Why Is This Even A Thing?

Or, the Quislings speak.

Democrats give up hope on striking a deal with Trump
By Edward-Isaac Dovere, Politico
04/30/17

Democrats couldn’t be less interested in the whole Jared Kushner vs. Steve Bannon drama, and they have given up on the idea that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law will push him to work across the aisle on tax reform or anything else.

The crisis of confidence they felt after Trump’s shocking win has faded and his record-low poll numbers have killed any incentive in their minds to suck it up and compromise with him.

“There is zero chance of any of this working out that way, and it doesn’t matter who you’re changing,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who notes that many of his colleagues who once decried his absolute opposition to Trump now agree with him. “At the end of the day,” he added, “this is Donald Trump, and we don’t want to work with him.”

As far as Democrats are concerned, the idea of a moderate, post-partisan staff rising to guide Trump into building bridges with them — even for the sake of building actual bridges as part of infrastructure investments Trump talks about and they agree are needed — has now entered the realm of complete fantasy.

“This notion of the battle between Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon and who prevails is irrelevant in many ways to the policies,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), one of the chairs of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, about the discord among Trump’s most senior advisers. “What Democrats are responding to is the substance of the policies: It doesn’t matter who wins the internal battles in the White House.”
…
In the Democratic debate about how to deal with Trump, total obstruction — similar to the Republican approach during Obama’s presidency, with hopes it’ll produce the same results in elections — is winning, and selective, principled compromise is starting to seem like a fever dream, despite anxiety in some quarters that Democrats will be blamed for more gridlock in Washington that voters clearly don’t want.

Hill Democrats feel a hardened “no” is exactly what their constituents have come to demand.

“Initially, people didn’t have a full appreciation of how he would conduct himself,” said Cicilline. “They thought, ‘He won, he wasn’t our choice, but he is our president.’ What I’m hearing from my constituents, even some who’ve been more ambivalent, [is] it’s really important to stand up and resist and try to mitigate the damage that he’s likely to cause.”

Cicilline said that’s reverberated among the other Democrats on the Hill he’s in touch with.

“People are really conflicted, because they want government to work, and they know that’s when we can produce good results, but I think that they’re beginning to lose confidence that this administration and this president are interested in getting things done.”

Evidence of how quickly Democrats are shifting into full “no” mode against Trump: Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), a freshman lawmaker who beat a Republican last year and is already a top 2018 target. Gottheimer’s the co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, and just a few weeks ago was speaking optimistically about working with the White House on a tax overhaul package. He got so far as meetings with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and White House legislative director Marc Short.

Now, Gottheimer says, there’s still an opportunity for the two parties to work together, but only if the White House radically changes its approach.

He’s not interested in just giving a bipartisan sheen for a tax deal that parallels what Trump and GOP leaders did in their attempt to repeal Obamacare, which was a Republican-crafted plan that they complained Democrats wouldn’t support.

“There’s a very big difference between jamming you at the last minute with a piece of legislation and saying, ‘Let’s be bipartisan now,’ versus bringing you into the process so the solution is not an ideologically extreme or rigid document,” Gottheimer said.

There is absolutely no point to compromising with Republicans on anything unless you think their policies are objectively good and if that’s the case you should be given a swift kick in the ass and booted from the Democratic party.

The only ones crying are the Neo Liberal D.C. Centrists and New Democrat Traitors who are losing bi-partisan cover for their unpopular Billionaire boosting Plutocrat sycophant policies.