Democrats have emerged with a plan to counter President Trump’s well-received Tuesday speech to a joint session of Congress: make a big bet that Trump’s policies will fail and that the nation will eventually reject him.
A day after Trump’s big moment on Capitol Hill, Democrats made it clear they are looking to oppose Trump at every turn, and hope voters can start seeing the effects of Trump’s agenda, no matter how effectively he is able to communicate with voters.
“It’s not a question of one speech,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., told the Washington Examiner after Trump’s address, which political pundits declared the best of Trump’s political career. “If Democrats speak out against him and a year and a half from now people don’t think too highly of him, then that’s good” for Democrats.
Nadler and other Democrats interviewed by the Examiner are banking on Trump’s long and ambitious list of pledges failing to materialize — from a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, to comprehensive tax reform and a major bill to refurbish the nation’s infrastructure.
“He’s making promises that aren’t going to happen,” Nadler said.
The contrast between the two parties during Trump’s Tuesday speech was stark. Exuberant ovations from the Republican side of the House chamber were met with scowls and thumbs-down gestures from the Democrats across the aisle. They listened with sullen faces to Trump’s hour-long outline of a plan the GOP believes will improve the economy, job creation, national security and health care.
Trump’s relationship with Democrats has gotten off to a particularly rocky start, after dozens of House Democrats refusing to attend his inauguration. Trump has also engaged in frequent twitter warfare with Democrats and has attacked Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whom he called “incompetent” this week.
Yet during Tuesday’s address, Trump invited the Democrats to “join forces” with him to reform the troubled health care law that has caused premiums and deductibles to skyrocket while reducing the insurance market to a state of near collapse.
Just before the conclusion of his speech, he told Congress, “The time for trivial fights is behind us.” After all the public fighting, Trump’s offer struck some as incredible.
Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y. head of the House Democratic Caucus, was sitting right in front of the president and couldn’t believe his ears.
“He gestured towards me, saying let’s stop the trivial fights, and I gave him the arm gesture right back,” Crowley recounted. “Who’s trivial? He’s trivial.”
But Democrats acknowledged Trump is shaping up to be more presidential, forcing them to pivot from picking on Trump personally to attacking his policies instead.
Rep. Alan Lowenthal, a Democrat who represents the Long Beach area in California, said Democrats are ready to pivot away from attacking Trump and will instead focus on those who would lose under his policies, including an Obamacare repeal.
“I think there is going to be less anti-Trump and more of what are our values and what is the difference between what he is saying and what we propose,” Lowenthal said.
On the Senate floor Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., sought to downplay the success of Trump’s address by accusing him of embarking on an agenda that favors the rich over the legions of working class Americans who elevated Trump to victory in November.
Schumer acknowledged Trump has delivered “a few good speeches,” but accused him of “governing from the hard right … far away from what the American people want.”
Preliminary polls taken after Trump’s address show viewers mostly hailed it as a winner. That has some Democrats acknowledging a risk inherent in their plan: that their own fortunes will sink if Trump continues to perform in the eyes of the public.
“If Democrats speak out against him and a year from now he’s riding high, then that’s not so good,” Nadler said.
