Weakness Invites Aggression
In Domestic as well as International Politics
Weakness invites aggression. That’s an old rule of international politics. But it also applies to domestic politics, as we can see right now in the American political arena.
The Democratic Party exhibited a brief show of strength in the off-year elections on November 4 (in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City, California and in local elections around the country). A six-week-long government shutdown ended a week later when seven senators (six Democrats and one Independent who caucuses with the Democrats) voted to end the shutdown – the longest in U.S. history – and re-open the federal government. The only senators who gave in were Democrats; no Republicans switched sides to end the shutdown.
Polls showed that voters were more likely to blame Republicans than Democrats for the shutdown. But President Trump is a master of political aggression. He proved it during this confrontation. He cut off food stamps to needy families, threatened to fire federal workers, restored back pay to most government workers and military personnel and agreed to allow a vote on the extension of health insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (commonly called ``Obamacare’’). Democrats had demanded that the president agree to the Obamacare subsidies up front. ``Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work,’’ Sen. Angus King (I-Me.) acknowledged to The New York Times. ``It actually gave him more power.’’
Democrats bought the deal because, unless they accepted it, they would get nothing from Trump – no health insurance subsidies, no end to the shutdown. ``I could never figure out how you could ever get Republicans to vote for the health care extension [of the subsidies],’’ Jim Manley, a former Democratic Senate aide, told the Times afterwards. ``But . . . doing nothing was not an option.’’
In a Veterans Day speech, President Trump called the deal to end the shutdown a ``very big victory’’ for Republicans. ``We’re opening up our country,’’ Trump said. ``Should have never been closed.’’ On Fox News, Trump claimed the Senate Democratic Leader ``thought he could break the Republicans. Instead, the Republicans broke him.’’ The president added, Democrats are ``not getting much’’ from the deal.
Having lost the shutdown fight, Democrats are now arguing among themselves about who should get the blame. The long knives are out for the Senate Democratic Leader, Charles Schumer of New York. But the problem goes deeper than a failure of party leadership in Congress. The core problem is with the image of the Democratic Party to voters: weak and ineffectual.
Citing Michelle Obama’s famous aphorism, (``When they go low, we go high’’), Neera Tanden, a former Biden Administration adviser who now heads a progressive think tank, lamented the tendency of Democrats to be too polite. Tanden told the Washington Post, ``The real problem is that, if only one side is following the norms of decorum, then the other side is basically benefiting from the weakness of Democrats.’’
The Democratic Party lacks the strong leadership it used to have with leaders like John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The most recent leaders – Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi – are out of the picture and no longer have much clout. The party’s leading ``fighters’’ – Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani – are too far to the left for most Democrats.
In the September Gallup poll, the image of the Democratic Party was only 37 percent favorable. (The image of the Republican Party was not much better, at 40 percent favorable.) Asked in a July poll to describe her own party by the Associated Press, one Democratic voter complained, ``They speak up a little bit and they roll right over.’’ Sen. Sanders echoed the voter’s complaint: ``The Democratic Party has been perceived to be weak, to not stand up and fight.’’
As a result of this year’s off-year campaign, President Trump appears to have discovered a new issue -- ``affordability,’’ a/k/a cost of living, or inflation. It was the top issue for many voters in New York City and New Jersey on Nov. 4 and paid off handsomely for Democrats.
But Republicans may have a big problem with the affordability issue next year: President Trump’s beloved tariffs could easily drive up consumer prices. Trump insists that tariffs will be paid by foreign producers and U.S. importers. But they are unlikely to absorb all or much of the cost.
Tariffs are like national sales taxes, paid to the U.S. government by American consumers. Tariffs are already beginning to drive up the cost of foods like coffee and bananas that cannot be grown in the United States. President Trump is considering the idea of giving Americans a $2,000 tax rebate funded by tariff revenues (which have begun to roll in).
A few Republicans are already denouncing tariffs as just another tax increase, a policy that has been anathema to conservatives like former President Ronald Reagan. Moreover, only Congress has the constitutional authority to impose taxes and tariffs. The president cannot impose them on his own authority.
The Supreme Court is already set to rule on the constitutionality of the tariffs President Trump has imposed. The case has been argued before the Court, and several conservative justices asked questions that appeared to challenge the president’s authority to bypass Congress and raise tariffs on his own authority. The fate of this president’s entire economic program may hinge on the Court’s ruling in this case.
In the 2002 midterm election, Republicans, led by President George W. Bush, did better than expected. (The president’s party unexpectedly gained eight House seats and two Senate seats.) Bush was still riding high in the ratings (64 percent job approval) as a result of his defiant response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks a year earlier.
Former President Bill Clinton happened to be giving a speech in Chicago after the 2002 midterm, and he offered his assessment of the result (speaking as a Democrat): ``Strong and wrong beats weak and right.’’
Still a very shrewd assessment.