOP were to nominate Giuliani or Romney, I think most black voters would hold their noses and vote for the Clintons no matter how offended they are by the Clinton’s marginalizing strategy. But it is now much more likly that the GOP will nominate McCain, and he is not associated with racial politics. The whole Clinton strategy assumes that black voters won’t have anywhere else to go no matter how much they are marginalized and taken for granted. But they just might stay home on election day, and if that happens no Democrat can win the White House back.