President Trump is in a quagmire over border wall funding. He has no leverage that he can use to convince Congress to give him what he wants, but he’s too embarrassed to give in and admit that he won’t be able to deliver on his signature campaign promise.
Democrats thinking of running for president in 2020 may be enjoying watching him squirm and salivating over the prospect of running against a weakened Trump. But anybody who hopes to succeed Trump as president should take a lesson from his current debacle.
Trump painted himself into a corner as a result of years of lofty campaign rhetoric that was not rooted in reality. At the time, many people pointed out that Mexico was never going to pay for any wall, and if he was going to build one, Trump was always going to have to figure out a way to get Congress to fund it.
As a candidate, however, these details don’t matter. There’s no penalty for making such wild claims when running for office, because anybody who tries to counter that what is being pledged cannot actually happen is seen as a defeatist or a creature of Washington who doesn’t know how to think big or actually get anything accomplished. In the words of Trump, the type of people who focus on complications are the type of people who are “all talk, no action.”
And so, over the course of the campaign, Trump made all sorts of promises detached from reality — on healthcare, on the debt, and on a host of other issues. Trump’s bold promises are coming back to haunt him now, as he’s stuck in a protracted government shutdown that is paralyzing his ability to advance any administration priorities.
Democrats may benefit from his stumbles in 2020, but they should also take notes. Spending the next two years building up the expectations of their liberal base will only lead to disappointment and political paralysis should Democrats regain power.
Just to take two examples, there’s the push for the “Green New Deal” and socialized health insurance currently being promoted under the banner of “Medicare for all.”
When it comes to “Medicare for all,” the liberal Urban Institute and libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center have both found it would cost about $32 trillion over a decade. That would exceed combined 10-year expenditures on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. Over the next decade, individual and corporate income tax revenue is expected to be $26 trillion — meaning that doubling income taxes on individuals and businesses would not cover the cost of putting everybody on a Medicare-like plan. This does not even get into the issue of how much disruption it would cause to shift the whole population onto a new government healthcare program, as well as have federal officials slash payment rates to drug companies, hospitals, and doctors.
The “Green New Deal,” which at the moment doesn’t exist beyond a rough outline, is a broad vision to create universal employment, spend trillions on infrastructure, and meet the ultimate goal of moving the U.S. to 100 percent renewable energy sources within 10 or 12 years. Right now, just 17 percent of our power comes from renewable energy, with the other 83 percent coming from nuclear power and fossil fuels. There is simply no way that 83 percent of U.S. power sources are going to be replaced within a decade.
Even taking a step back from policy, there’s the issue of political power. Republicans currently have 53 Senate seats, and in 2020 Democrats will only have a few pick-up opportunities, plus they’re almost certain to lose the Alabama Senate seat they captured due to the Roy Moore debacle. Assuming a loss in Alabama, they’d need to gain four seats just to put a theoretical Democratic vice president in the position of being a tie-breaking vote. The more comfortable any theoretical Senate majority, the more it would involve winning traditionally red states, in which candidates would have a much tougher time supporting a radical agenda.
If they couldn’t get a “public option” in Obamacare with 60 votes in the Senate, they certainly aren’t coming back a decade later with a significantly smaller majority passing socialized healthcare. In 2017, when Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., released his version, it attracted 16 co-sponsors, which only represented about a third of the Democratic caucus at the time.
So, the next president is not going to be able to sign “Medicare for all” into law, nor will he or she be able to pass a bill meeting the goals of the Green New Deal.
But it will be temping for candidates to latch on to unrealistic policies to appeal to the energetic liberal base. Of the 16 senators who joined Sanders in supporting “Medicare for all,” four were probable presidential candidates: Sens. Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
Booker has also joined Sanders in supporting a “Green New Deal.” Warren has signaled that she supports the “idea” of it, whatever that means.
At first glance, the “Green New Deal” is perfect for 2020 Democrats wanting to appeal to the base. Since there’s no one specific piece of legislation out there, it can mean different things to different people. But any Democrat who says they support the idea, only to propose a smaller scale bill along the lines of President Barack Obama’s $831 billion stimulus plan is going to be in for quite a backlash. The brief outline that we have from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, says, “the ‘$1 trillion over 10 years’ plan for investment in the green economy that has been floated by some policy makers has been criticized by climate experts as a wholly inadequate level of investment.”
Trump was able to win the White House in large part by making promises untethered to the limitations of policy and political realities, but now in office, he finds himself trapped by that rhetoric. Any Democrat who follows his strategy to capture the presidency will inevitably find him or herself in a similar crisis.
