Destined to Fail - Politically

by Steve

While many in the media are fixated on the daily outrage(s) from the Trump administration, even the impending car accident of a Mueller firing (yes, Trump will be stupid enough to do this), not enough attention is paid to the basic political weakness of this president and his team - the abandonment of any real populist agenda in governing.

Neil Irwin of today's New York Times in The Upshot pens the real reason Trump will fail politically. Yes, Trump clearly acts and sells his limited accomplishments all as nods to his base (see Cuba, the Gorsuch confirmation, and killing the Paris climate accord). But Trump will not climb out of his terrible mid-30's approval ratings by only playing to that base, and he cannot get reelected (assuming he makes it to 2020, which he won't). He could however gain more political support, even with the daily drumbeat of investigations, if he actually carried out the populist agenda he ran on.

Irwin goes so far as to suggest how Trump could have done this, and yet it is too late for that because 1) Trump has now been exposed as the faux populist he was all along; 2) Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the Koch Brothers (Pence's handlers) want none of that agenda; and 3) Trump's persona and evaporated political capital make it now impossible for him to turn back and work with the Democrats and GOP moderates on any of it.

All of which means that after less than 180 days of governing, Donald Trump's presidency is stillborn, and the only thing that can save it, which George W. Bush knows all to well, is something to galvanize support behind a flailing president. I would normally be worried that Trump and his team are at work looking for exactly that catastrophe to prop them up, because he and his team are craven enough to let it happen.

But then I know that before that happens, Trump will do the one thing that will start Republicans heading for the exits: he'll fire Mueller.