Not much has changed in the one year since President Donald J. Trump took the oath of office at the west front of the Capitol.
By that I mean the Democrats haven’t learned anything from the epic 2016 presidential election in which Trump slayed a who’s who of the Republican establishment to claim the party’s nomination before conquering Bill and Hillary Clinton. Then there’s the chattering class, which still thinks Trump Democrats in Saginaw will be swayed by whatever “Morning Joe” is saying.
To this day, they are in a state of delusion.
Democrats have done nothing to show they have learned anything from Trump’s victory, when he moved Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to the Republican column.
The Democratic Party is now the party of the hard-left, led by the likes of Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. The few traditional Democrats that remain in the party — the recusants of flyover country, which is populated mostly by middle-class and working-class whites — have been marginalized to the point where they have become an object of media curiosity, as evidenced by a recent must-read piece in Politico Magazine entitled “Heartland Democrats to Washington: You’re Killing Us.”
As a result, Democrats have gone all-in on obstructing and delegitimizing Trump. Even if some in their heart of hearts aren’t inclined to support the so-called #Resistance they also don’t want to become the next Joe Lieberman — the now-former senator from Connecticut and 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee who was purged by the hard-left for heresy in the primaries of 2006.
That would explain why Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Democrat whip, undermined the sausage making that occurs during backroom negotiating.
Durbin and the minority Senate Democrats were under intense pressure from the hard-left not to cut a permanent deal with Trump. To do so would be capitulation.
The handful of Democrat senators from states won by Trump — the likes of Debbie Stabenow in Michigan or Claire McCaskill in Missouri — also voted against the sweeping tax reform. That’s because a vote with Trump and majority Republicans wouldn’t just create internal party problems, but it could result in a loss of funds from their patrons in the donor-class.
Notwithstanding, Trump has achieved a great deal in his first year at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue despite relentless partisan warfare from Democrats that at times has blurred the lines between legitimate political disagreement and subversion.
Atop the list is the booming economy.
Case in point is the Dow Jones industrial average, which, at the time of writing, is up 42.5 percent since Trump’s election.
Of course, the stock market’s performance isn’t the sole indicator of economic growth. For working-class voters, including the 56 percent of union members that defied union bosses to vote for Trump, it’s all about jobs and wages.
Not only are there more jobs, but workers are taking home bigger paychecks thanks to the raises and bonuses that Nancy Pelosi, the House Democrat leader, dismissed as “crumbs.”
To keep majority after November’s mid-term election Trump and Republicans need to stay the course and remain committed to a program that puts America and American workers first.
Democrats who continue resisting will do so at their own peril.