The editors of the Washington Post (known to some as “Jeff Bezos’s blog”) have proposed their agenda for the incoming Congress:
Democrats obviously cannot overcome the 60-vote rule in the Senate, much less Mr. Trump’s veto. They can, however, use the legislative process to address concerns that the GOP has unreasonably ignored or actively made worse in the past two years. Republicans have responded not at all to mass shootings; Democrats should pass an assault weapons ban, modeled on the federal law in force between 1994 and 2004, to show that they, by contrast, understand the need for action. The GOP slashed taxes for the rich without regard for exploding federal debt; a restoration of the pre-Trump estate tax would show that fiscal responsibility and greater equality of wealth can go together. In a society where millions fear for their most basic political rights, legislation to enhance protections under the Voting Rights Act, and to grant the District voting rights in Congress, would reassure. And, of course, they must keep their health-care promises.
They also urge the incoming Congress not to waste their efforts attempting to impeach either the president of Brett Kavanaugh. I’m afraid their suggestions will land on deaf ears.
Quite to the contrary I think that what will happen is that the incoming Congress will behave like an incoming presidential administration and throw a number of sops to their base, “their base” idiosyncratically defined as the “social democrats” who by and large flopped in the midterms. They will tilt at a number of windmills including the $15/hour national minimum wage (which would hurt their actual base), abolishing ICE, and, possibly, an assault weapons ban and I expect them to launch one or more investigations of President Trump.
If they were shrewd I think they’d start driving a wedge between President Trump and Mitch McConnell, championing things that Trump has said he’d support in the past that also fit in with their preferences and avoiding the “I” word. That might be tricky since it would require them to admit, at least tacitly, that all of their fulmination against Trump for the last two years has been political posturing.
…….and then Hillary will run.
I expect a couple of token attempts at impeachment, but not a sustained effort like we had with 300 votes against the ACA. I also expect investigations. Will they be on the same scale as what the GOP did with 8 investigations of the same thing? Probably not, as I think they will find plenty of other stuff. The lesson learned from all of the politically driven investigations done by the GOP is that it does not harm your election outcomes and is probably a positive.
What wedge items are you thinking about? They already agreed on immigration reform that would give Trump the wall but would would have required maintaining DACA, and Trump shot that down. I dont see the GOP going for infrastructure in the same way that the Dems would. Health care is not a topic which interests the GOP. What is left that they might work on together? Maybe a real opioid bill?
Steve
Opioid bill: how can we address that problem without facing the fact that the PRC is the source? That and amphetamines. Is our trade really so important as to ignore their obvious indifference to human suffering and laser focus on profit?
I used the pronoun “their” . Correction, “His”.
The Democrats know they aren’t going to get their agenda past the Senate or President Trump. The well is poisoned enough and primary election threats ensure that neither side will be willing to compromise enough to result in substantive bipartisan legislation, so I think a very familiar game will be played over the next two years.
It will simply be an awful 2 years. Little will get done. The dem vitriol will be nauseating. Trump, his family, republicans, supporters will continue to be harassed, drawn and quartered. How all this will play out in the economy, health care improvements, unification of the country, and a myriad of differences and problems that seem to plague us at the moment is dismal.