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Pelosi’s Open Bluff
Nancy Pelosi is in a staredown with Donald Trump over the building of a wall along parts of our southern border. Pelosi has the support of Democrats, the media, progressives, and anti-Trump Republicans. Trump has the support of some Republicans and his ego. So I would argue that Trump has more support than Pelosi.
Trump is pushing this because it’s one of his campaign promises, but also apparently because he thinks border security is an important problem facing American citizens. Pelosi has spoken in favor of a wall in the past, but in her current political situation, it makes more sense for her to oppose the wall, President Trump, and her own former statements. Politics can put people into awkward positions sometimes. It happens.
So in this staredown, who will blink first? I find it exceedingly unlikely that Trump will back down. First of all, that’s not his style. He may negotiate and meet her halfway (and he has publicly offered to do exactly that already), but he will not abandon his cause. Suppose he loses more and more Republican support as the government shutdown becomes more politically difficult over time – I just don’t think that will matter. Trump was elected without the support of the Republican establishment. He’ll take their support where he can get it, but he’s certainly not dependent on it. And anyone who looks back on Trump’s life will find many character flaws, but they will not find that he is prone to crippling self-doubt. He’s just not going to back down. All he has to do is say, “I’m doing this for the good of American citizens. If Pelosi has her way, American citizens will get hurt.” That is a plausible position. He doesn’t have to back down.
What about Pelosi? First of all, she’s a political animal. She is in her position solely because of the support of her political allies. If they start to get cold feet, she’ll find herself in a very awkward position very quickly. She may then be forced to appeal to them by pointing out the reasons for her opposition to the wall, but that will quickly become even more awkward. What will she say?
She could say that if the government shutdown persists, then hundreds of thousands of government workers will not get their paychecks. These people will get hurt more and more the longer this goes on.
So what happens if she agrees to the wall? Well, all those government workers start getting paid, so they’d be happy.
But she can’t back down. She just can’t agree to the wall. Why not? Well, Pelosi would say that people will get hurt if she agrees to the wall. But here’s the trick: Who are those people? I’m not sure how she would answer that.
It’s obvious that if she agrees to the wall, there will be some happy government workers, because they’ll get paid. But who will be unhappy?
Illegal immigrants. They’re the only ones I can think of who will be hurt by the construction of a wall along parts of our southern border. It won’t hurt legal immigrants – they don’t enter the country by sneaking through the desert. It won’t hurt American citizens – it will help them. It won’t hurt government workers – it will help them – they’ll finally get paid.
So the only people who will be hurt if Pelosi agrees to a wall are illegal immigrants. They are the only reason she cannot agree to the wall. So illegal immigrants are apparently more important to Pelosi than government workers, or American citizens in general. I would think that this would put an elected official into an awkward position.
I would also think this bargain would be a tough sell for Pelosi to maintain her support. And if those who support her start to figure this out, I think Pelosi may have no choice but to agree to the wall.
I also suspect that Trump has already figured all this out, and he knows that he’s negotiating from a position of strength. He won’t back down. Because he doesn’t have to. And he knows it.
I suspect Pelosi knows it, too. I’m pretty sure Chuck Schumer knows it. Pelosi may be as stupid as she sounds, although that seems unlikely. But Schumer is not stupid. They’re in an impossible situation. Surely they must see that as clearly as Trump and everyone else does.
Sometimes a bluff works in a game of poker, even if you have no cards in your hand. But that only works if everybody else can’t see your cards.
It seems to me that Pelosi and Schumer are bluffing even though everybody in the game knows they have a losing hand. That seems like odd behavior for professional politicians. So perhaps I’m missing something.
What do you think?
Published in General
She still has the media on her side.
If I were President Trump, I would use my own money to run an add in the New York Times and in the Sacramento Bee, listing and quoting all the dates and places, when and where Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer made public statements from the past supporting the wall. Keep that portion of his pay that he gives away to pay for the ad. Keep it running for at least a week.
Pelosi, Schumer and the Democrats are facing a unique thing they have never seen before. A “Republican” with a set of gonads.
You’re reckoning without the large number of Pelosi’s supporters who are enthralled with virtue signaling, in this case waving unskilled and often criminal illegals through the border to feast on taxpayers’ largesse.
I think Pelosi/Schumer/et al do not care about any principle. They don’t care. They do care about power. And they do know that Republicans have always caved.
They might have a tiger by the tail now.
That is exactly what he does say. He also said he could take the easy route like all the Presidents before him, and just kick the can down the road–just forget about it and move on. But then more Americans will get hurt, like you said Doc. There are, of course a hundred reasons to build the wall, if only to convince law abiding citizens that breaking the law is serious and will not be allowed. Walls are the cornerstone to building, whether it be a house or a country because they provide security for those inside. But just as is the case with all things he does, he will get “wall to wall” ridicule. I think PDJT needs to become boisterous, for a change, to overcome the milieu of opposition.
If only.
I think you have it right.
And remind me why they made such a big deal out of this? What’s 5 billion to a Democrat?
I don’t watch the MSM anymore, but news cycles get stale. Unless you are a missing paychecks yourself, the whole government shutdown thing as it goes on can’t carry a lot of sympathy. What are they going to do, show families eating dog food? Trash in the parks? It’s going to get old.
I’m guessing government workers are overwhelmingly Democrat, and I doubt Trump-supporting government workers will hold it against him. So how much more can the Dems get out of this?
The Democrats have spent all their ‘hate’ capital. Can they hate him any more? So this gives him the ability to ignore them completely until they cave.
Yeah, this is important. The media with obfuscate as much as they can, hoping the American people’s sympathy for the little guy will overwhelm the basic facts of the situation. It might even work for them, again. I’m am hoping Trump plays it to the end.
Clear, well said and dead right. It’s also the PR we should be using. She doesn’t care about government workers. She cares about illegals.
Exactly. In typical DC fashion, all they have to do is tack another $5 billion for Planned Parenthood (or some such) on to Trump’s wall funding…hell, make it an extra $10 billion (he’ll sign it), and this is all over until next time. The Potemkin republic in all it’s glory. (Nothing new here under the sun…)
I think polls show he also has the support of a large proportion (if not the majority) of US citizens.
(EM) The wall would only affect people who want to emigrate and haven’t decided what to do:
Might be missing a couple of factors. One, their supporters already know they’re lying regarding why they oppose a wall. That is baked in. Two, the wall is a very serious threat to the left – it will reduce illegal immigration, but the special thing about a wall is its permanence. The left, at the leader and donor level, is depending on migration as one key factor in their eventual rule. Without it, the whole glorious future of progress is threatened.
So they’re in a bit of a bind, for sure. They have to be very careful how they rally the troops and what the media says. But I don’t think they’re bluffing, because real border security that can’t be easily turned off by the next leftist President is near to an existential threat.
Trump owes no one politically except his voters. His voters are certainly not government workers. The illegal immigrants are a crisis. The wall and much more is needed. I don’t see Trump backing down.
Not only that, but Schumer and company usually vote for big federal public works projects. Blue collar construction jobs, I guess those construction jobs are out.
But lets face it – even if they fully funded it tomorrow, nothing significant is going to get built before Trump leaves office (even if he’s re-elected) – The Environmental impact statements alone will take a decade. And the next Dem president will just kill it.
Trump has two big problems in this negotiation:
1) the GOP establishment, Koch brothers, and chamber-of-commerce types like cheap illegal labor. That means he will be nearly alone in communicating with the public (plus talk radio).
2) his opponents win if nothing happens and Congress is very good and doing nothing.
Trump does not have much to help him:
1) past statements by DNC leaders.
2) wall supporters are smaller in number, but more passionate than the broken immigration folks. Small and passion is better for defense than offense.
What happens? Maybe the El Chapo act to fund upgrades of existing elements of the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
Forget the wall. Waste of money. Landmines and AC-130 Gunships.
Not the only ones. Democrat politicians. They’ll get hurt by letting Trump win this one and by the reduction in new
socialistDemocrat voters. I think they’re at an impasse.Should Trump employ the Army Corps of Engineers and get it over with? I’m beginning to think so.
Why did President Trump wait until Republican domination of Congress ended to publicly focus on the wall?
One possibility is that he doesn’t care as much as he claims. He saved it until now because the show is all that matters.
Another possibility is that some Republicans were not on board and he kept debates private to keep voter frustration focused on Democrats. But that scenario assumes a degree of secrecy unlikely in modern politics. Leaks abound.
A third possibility is that he always intended to pursue the goal through Executive powers rather than legislation. But then he probably would have said that during the campaign, as Clinton did in regard to “climate change” regulations.
Good line.
The experts think Pelosi and Schumer have the winning hand. They think the wall polls badly, and that the president and Repubs always take the blame for the shutdown, especially when Trump said he’d own the shutdown and said Mexico would pay for the wall.
I think the experts are reading the situation about as well as they’ve read every other situation in the past few years.
BTW, great piece.
In this discussion we have completely ignored the second most important reason for building the wall, to stop the drug traffic across the border. Certainly those who traffic in illegal drugs oppose the wall and probably a significant number of drug users who fear a rising cost or unavailability of their favorite stash.
The drug kingpins are probably already funneling big bucks into the US to promote opposition to the wall. Trump should keep hammering on the damage done to Americans by illegal drugs just as the Dems will keep hammering about those poor children stranded over the border who only want a better life. There is no way Pelosi can defend the drug smugglers, just pontificate how drugs will find a way in even if the wall is built. That may be a hard sell.
That’s a good point. The funding is just one step, then they get to leverage their courts and probably the EPA too. Do I recall something in the news a while back about sidestepping the usual faux-environmental lilliputians?
Me too, and he needs to hasten the pace of events and get it started.
Let’s say construction starts tomorrow, with the Corps of Engineers in charge. If Trump wins in 2020 then the wall gets finished. If Trump doesn’t run but, say, Pence wins then I think it’s a maybe. If a standard GOPer or a Dem wins, then work stops and never resumes.
And if K. Harris wins in 2020 then that agency would be replaced by the Corpse of Engineers, and we’d have to dig up all the existing fencing.
The Corpse of Engineers could join the already extant medical corpsemen.
@aaronmiller
I’m not seeing any of those scenarios as compelling.
Others have been asking this question, and my thought is “ where have you been these last two years?”
New President never before in politics. Has appointed a few too many non-loyalists with their own agenda. The most multi-tasking of recent Presidents, revamping foreign policy, trying to repeal Obamacare, two Supreme Court battles, having to fight on several fronts versus the media and the FBI and DOJ, with a Congressional leadership that doesn’t seem very interested in building a wall. And he did get some funding for the wall last year, but it seemed he had to get $ for the military as a priority.
How should he have predicted that Democrats would seize on this as a political football? And even if he had, I’m not sure he could have done that too. And of course, they would pick whatever he didn’t finish anyway to attack him on.
Once again, thanks for dinner and it was great to meet you! Next time on me!
I’m not sure “He was busy” is a good excuse. Leaving aside any concrete proposals, how much has he even spoken of the wall between now and his campaign? It was so prominent in his campaign that it’s hard to believe he would put it on the back burner without at least telling his supporters he was working on it.
It was a pleasure.