It’s Day 75 of Donald Trump’s pr*sidency, the winning hasn't really started and it might never. Other than Republicans forcing through Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch by nuking the Senate filibuster rule, Trump appears poised to accomplish little-to-none of his legislative agenda. Bottom line: he has no real ideological allies on the Hill and he specializes in subtraction (or losing votes) rather than addition. The last few “yeas” that a popular president with an actual mandate might be able to deliver on any given bill remain out of his grasp. The Washington Post writes:
“He seems both politically and personally isolated these days,” said David Gergen, a former adviser to Democratic and Republican presidents dating to Richard M. Nixon. “He’s flailing because he doesn’t know where to find his natural allies.” [...]
In the West Wing, frustration abounds. For a president fixated on winning, people close to him say he is anxious to find out what went wrong with his team’s health-care push and get to a deal on that issue or another front such as taxes or infrastructure as fast as possible.
The desperation is palpable. Last week, Trump was fixing for a "fight" with the Freedom Caucus that blew up his healthcare bill, “& Dems” (from the same tweet). Of course, if you go to war with both the House maniacs and Democrats, you’re not passing squat. Zip. That revelation must have led to his brief flirtation with the idea of reaching out to Democrats, which he dropped just as soon as his aides floated it. Now he's back to wooing the same Republicans that killed health care like Sen. Rand Paul, whom he golfed with on Sunday.
Donald Trump is desperate for traction, but he doesn’t have the temperament for governing. As California Gov. Jerry Brown told MSNBC last week, politics is about finding votes.
"You have to make more allies than enemies. It’s simple. Politics is about addition, not subtraction.”
Trump, a master of subtraction still in search of a central organizing principle, is in the wrong business now.