White House Correspondent Andrew Egger recently wrote in the Bulwark that most presidents view a major off-year election loss as “the political equivalent of a punch in the mouth,” and they change their tactics. This goes double in an election that was seen as a clear repudiation of a president’s policies.
“If there’s good news for [President Donald] Trump here, it’s that the [election] damage was contained to a couple governorships and state supreme court and legislative elections,” said Egger. “The GOP’s coalmine canary has croaked, but the miners are all still alive. They may even remain so. But that will depend largely on how [President] Donald Trump responds.”
Just don’t get your hopes up for any philosophical evolution in Trump, Egger said.
“Other presidents have made pivots before. Barack Obama turned abruptly to fiscal austerity after a backlash to his stimulus-heavy first year. Bill Clinton leaned further into triangulation after his health care initiative blew up,” said Egger. “It is perhaps not as outlandish as you might think to wonder whether Trump himself will try his version of this. He has spent the entirety of his first year back in office unbelievably high on his own supply — totally convinced that the great and good American people are as into his presidency as he is into himself. Now that they’ve declared they’re not, it would seem like a natural moment to reassess that assumption.”
Such a pivot could go in several popular directions that could help Trump and make Republicans give a sigh of relief. It would start, said Egger, with It would start with Trump “actually engaging in negotiations to break the ice on the government shutdown, which grows more painful for the American public by the day.:
It could also take the form of Trump quietly yanking “Stephen Miller’s chain” on immigration enforcement.
“Detentions and deportations would continue, but the base-titillating robocop cosplay would be quietly wound down. The sizzle-reel videographers shooting lascivious B-roll of migrants in wrist-and-ankle chains or of Border Patrol agents rappelling down from helicopters into apartment buildings would be unobtrusively reassigned.”
Let the deportation numbers “speak for themselves,” said Egger.
“Or imagine if Trump were to get serious about actually addressing affordability,” Eggers continued. “Instead of pushing the pillow of tariffs down ever harder on the face of the economy, he could do what he did on trade with Canada and Mexico in his first term: strike deals allowing free trade to resume while including a few pot-sweeteners from other countries to help him save face,” said Egger. “He could then declare the negotiating period over and the Golden Age launched. For good measure, he could demand Congress pass a bill converting the tariffs already accumulated into a rebate to help the American consumer with prices. Who says no?”
Trump might even turn to energy, and instead of continuing his “pointless war on green energy as electricity costs spike,” Trump could embrace an “all-of-the-above approach — keeping the drill, baby, drill rhetoric up about oil, gas, and coal while quietly allowing renewables to thrive, too,” said Egger.
“He could go into Russ Vought’s office tomorrow and say: Hey, those projects you froze, unfreeze them. It would be that easy,” Egger said.
“But I’m not holding my breath,” he added. “Donald Trump didn’t get where he is today by learning to accommodate himself to the shape of the world around him. He got here by trying to bludgeon the world into shape until it accommodated him.”
Whether that will get Trump safely through the midterms “remains to be seen,” Egger said.
Read the Bulwark report at this link.