President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune at the White House
In a brief respite from the usual econonic analysis on this page, let us count the recent losses for our benighted president:
—With a 215-208 vote, the House passed a measure instructing the president to either withdraw U.S. forces from Iran forthwith or win Congressional approval to continue the conflict.
—Enough Republicans came out publicly against his $1.8 billion slush fund for January 6 rioters that the measure appears to be dead.
—His ballroom funding appears to be in trouble.
—His preferred candidate in Iowa’s Republican primary lost.
—He’s got to take his name off of the Kennedy Center.1
—Senate Republicans appear to be balking at his nominating “little Trump”—Bill Pulte—to be his Director of National Intelligence as the man has zero experience in such intelligence. Or any other kind of intelligence. His sole qualification is that he’s been Trump’s bulldog; this is the guy that cooked up the attack strategy on former Fed chair Jerome Powell, which, for the record, totally backfired on the administration.
I’m sure this is a partial list—it’s just off the top of my head (and I didn’t even mention all the artists who dropped out of his July 4th concert). Head over to the Contrarian for a much deeper dive. What I’d like to do here is noodle a bit on what it all means.
First, let’s recognize that something has changed. I just noted that Senate Republicans are balking at a terrible nominee. But they’ve confirmed dozens of terrible nominees. Has Trump become some kind of lame duck? Has the Republican party found its spine?!
No, on the spine thing. Part of what we’re seeing is truly pathetic opposition to some of Trump’s agenda from Republicans who lost their primaries due to Trump’s endorsement of their opponent. I give zero spine points for standing up to Trump’s grift, lawlessness, and incompetence only now that it is costless to you.
But there’s perhaps something to the lame-duck condition. The root of Republicans’ fealty to Trump is their belief that he can primary them, and that still clearly holds in more than a few districts (his Iowa endorsement loss is an exception). But revealed behavior being what it is, a few Republicans—and to be clear, there are just a few of them—calculate that they’ve got more to lose by aligning with Trump on everything than by showing some independence. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) put it this way: “I feel like there are people advising the president as if there is no election in November.”
Trump has said he doesn’t care about the midterms, but he’s never seen a vote he didn’t want to rig, and his gerrymanders and proposed voting-rule changes suggest he cares plenty about that outcome. For what it’s worth, which is probably not much at this point, Polymarket has the Democrats at 82 percent to win the House and 47 percent to win the Senate.
Let’s say those odds hold, what can we learn about this recent spate of Trump losses and defections that’s relevant to the back half of his second term wherein Democrats control the House? I’m already too far out of my political economy lane, but I’ll briefly offer the following.
I’d argue that when you add a Democrat-controlled House to these dynamics, and likely even a narrower Republican lead in the Senate, to the at least meager evidence of Republicans recognizing that maybe this Trump guy isn’t great for them and their party’s future, you get an even more insulated Trump for the rest of his term.
Outside of extending his first-term tax cuts, he never had any use for Congress in the first place and views them as a largely irrelevant buzzing in his ears as he and his cabinet pursue their unitary goals whims. That wouldn’t necessarily be a political problem for Trump if his whims weren’t so economically destructive. Yes, he’ll always have the always-Trumpers and never have the never-Trumpers, but the decisive group in the middle that determines election outcomes has realized that, when it comes to their living standards, they bet on the wrong pony. And Republican politicians can only ignore that reality for so long.
So, under the scenario I’m describing, Congress gets nothing done while the Democrat-controlled House holds endless hearings prosecuting the misdeeds of the admin. That won’t be pretty, but I’ve long argued that if we want to begin tacking back towards good governance, Trump’s enablers must be relentlessly prosecuted.
Trump himself doubles down on his personal grift, focusing even more on kickbacks and crypto, and becomes increasingly irrelevant. With greater Democratic control and less unchecked power, he is less able to disrupt on the scale of his first two years in office.
I admit this may be wishful thinking and it is too soon to tell if I’m correct that some Rs are recognizing they need some distance from Trump—as the New York Times put it: “The president’s unilateral and retributive style of governing is starting to hit a wall in both chambers of Congress.” And, especially with SCOTUS mostly behind him, there’s no telling what greater damage he can do. We must especially worry about his attack on the electoral infrastructure.
But it is also important not to let one’s doomerism preclude one from seeing these cracks. A bad day for Trump is a good day for America and the rest of the world. A bad week, quarter, year or two are even better.
Jared Bernstein is a former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President Joe Biden. He is a senior fellow at the Council on Budget and Policy Priorities. Please consider subscribing to his Substack, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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