← The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Can the Democrats Outfox Trump?
00:16:53
President Trump is showing a new collegiality with Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi on DACA and other issues. John Cassidy joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how Democrats are responding to Trump's calls for bipartisanship, and how much they stand to gain and lose from working with him.
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- [00:00]
A
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B
This is the Political Scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and editors about Politics. It's Thursday, September 14th. Dorothy I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. Yesterday afternoon, Trump held a meeting at the White House with Republican and Democratic members of Congress to discuss his legislative goals. It preceded a dinner at the White House with Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi. He was asked what he'd say to people who were skeptical about his new strategy of working with Democrats.
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C
Well, I'm a conservative and I will tell you I'm not skeptical. And I think that if we can do things in a bipartisan manner, that'll now it might not work out, in which case we'll try and do them without. But I think if we can do in a bipartisan manner, if you look at some of the greatest legislation ever passed, it was done on a bipartisan manner.
- [02:10]
B
After the dinner, Schumer and Pelosi announced they'd reached a deal with Trump to replace daca, the immigration program that protects from deportation people who are brought to the US as children. Early this morning, Trump tweeted that no deal had been made, but a few hours later said that actually they were all working on a DACA plan. John Cassidy joins me to discuss how Democrats are responding to the president's new calls for bipartisanship and how closely they should work with him in Congress. Hi, John, thanks for coming on.
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D
Hi, Dorothy.
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B
At the meeting yesterday afternoon, Trump announced his three current tax reform, infrastructure, and daca. Let's start with daca. What was actually accomplished yesterday in the end?
- [02:56]
D
Well, that's a big question. We don't know for sure. It looks like there was provisional agreement anyway. Trump has been saying for a week or so now that contrary to Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, who seems very keen to get rid of daca, he wants to make a deal to preserve the legal protections for the Dreamers. And after Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer came out of the meeting on Wednesday night, they announced that they'd made a deal and it wouldn't involve any funding from Trump's Mexican wall. That would be a separate issue. Basically. The right wing media exploded in anger. The White House then pushed back, saying, no, there wasn't any deal. Trump then went on Twitter this morning and repeated that there wasn't any deal. But he sort of contradicted himself by then saying that a deal was close and that Mitch McConnell was on board and Paul Ryan was on board. So it looks like we are moving towards a deal on Dhaka. The question is whether sell it to the conservative wing of the Republican Party and whether this is just a one off or whether it augurs a bigger switch towards bipartisanship.
- [04:04]
B
You know, I'm still hearing from Democrats who say that the party should oppose Trump just as emphatically as Mitch McConnell opposed any legislation supported by President Obama, especially in his second term, and let Trump be blamed for gridlock. Is there any merit in that argument?
- [04:21]
D
Well, there are certainly a lot of people in Democratic Party on the left who take that line. You know, you've got this enormous resistance movement to Trump, and Pelosi and Schumer have got to be very careful here. If they're seen to be sort of cooperating with Trump and giving him anything that he wants the Democrats don't want, there'll be an enormous backlash from the grassroots of the party. But I think Pelosi and Schumer are on firm ground when it comes to daca. I think as long as that's the basis of the agreement, there won't be any pushback from the Democratic grassroots because That's a big Democrats. The question is, why is Trump doing it? And, you know, what does he want in return in the long term? Well, clearly he wants some support on other items of his agenda, which you mentioned, tax reform and infrastructure spending, et cetera. So the question is whether Democrats would be willing to translate this deal into anything larger, and we just don't know that yet.
- [05:13]
B
Right. So let's talk for a second about infrastructure. For months, Schumer has been inviting Trump to work with the Democrats on their bill and warning that he cannot get it done without them, that they would have the same problem they did with health care reform, which was, you know, a major victory for the Democrats and humiliation for the Republicans. And Trump does desperately need a victory, at least on one of his campaign promises. So what's that likely to look like?
- [05:39]
D
Well, infrastructure is a potential deal because, again, that's traditionally been seen as a Democratic policy. The question is, is Trump willing to do a deal on infrastructure without tying it to a tax reform package? His biggest item now is going to be the tax reform they're unveiling in a couple of weeks. It looks like it's going to be a very conservative, very Republican plan. Tax breaks for corporations, tax breaks for rich people. Will he get any Democratic support for that at all? Or will the Democrats be willing to give him support for at least parts of it in return for a big infrastructure bill? I think that's what he'll push for. But so far at least, I don't think there's any sign that any Democrats are willing to go along with Trump on tax reform.
- [06:19]
B
Trump also said on Wednesday that the wealthy wouldn't benefit at all, as he put it, from his plan, which again was a little surprising and I suspect was somewhat surprising to his own party.
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D
Very surprising to the people who are working on the tax package in the Treasury Department and on Capitol Hill. Obviously, the details of this plan haven't been announced yet. We've been waiting for them for months. The news came out this week that they're going to put them out in two weeks time. So we shall see. But from everything we know, Trump is basically not telling the truth here. This is going to be a plan which does cut the taxes on the rich. Tax rates are going to come down somewhat now. They will. There'll theoretically be some offsets in that some tax deductions that rich people use may be eliminated. But almost everybody who's looked at the broad outlines of this package has said it's going to favor the rich more than the Poor. It's certainly going to favor corporations because an essential part of it is going to be a deal that they can repatriate their foreign earnings at a low tax rate. Trump sort of stood on all this yesterday and basically said the opposite, that the rich won't benefit. So does he really mean that? We shall see.
- [07:26]
B
So what does his own Treasury Department's bill offer? The middle class, which of course was another great claim that Trump made throughout his campaign, that he was going to help the middle class.
- [07:37]
D
From all the reporting that's been done and Mnuchna Treasury Secretary's previous statements, it looks like there won't be anything very much directly for the middle class. There may be. The tax brackets will be changed. So the headline marginal tax rate may fall for some people, but it all depends on how that is offset with the treatment of deductions and other parts of the tax code. Most people think there will be a small reduction in taxes for the middle class, maybe a few hundred dollars or something, and a huge deduction in taxes, millions of dollars a year in some cases for ultra rich people. Now, what Trump argues, and he made this argument this week, is that by giving the corporations more money, they'll invest more, there'll be more jobs, we'll get the economy going, but that's how people at the bottom will benefit.
- [08:27]
B
That's the traditional Republican.
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D
It's a classic trickle down argument. Exactly. Trump this week seems to have been saying something different, but so far, I think we've just got to take that as one of the things he says which he doesn't really mean.
- [08:41]
B
All of this is in large part positioning for the midterm elections next year. Getting back to the Democrats again. A number of Democrats are seeking reelection in states that went heavily for Trump. I've been particularly interested in watching the dynamic between him and North Dakota's Democratic Senator, Heidi Heitkamp. Trump won North Dakota by 36 points and she recently joined him on Air Force One. He's called her a good woman. So talk about that dynamic and how far certain Democrats are going to have to go in the direction of meeting Trump. More than halfway.
- [09:17]
D
Yeah. I mean, it's very interesting, obviously. I mean, I think there's more than 10 Democrats up for reelection. 12, I think it is up for reelection next year in the Senate who were in states that Trump won. So theoretically, that's good news for the Republicans. What Trump is trying to do, I think, I don't think he thinks he'll get mass support among the Democrats, but he's trying to pick off one or two. Hyde Camp is one, mansion in West Virginia is another. And I think he's courting them, going to their states so that their voters see him and saying nice things about them in the hope that, you know, they'll support elements of his package, certainly infrastructure, maybe even the tax bill. He said when he was in North Dakota with Heitkam that he was hoping for her support on that. She hasn't really said anything one way or the other as yet, understandably, because the bill hasn't even come out. The Republicans got a very narrow majority, remember, in the Senate. And if he can pick off even two or three Democrats, it would be a big win for him. So far at least there's no sign of this succeeding. But I think, you know, he's made the decision that what he was doing wasn't working, certainly wasn't working. So he's going to try something else. Right now.
- [10:22]
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We are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Charlemagne, tha God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts.
- [10:52]
B
So meanwhile, on the left wing of the party, Bernie Sanders continues to make inroads. You wrote this week about his Medicare for all bill that would create effectively a single payer system, but it has no chance of passing. So talk a little bit about that and how Democrats are responding to it.
- [11:09]
D
Yeah, I mean, this is another interesting one. Bernie obviously proposed a single payer Medicare for all plan during the campaign and he took some heed on the Hillary campaign for it, saying it was unfunded. But here we are a year later and he's got 15 senators supporting pretty much the same proposal in a bill he put forward in the Senate this week. I think it shows a couple of things. Number one, it shows how Bernie is still his campaign wasn't just a one off. It sort of reflected a shift to the left in the Democratic Party and he is now helping to set the agenda in a way which I don't think many people could have foreseen a year or two ago. Secondly, the actual idea of universal government run health care, a single payer system, is just getting more popular. You see that in the polling. Most of the polls show that more than 50% of Americans now support the idea of a single payer. Among democrats, it's like 2/3 or higher. Among independents, it's 55% or so. In a recent Pew survey, Even among Republicans, 28 30% of Republicans now say they'd favor a single payer. Of course, that's just the start of the debate because it'd be a huge. There'd be huge transition costs. It would be a major upheaval. 150 million or more Americans get their insurance to their employers. Most of them are reasonably happy with that insurance. That would all change. The government would basically. You'd be basically insured by the government under Bernie's plan. And almost all economists agree taxes would have to go up somewhat to cover it. How much they'd have to go up is a matter of debate, but it'd be a big transition. And when you start to get into some of the details like possible tax increase and government regulation of your health care, etcetera, Support tends to drop. That's why Democratic leadership, especially Schumer and Pelosi, were cool towards Bernie's bill. They didn't endorse it. They're worried about next year's midterms and the Republicans using their usual tactic of tagging the Democrats as the party that wants to raise your taxes.
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B
And yet the Democrats, who at least are suspected of thinking about a 2020 presidential run, were among those who supported it.
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D
Yeah, I mean, I think what you. There's two different electorates here. The people who support it, who. The co sponsors of the bill, are basically looking at the Democratic primary electorate in 2020. Democratic primary electorate tends to be liberal. Most liberals support single payer. Bernie himself may be running in 2020, and a lot of progressive groups have already come out in favor of his bill. So the safe thing to do if you're a progressive and you're thinking of running 2020, is to go along with it. I'm sure a lot of them actually agree with it, too. Pelosi and Cuma, on the other hand, are looking at the general election electorate in the midterms. That electorate, obviously is substantially less liberal on average than the Democratic primary electorate. They want to make the 2018 midterms basically into a referendum on Trump, I think, and his unpopularity and his policies. And they're reluctant to sort of have the focus put on detailed Democratic policies, which may include tax increases, even if they seem to be popular on the surface of things.
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B
Do we know yet, John, whether the fundamental centrism of the vast majority of American voters has changed in the wake of Trump and Sanders on the other wing.
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D
Yeah, I mean, this is a long debate, actually. And, you know, we've heard this again this week with the whole Hillary Clinton story. Some people say that this theory of centrism is now outdated and that the electorate is so polarized these days that you don't get it. You don't win anything by going in the center. And the Democratic Party should do, as you said earlier, should do what the Republicans did under Obama and basically oppose, oppose, oppose, be hyper partisan, focus on getting out their base. And that's the route to victory, especially in midterms. The other. And I think there's quite a lot in that, actually, just from a ruthless, cynical political point of view. The other point that has to be made, though, is if you just look at the polling on not just committed party voters, but everybody, there's enormous disappointment and anger about the sort of, you know, partisan squabbling in Washington. Congress's approval rating is now, I think, I think there was a poll out this week. I think it's 16%, 17%. Democrats and Republicans above parties, their ratings are in the low teens. And Trump, I think, is trying to tap into this feeling. Now, there's been a bit of polling done. Rasmussen had a poll out this week about whether people support his idea of reaching out, you know, bipartisanship, trying to do some deal deals with Democrats. And the initial polling seems to suggest it's very popular. So I think, you know, if you're the president and you're trying to raise your approval rating, it does make sense to sort of tack to the center and try to reach over the heads of a very unpopular Congress. But if you're the Democratic Party worrying about, you know, 2018, the incentives and the logic are very different.
- [16:11]
B
They still need a message for the middle class. Bernie has one. Whatever you think about his politics, he has one. Hillary, as you mentioned, nobody ever really understood or believed that she would help the middle class. This summer, Schumer unveiled the establishment plan with that banal slogan, A Better Deal. It kind of reminded you why Hillary Clinton couldn't beat Donald Trump.
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D
Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously the Trump slogan, making America Great Again, was, you know, stronger than Hillary's slogan, Stronger Together, which also was the slogan of the losing side in Brexit. But this is an interesting debate, I think, about how much of a positive message you need to go into midterms and general elections. Clearly, going into 2020, whoever is a Democratic candidate is going to have to have a more distinct, sharply focused message on the economy than Hillary did. Hillary's actual policies were actually pretty progressive. If you just go down the list, she'd moved substantially towards Bernie on issues such as college tuition, the minimum wage, but she never put it together into a crisp message that people could understand and sort of rally around. There were too many proposals, I think, and it wasn't sort of drilled down into you strong slogan. But going into the midterms next year, I think the Democrat now Trump may pivot or try to pivot, but I.
- [17:33]
B
Think many times between now and then, obviously, yes.
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D
But I think the central plan which Democrats have got basically opposing Trump and making this a referendum on him is actually likely to be a pretty successful one. They're not mass turnout elections, midterms in general. If you can rally your base and get a good turnout, well, the opposition's turnout is low because people are disappointed in the president. Then you know, you can really make some ground.
- [18:00]
B
Thank you so much, John.
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D
Thank you.
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B
John Cassidy is a staff writer and a political columnist for newyorker.com this has been the political scene from the New Yorker. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on new yorker.com Feel free to rate and review the political scene on Apple Podcasts. This podcast is produced by Alex barron for new yorker.com with help from Hannah W. Lentz. I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
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F
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Try to be an antidote to the.
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D
To the best of my ability, every.
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F
Week, we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times, meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me. One day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
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D
From. PRX.