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Democrats are back in array!

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

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Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

“woke” is the new caravan.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

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I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

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The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

I was promised a recession.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / World’s Greatest Negotiator

World’s Greatest Negotiator

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Twitler thoughtfully provided foreshadowing this morning on his trip to Capitol Hill today:

When I saw that this morning, I wasn’t sure what he was up to, aside from mindlessly lashing out. The consensus last time Trump negotiated directly with Pelosi and Schumer was that he (Trump) got pantsed. Was this preemptive bluster designed to soften the bounce if he has to cave again?

If so, “Chuck and Nancy” declined the bait. Breaking news from WaPo:

Pelosi, Schumer pull out of White House meeting over spending

Schumer and Pelosi said that “rather than going to the White House for a show meeting that won’t result in an agreement,” they’ve asked to meet alone with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

“If the president, who already said earlier this year that ‘our country needs a good shutdown,’ isn’t interested in addressing the difficult year-end agenda, we’ll work with those Republicans who are, as we did in April. We look forward to continuing to work in good faith, as we have been for the last month, with our Republican colleagues in Congress to do just that.”

Good for them for waving the orange fart cloud away. It would be not only hilarious but a heartening display of bipartisan contempt if Ryan and McConnell met with Pelosi and Schumer as scheduled, sans Scheißegibbon, but I don’t think they have the guts to defy Trump so openly. Yet.

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69Comments

  2. 2.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Trump has no power over congress, and is too chickenshit to use his only threat – the veto. Anything Pelosi and Schumer say to/with/about him is for publicity and nothing more. There are no deals to be made. McConnell and Ryan are where the power is, and those negotiations must be interesting. They are supremely slimy assholes, but unless McConnell’s actual Machiavellian goal is to accomplish nothing and go ‘Hey, you can’t blame me, I tried!’ about the most god-awful and yet easily accomplished aspects of conservative policy, neither strikes me as a genius anymore. Ryan’s stupidity is probably the biggest problem. It’s hard to negotiate with a moron who thinks he’s always right.

  3. 3.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    The only way Ryan and McConnell will ever defy the Popular Vote Loser is either when he’s voted out of office or falls into a coma.

    The only people in the modern GOP who are bipartisan are ones who are either out of political office or have told us they’re leaving political office soon. And I have my doubts if the latter group have the guts to meaningfully defy the Popular Vote Loser when push comes to shove.

  4. 4.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:
    They have already openly defied him, repeatedly. The sanctions bill against Russia was nothing but a giant middle finger to Trump. They may be scared of his voters, but they ain’t scared of him and Trump has demonstrated he doesn’t control those votes.

    EDIT – There is a big, BIG difference between fanatically defending Trump being president and following Trump’s lead on anything.

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    @schrodingers_cat: They might have some trouble with that; there’s enough obvious nonsense in the Senate bill that there’s a non-zero chance it could even fail to pass out of committee. I won’t hold my breath expecting that, but it’s at least possible.

  6. 6.

    MattF

    What Trump is ‘selling’ is always his own self-defined magnificence– he wants to use Pelosi and Schumer as props in a little puppet show. Now, it just so happens that Pelosi and Schumer have policy goals, a notion that is entirely beyond Trump’s repertoire. So, no puppet show.

    I’d have written ‘intellectual’ repertoire above, but it felt inappropriate.

  8. 8.

    trollhattan

    I find Trump’s random capitalizations distressingly similar to RANDOM Anonymous!!! wingNUT Internut KommenTERS and NEWSpaper Letter-righters eVERYWare?

  10. 10.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Nope. He’s never had to interact with people who aren’t forced to be nice to him because he has power over them. He has no clue how to deal with people who have an equal amount of power of their own.

  12. 12.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    It’s hard to negotiate with a moron who thinks he’s always right.

    That describes every glibertarian I’ve had the misfortune of knowing. Of course it applies to Paul.

    I work in a federal agency and don’t see Congressional leadership defying Trump in any meaningful way when it comes to running the government (into the ground). Or in larger policy goals like upward, redistribution of wealth, etc. Or nominating reactionary morans to the federal bench.

    Having said that, I’ll backtrack a little: should little Paulie end up facing a tough re-election battle next year, he might find something effectively meaningless to hang his hat on to the voters as “defying” (running away from) the Popular Vote Loser. Of course he has to walk a fine line there because if he does that too much, the loses the Crazification Vote and thus loses re-election.

  13. 13.

    LurkerNoLonger

    Someone should tell Trump, because he’s a stupid moron who can’t count, that there are more Republicans in congress right now than Democrats. They have the numbers to keep the government open and they could do it without any Dem votes. But 50% of them are crazy idiots so they have to go to the Dems looking for help.

  14. 14.

    MattF

    @lgerard: There’s a level of shamelessness about Hannity that I find hard to grasp. But trying to grasp it is an exercise in self-pollution.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    @trollhattan: That drives me nuts too. There’s speculation that he doesn’t write his own tweets but bellows them to someone else to type into a phone, but those random capitalizations make me think it’s probably Trump himself who types most of them.

  16. 16.

    TenguPhule

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    The sanctions bill against Russia was nothing but a giant middle finger to Trump.

    Point of Order, Tillerson’s gutting of State means those Sanctions are only on the books, not in actual effect. Because we have nobody enforcing it.

  17. 17.

    TenguPhule

    @LurkerNoLonger:

    They have the numbers to keep the government open and they could do it without any Dem votes.

    Actually they don’t.

    Spending bills need 60 to break a fillibuster. And thanks to Republicans, fillibusters are now always assumed to be in play on every bill that gets voted on in the Senate.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LurkerNoLonger: Actually they can’t. They don’t have a large enough majority in the Senate to pass either another continuing resolution – short or long term/year on year – or actual appropriations bills through regular order. In order for any spending bill, continuing resolution or appropriations, to get through the Senate will require at least 8 Democratic votes.

  20. 20.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Betty Cracker: Three people do tweets under both the President’s personal and official accounts. The President, the caddy (Scavino), and Hope Hicks. During the day, the one’s from the President are either him will dictating them to Scavino or Hicks or him typing them himself. After hours he does them himself. You can tell whether the President is writing them himself or dictating them by the presence or absence of random capitalization, other typos, and strangely used punctuation.

  23. 23.

    randy khan

    Not that I expect anything different, but the Trump tweet on Pelosi and Schumer doesn’t have much to do with the budget negotiations (crime, immigration?) and seems to contradict his earlier statements that he wants to find a way to keep Dreamers in the U.S.

  27. 27.

    Felonius Monk

    Can’t wait to hear what the Orange Scrotum of Cluelessness has to say about being dissed by Nancy and Chuck.

  28. 28.

    SenyorDave

    @lgerard: Not surprising that they don’t mention his race baiting on local NY radio, or the disgraceful Abner Louima episode.

    I was in NY metro area when Hannity made a name for himself. He was pretty overt in his racism in those days.

    I do remember the Louima case. For those who don’t know, Abner Louima was a Haitian immigrant arrested on a disorderly conduct charge.
    He was sodomized with a broom handle at the police station. Eventually, police officer Justin Volpe pled guilty to the assault and received a 30 year sentence. Prior to his pleading guilty, Hannity would have Justin Volpe’s father on and they would joke that Louima went to a gay club and had rough sex (Louima’s injuries required multiple surgeries, plus he had extensive damage to his teeth as a result of the broom handle being shoved into his mouth). Hannity played the whole thing as a big joke. WABC, his radio station at the time, had a stable full of racist talk show hosts, including the infamous Bob Grant, may he rot in hell. BTW, Louima turned out to be a good guy, using a portion of his $8+ million settlement for relief in Haiti. I guess the NYT can’t be bothered to mention Hannity’s racist background, too much trouble to investigate since it happened all the way out in… New York City!

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: They can’t. The reconciliation enabling legislation for this current year allows them to do the tax stuff and, maybe, some ACA repeal (depending on how they were to word this). Spending bills, either continuing resolutions or actual appropriations, require clearing the 60 vote cloture threshold.

  34. 34.

    Barbara

    @TenguPhule: Not to get all conspiracy oriented, but I do wonder whether Russia really wants the U.S. to drop sanctions against Cuba. It’s been a while since Cuba has been overtly influenced by Russia, since other EU and Latin American countries have disdained to keep following the U.S. So I would not have thought this would be something terribly important for Russia. But who really knows.

  36. 36.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Adam L Silverman: I used to believe that to be the case, but (going off research I did a month or two ago) apparently the idea that reconciliation bills must be “about” something outlined in the instructions is merely another convention. The law/rules just say that it has to be under the amount specified in the instructions.

  37. 37.

    Woodrowfan

    @Barbara: it might be that the Russians still have enough assets in Cuba that they can pull such an attack off with more ease…. I wonder if they’d even tell the Cuban government…..

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @Frankensteinbeck: RollCall:

    Ryan and McConnell, though, issued their own statement criticizing the Democrats’ move.

    “We have important work to do, and Democratic leaders have continually found new excuses not to meet with the administration to discuss these issues. Democrats are putting government operations, particularly resources for our men and women on the battlefield, at great risk by pulling these antics. There is a meeting at the White House this afternoon, and if Democrats want to reach an agreement, they will be there.”

    In his opening remarks on the floor Tuesday afternoon, Schumer said the president shot first, resulting in the standstill.

    “The president said I don’t see a deal three hours before a meeting, before we had anything to say,” Schumer said.

    Speaking to reporters Tuesday morning, House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland said he reads the statement Pelosi and Schumer issued as, “You’re on your own, Mr. President.”

    Hoyer said Trump’s tweet is “absolutely false” and is just him “pandering to his angry base.”

    “It it’s totally antithetical to trying to get some kind of agreement on what he said he’d do,” Hoyer said.

    White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called Pelosi and Schumer pulling out of the meeting “disappointing.” The meeting will go on with President Trump and GOP leaders.

    Presumably Donnie and the Teabaggers will try to come up with some Genius Strategery to blame the Democrats in their meeting today. It’s what they do. But, as you say, Donnie has very little leverage here. The question is, whether Ryan and McConnell are happy with a day of dueling blame games and actually want to make a reasonable deal, or whether they actually think they can force the Democrats to go along with their horrible proposals.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another short-term CR with nothing else that anyone wants in it, but if it goes beyond the end of the year then the automatic 2018 Sequestration cuts become an increasingly likely possibility. Ryan and McConnell are eventually going to have to pick up the can and stop kicking it down the road…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    TenguPhule

    @Barbara: It would not surprise me that Putin would want to goad Trump into military strikes against Cuba.

    It would immediately alienate the USA from Central and South America.

    They still remember the Death squads and gunboat diplomacy.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: The Senate parliamentarian will have the final say, but under the rules the GOP majority put forward to enable their legislating in FY 2018, the only thing they can bring under reconciliation is the tax stuff and some of the ACA repeal stuff.

    As with everything else we’ve seen not just over the past year with the President, as well as with the senatorial GOP over the past decade or so, rules, regulations, norms, and traditions don’t really matter much. If damage is to be properly repaired, many of the things (rules, regs, norms, and/or traditions) that everyone had previously just accepted would be observed will have to be actually written into law to constrain both the abuses of the executive and his appointees and those of legislative leaders.

  44. 44.

    TenguPhule

    @Another Scott:

    I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another short-term CR with nothing else that anyone wants in it.

    Not gonna happen.

    If the Democrats can’t get anything out of this, they have no incentives to do anything other then take the ball and go home.

  45. 45.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Adam L Silverman:

    under the rules the GOP majority put forward to enable their legislating in FY 2018, the only thing they can bring under reconciliation is the tax stuff and some of the ACA repeal stuff.

    Following those rules is not codified anywhere. Not even the senate rules. It is a convention. The only thing that’s codified about the instructions is their existence and the dollar target.

  48. 48.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    I can’t bring myself to click on the Smirks O’Hannity piece. Has anyone read it and seen if there’s at least any pushback in the comments section?

  50. 50.

    Another Scott

    @Major Major Major Major: Yup.

    As Drum points out, their tax bill obviously fails all of the usual conventions for these things, but the GOP doesn’t see any problem with it.

    Just to remind everyone, there are three separate rules that the Republican tax bill has to conform to:

    1. The Republican budget resolution, which limits the bill to additional deficits of $1.5 trillion over its first ten years (2018-2027).

    2. The Byrd Rule, which limits additional deficits to zero after the first ten years (2028 and beyond).

    3. PAYGO, or pay-as-you go, which, when combined with the Budget Control Act, mandates that any new deficits need to be offset with equal spending cuts.

    #1 appears to be pretty well in hand. #2 is still a problem as far as I know, though we haven’t yet seen the latest JCT estimates. And #3 is basically an ICBM headed straight for the Capitol dome: we can all see it coming, but for some reason hardly anyone is talking about it. I don’t quite understand this.

    The idea that #2 and #3 are both satisfied is laughable. But Donnie and the Teabaggers don’t care.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    Roger Moore

    @Mnemosyne:

    Nope. He’s never had to interact with people who aren’t forced to be nice to him because he has power over them. He has no clue how to deal with people who have an equal amount of power of their own.

    I think the second part is true, but not the first. Trump does have experience dealing with people who don’t have to be nice to him. The obvious example is Vladimir Putin, who has power over him and who Trump thus has to suck up to in order to avoid being crushed like a bug.

    But you’re absolutely right that Trump has little experience in dealing with people who are neither able to bully him nor susceptible to being bullied by him. Since bullying is his primary way of dealing with people, he’s lost. He tries bullying but fails because he lacks leverage, and he tries sucking up and also fails because that isn’t what they want. He has no grasp of how to negotiate a mutually beneficial deal with an equal negotiating partner because his worldview doesn’t encompass the idea of mutually beneficial deals.

  57. 57.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Roger Moore: @Major Major Major Major: He doesn’t believe in mutually beneficial deals. He has no concept of best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Everything for him is zero sum. Every relationship, every negotiation, every agreement. For him to be successful (win), the other party has to lose.

  59. 59.

    Roger Moore

    @Adam L Silverman:

    For him to be successful (win), the other party has to lose.

    I think it’s actually worse than that. He thinks that as long as the other party is losing, he must be winning. Just as he doesn’t grasp the concept of a mutually beneficial arrangement, he doesn’t grasp the idea of a mutually destructive one. That’s an incredibly dangerous hole in his thinking.

  60. 60.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Roger Moore: Its not just him, its the legions of morons enabled by Fox News and our purity ponies are similarly infected. They think all games have win-lose outcomes, they can’t comprehend win-win or lose-lose outcomes, something that my cats can. Its their moral certitude combined with intellectual bankruptcy that is going to be lethal to the rest of us who share the country and planet with them.

  61. 61.

    Brachiator

    If so, “Chuck and Nancy” declined the bait. Breaking news from WaPo:

    Pelosi, Schumer pull out of White House meeting over spending

    I loved this move.

    Good for them for waving the orange fart cloud away. It would be not only hilarious but a heartening display of bipartisan contempt if Ryan and McConnell met with Pelosi and Schumer as scheduled, sans Scheißegibbon, but I don’t think they have the guts to defy Trump so openly. Yet.

    If the Dems and Republicans work out a deal, the GOP leadership just have to sell it to Trump in a way that makes it look like he won.

    Also, the GOP can afford to look reasonable here, especially if it gives them room to get their abomination of a tax reform bill passed.

  63. 63.

    Roger Moore

    @Adam L Silverman:
    As schrodingers_cat points out, it’s not just him. It’s the whole damn party. You can pretty easily explain Cleek’s Law as exactly the same failure. The Conservatives are so worried about beating the Liberals that they’ll accept anything that the Liberals don’t like as a victory, even if it’s objectively terrible for them, too.

  64. 64.

    J R in WV

    @Major Major Major Major:

    The internets of politics are especially stabby lately, even for me, and I’ve been a political junkie for going on 50 years (Shock & Awe! I’m an old…).

    I’m reviewing inexpensive digital cameras suitable for snorkeling next March.. there are still gaps in the preparations, like a house sitter for 3 or 4 weeks, but might as well learn what’s out there.

    That’s not nearly so upsetting as politics.

  67. 67.

    Another Scott

    @Mnemosyne: I haven’t kept up with the details, but it appears that tyrant Obama signed it into law after it passed with large majorities in both Houses.

    BI:

    According to the CBO, since the GOP’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is expected to add roughly $1.5 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, Paygo would force spending cuts of $150 billion a year on average to offset the reduced revenue.

    The letter from the CBO said the cuts in 2018 would total $136 billion, including slashing the budget to core programs like Medicare. The CBO said Paygo would force a cut of $25 billion from Medicare — the maximum amount allowable — and then cuts totaling “between $85 billion to $90 billion” from other programs like the federal student-loan program and farm subsidies.

    These cuts can be waived — but not under the process being used by the GOP to pass the tax bill. The process, known as budget reconciliation, allows Republicans in the Senate to avoid a Democratic filibuster and pass the bill on a party-line vote.

    The Paygo wavier, however, would not qualify for reconciliation consideration and would need at least 60 votes. Since Republicans have only 52 seats in the Senate, they would need eight Democrats to get on board to waive these requirements.

    Democrats say the Paygo cuts would fall on Republicans, which are pushing the expensive tax legislation on a purely partisan basis. This would, in theory, give Democrats leverage to demand changes in the tax bill to win Paygo support.

    The GOP, on the other hand, would say Democrats knew the consequences and held the Paygo cuts hostage to block the tax bill.

    Regardless of who shoulders the blame, the Paygo implications could throw another massive question mark into the already volatile tax-bill negotiations.

    This whole execise feels the same as the Obamacare Repeal exercise. “Here’s our beautiful bill! It’ll be great!!1 No problems!!1!!! […] What do you mean you’re voting NO?!?!?” It’s hard for me to see them getting 50 votes in the Senate for this thing, but they really shouldn’t have gotten this far with it either. It’s nonsensical, but so is Donnie sitting in the White House…

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    It will be a disaster if it manages to make it to Donnie’s desk, but how can it get there if they actually follow the rules????

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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