When Donald Trump first took office, all the pundits wondered at whether he would put together some sort of inspired agenda that wasn't definitively red or blue. Given his appeal with at least enough crossover Democrats to get elected and the fact that nine Democratic senators are up for re-election in 2018 in states Trump won, he conceivably had the opportunity to prioritize issues on which he might get a bipartisan boost—funding infrastructure, certain tax cuts, etc.
That was way back in the glorious “he’s gonna pivot" days—only a few months ago but feels more like several years in the Trump time warp. Anyway, that was then, this is now, writes the New York Times:
Democrats, watching Republicans careen around in search of a health care solution, honored the demand of Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, that they stick together in their refusal to lift a finger to help until repeal was taken off the table.
And perhaps most important, Mr. Trump has rarely bothered to ask.
“I am a moderate from a state Trump won,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, who is up for re-election next year in a state where Hillary Clinton received just 38 percent of the vote. “You’d think they would have called me sometime.”
McCaskill and her red state Democratic counterparts sure aren't waiting by the phone any longer. Nor are they afraid to tell it like it is. If you haven't watched the Missouri senator scold her Republican colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee for not holding a single damn hearing on the healthcare repeal bill, treat yourself to a few minutes of her outrage.
Yep, far from upsetting the partisan polemics on Capitol Hill, Trump has gone about stretching them out and etching them in stone with his Twitter tirades and complete dismissal of Democrats. Meanwhile, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have been his gleefully willing accomplices by opting to use procedural moves that enable them to pass bills without any Democratic support whatsoever.
In fact, instead of crafting bills in committee settings, which help foster bipartisan approaches, both Ryan and McConnell have authored their bills in secret with their leadership teams. And since they have entirely frozen Democrats out of the process, their failures will be entirely their own, as will any disastrous policies they do manage to enact—like, say, stripping 20-some million Americans of access to health care.
But within months, Trump has become somewhat of a toothless monster where legislation is concerned—no one on the left or right in the Senate views him as serious enough to be taken seriously or fearsome enough to be feared.