Trump is throwing himself into the Democrats’ trap
More than that, though, Trump’s inability to unite Republicans behind his health-care bill showed Democrats that they don’t have to make a deal with him out of fear of him making an extremely conservative deal with the House Freedom Caucus. It turns out he can’t make a deal with them at all. Kind of makes it hard to play the two sides off against each other.
.. Republicans want to give private-sector companies tax credits for building approved projects, which they then could charge people to use. Think toll roads, except for everything. Democrats, meanwhile, want the government to take advantage of its still historically low borrowing costs to build whatever we need itself. They’re afraid that tax credits would only fund the most profitable projects, not the most necessary ones; that they’d mostly be a windfall for projects that were already going to happen, not promote new ones; and that the money would go to people close to Trump ..
.. Why turn him into the winning winner he ran as, who alone possesses the ability to break through the gridlock of Washington, when they can keep him as the losing loser he’s governed as, who can’t even get a bill through one chamber of Congress his party controls? They won’t, at least not on terms that are remotely acceptable to Republicans.
.. That’s what happens when everyone knows you can’t afford to walk away from the negotiating table, say, because you have a 36 percent approval rating. Nobody will be afraid of your threats, everybody will call your bluff, and you will cave to whatever they want.