President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Maybe Mr. Tough Guy should put congressional leadership ON NOTICE!, just like he did with Iran a few months ago.

 

Obama saw the idea of schmoozing Congress as a useless chore.

"Nearly six years into his term, with his popularity at the lowest of his presidency, Mr. Obama appears remarkably distant from his own party on Capitol Hill, with his long neglect of would-be allies catching up to him," reports the New York Times.

The Times is getting at something real: congressional Democrats admire Barack Obama and they badly want him to succeed. But they don't particularly like Barack Obama — in large part because they don't think he likes them. Hill Democrats speak wistfully of President Bill Clinton and his late-night phone calls. Clinton, they say, wanted to talk to them. Barack Obama sees them as a chore.

Obama does see socializing with Hill Democrats as a chore. But there's a lot that Obama sees as a chore and commits to anyway. The presidency, for all its power, is full of drudgery; there are ambassadors to swear in and fundraisers to attend and endless briefings on issues that the briefers don't even really care about. The reason Obama doesn't put more effort into stroking congressional Democrats is he sees it as a useless chore.

Why congressional Democrats don’t like Obama


To Democrats in Congress who have worked with Mr. Obama, the indifference conveyed to Mr. Reid, one of the president’s most indispensable supporters, was frustratingly familiar. In one sense, Mr. Obama’s response was a reminder of what made him such an appealing figure in the first place: his almost innate aversion to the partisan squabbles that have left Americans so jaded and disgruntled with their political system. But nearly six years into his term, with his popularity at the lowest of his presidency, Mr. Obama appears remarkably distant from his own party on Capitol Hill, with his long neglect of would-be allies catching up to him.

In interviews, nearly two dozen Democratic lawmakers and senior congressional aides suggested that Mr. Obama’s approach has left him with few loyalists to effectively manage the issues erupting abroad and at home and could imperil his efforts to leave a legacy in his final stretch in office.

Grumbling by lawmakers about a president is nothing unusual. But what is striking now is the way prominent Democrats’ views of Mr. Obama’s shortcomings are spilling out into public, and how resigned many seem that the relationship will never improve. In private meetings, Mr. Reid’s chief of staff, David Krone, has voiced regular dismay to lawmakers and top aides about White House operations and competency across a range of issues, according to several Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Obama Is Seen as Frustrating His Own Party

 

What did they lie about?

 

And we all see where that got him. A nothingburger on one of his signature issues. But he got to throw the Democrats (who weren't invited to the party) under the bus!

 

I'm happy to report I've never watched a single minute of The Apprentice. But I'm guessing at the end of the show, if somebody complained that their project fell through because of Reasons A, B and C, Donald Trump didn't sit there and say "Boy that sounds tough. No wonder you didn't get the job done. Perfectly understandable. Good try."

 

Whether it happened, whether they knew about it, whether they were invited to meetings about it, whether they attended said meetings, what was the scope of said meetings, what people were at said meetings, etc.

 

"But Obama!" is the new "But Hilliary! "

 

Donald Trump's 35 most eye-popping quotes in his interview with the New York Times - CNNPolitics.com

 

Since YF is on an Obama jag again, from an article linked here yesterday:


Trump can’t make a health care deal because he doesn’t understand health care - Vox
For better and for worse, policy leadership in the modern era tends to come from the White House. Take the Affordable Care Act. Though the bill was written in Congress, President Obama and his staff were involved at every step of its construction — they set the policy vision, used the technical resources of the executive branch to work through trade-offs, were deeply involved in the legislative process, and led the communications effort on the bill’s behalf.

The apex of this was the Blair House summit. As the bill was floundering, Obama invited congressional leadership from both parties to the Blair House to debate the legislation on live television for hours. Obama was trying to prove to congressional Democrats that they could win the argument on health care, that he could win the argument on health care, and that they should trust him and pass the bill. It really is worth watching a few minutes of Obama’s performance in this, and contrasting it with Trump’s role in the replacement effort:
Obama’s performance was effective because it was, to Democrats, persuasive. Obama knew the details of the legislation, he knew the issue, and he knew how Democrats thought — and so he made arguments they believed, and persuaded them that even if the Affordable Care Act was a dangerous vote to take, it was still a vote worth taking.

What happened publicly at the Blair House happened privately every day. Obama and his team were constantly working to sell wavering Democrats on the bill, to persuade them that the trade-offs made were the right ones, to convince them this was a historic opportunity to achieve the Democratic Party’s 80-year dream of universal health care. It’s no accident that Obama’s health care address to a joint session of Congress ended by wrapping the bill in the legacy of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, and framing it as the “great unfinished business of our society.”

The campaign worked. In the Senate, Democrats had 60 votes, they needed 60 votes, and they got 60 votes.

The Affordable Care Act was a heavy lift, and there are many who deserve credit for its passage — notably Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. But I don’t know anyone involved in that effort who thinks it could’ve been done without Obama and his White House.

The GOP’s repeal-and-replace effort was also a heavy lift, and it’s been done without the productive involvement of Trump and his White House — in fact, Trump often made the process considerably harder.


The core problem is Trump has no idea what he’s talking about on health care and never bothered to learn. “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” he famously, and absurdly, said. His inability to navigate its complexities meant he couldn’t make persuasive arguments on behalf of the bills he supported, and he routinely made statements that undercut the legislative process and forced Republicans to defend the indefensible.

Trump’s post-election promise of “insurance for everybody” with “much lower deductibles” set up a standard Republicans had no intention of ever meeting but kept having to answer for. At his occasional meetings with wavering members of Congress, he’s made superficial political arguments to people who had deep policy concerns. The discussions left legislators feeling insulted and annoyed that the president hadn’t bothered to do the barest amount of homework.

Because Trump doesn’t understand the legislation or the trade-offs it made, he can’t make persuasive arguments on its behalf in public or private, and so he mostly doesn’t try. Trump and his team are not frequent presences in the public debate trying to sell the legislation they’re so keen to sign. That’s one reason the various bills routinely polled around 20 percent — without Trump using the bully pulpit to argue on behalf of the legislation, critics, terrible Congressional Budget Office reports, and news of congressional infighting filled the void.

When Trump does weigh in, it’s often a disaster. Asked by Fox News’s Tucker Carlson how he responded to analyses showing the House health bill would hurt the people who voted for him, he replied, “Oh, I know,” and said the bill was “very preliminary.” Later, after holding a Rose Garden ceremony to celebrate the passage of the House health bill, he called it “mean.” But he never articulated a standard for a bill that wouldn’t be mean, and he never came up with a policy that wouldn’t hurt his supporters.

 

You'd think its fucking 2009 the way @YankeeFan goes on about Obama.

 

Anyone who has read the NYT transcripts top to bottom has to see Trump as an embarrassment to the world.
Tap-dances away from everything, then brags about himself. YF, did you read the entire file?

 

"No speeko dee engleesh, mistah stinky smellyman, now you go away, okey-dokey?"