You’re going to hate this. It’s far more important to defeat Trump in 2020 than to win the House in 2018. The Senate is different—Cabinet appointments, judges—but the House just gives Trump someone to blame when things go south on Trump. As they will. As they always do.
Trump has a consistent pattern—make outrageous bets, be the best damn PR guy and salesman since PT Barnum, and first show initial success and then invariably barely personally escape as his disastrous lack of judgment brings doom upon all who relied on him, invested in him, and believed in him. With the presidency it will be no different. He inherited Obama’s strong economy and then did a typical GOP fiscally reckless move—big tax cut and big new deficits—and then got extraordinarily lucky—McCain saved him from killing Obamacare.
The tax cut brings short term economic benefits (which is why GOP might keep House) and long term economic damage—rapidly expanding debt, rising interest rates, and a weak economy. Short term, though, it has contributed to a strong stock market, continued Obama-like job gains, and record low unemployment numbers. The economic damage, though, takes time. It took Bush almost seven years to sink the Clinton economy and Obama three years to fix a big piece of the Bush mess. It will take Trump at least three years, and possibly more, to reverse the strong trajectory of the Obama economy—and with a Democratic House, he will blame the inevitable downturn on us. And he’s amazingly fucking good at blaming shit on us.
Obamacare is the opposite of tax cuts—the pain would have been immediate, felt by huge numbers of Trump voters, and impossible to blame on Dems. McCain saved him. Saved the GOP. Saved a weakened but still enormously helpful ACA. If the GOP keeps the House and Senate, and maybe even through a case about to be decided that will kill the ACA, the ACA will be dead and buried and the pain will come. It’ll be bad, and unfortunate, and good people will suffer, but it can be fixed in 2020.
Trump winning in 2020 brings on all the nightmare scenarios. He needs to own his inevitable mess. Own the deficit and rising interest rates and weakening economy and the immense and immediate pain caused by killing Obamacare. If we’re lucky, despite the anguish that will be felt here today, a Dem failure today will lead to a real House, Senate, and President blue wave in 2020.
Oh, and we need Gillum to help us win FL in 2020. He needs to win. We cannot afford a Trump victory in 2020. Not our party and not our country.
Start calling me names in 3….2….1…..