There are consequences to electing a know-nothing clown to head up the federal government. We are living them.
So are GOP elected officials, who at least richly deserve every bit of humiliation and agita they encounter as they prop up a woefully ignorant, impulsive charlatan so they can enact their pro-plutocracy agenda.
This healthcare push is revealing the scope of that difficulty as high-functioning sociopaths like McConnell and Ryan shoulder the burden of dragging their pig of a healthcare bill across the finish line while the preening narcissist who is nominally their leader constantly affirms his cluelessness, goes off script in unpredictable ways and consistently fails to live up to his “deal-maker” reputation. Via the NYT:
On Senate Health Bill, Trump Falters in the Closer’s Role
…If Republicans do manage to broker a deal — as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, pledged to do during a lively East Room back-and-forth with the president — it is not likely to be because of Mr. Trump’s involvement. Until Tuesday afternoon, the president was largely on the sidelines as the fate of one of his most important campaign pledges played out…
A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan — and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange. Mr. Trump said he planned to tackle tax reform later, ignoring the repeal’s tax implications, the staff member added.
After the meeting, Mr. Trump played the role of cheerleader on Twitter, encouraging his weary Republican allies to keep working. “I just finished a great meeting with the Republican Senators concerning HealthCare,” he wrote. “They really want to get it right, unlike OCare!”
Trump doesn’t know shit about healthcare or the finer points of any other foreign or domestic policy question, but he’s keenly attuned to perceptions of his own precious self, and that NYT article stung:
Some of the Fake News Media likes to say that I am not totally engaged in healthcare. Wrong, I know the subject well & want victory for U.S.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 28, 2017
Yeah right. I had a suggestion that won’t be taken up:
Then hold a televised bipartisan summit and answer detailed policy questions like President Obama did for the ACA. ?
— Betty Cracker (@bettycrackerfl) June 28, 2017
Flashback to February 2010, when President Obama held an hours-long, bipartisan healthcare summit to support passage of the ACA, in which he answered testy questions from Republicans and demonstrated extensive policy knowledge and engagement:
It won’t happen, but I wish one of the reporters at the daily briefing would raise this issue and ask why Trump doesn’t undertake a similar effort for the “healthcare” bill he claims to know so well. It would never happen, of course, and the expectation that a president should be at least minimally conversant on policies involving hundreds of millions of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars is one of those standards that ended on January 20th.
Anyhoo, it’s cold comfort at this point to recall how Obama handled a similar situation, as the blithering idiot who replaced PBO and said idiot’s congressional enablers are bent on destroying that hard-fought step we achieved in the direction of universal care. And let’s be honest — the bastards have a good chance of succeeding.
But remembering what actual leadership looks like and recalling what we once accomplished helps motivate me to make those calls to my congresscritters, etc. It’s still worth the fight.