Media reveled Wednesday in Mitch McConnell's "misery" at having to postpone the vote on his "wretched" healthcare "hoax." McConnell, once viewed as a "master tactician," had "miscalculated in the first round of play." Hopefully the misstep proves fatal to the effort.
But the secondary story leaping from the pages of the first draft of history was just how utterly useless Donald Trump was to the Senate process. Senators, who actually have to answer to a whole state rather than a gerrymandered district, neither trusted nor feared a guy who has proven himself to be a raging lunatic at every turn of governance with approval ratings stuck in sub-40 territory for nearly the entire month of June.
Drink in this sampling from the Washington Post:
In private conversations on Capitol Hill, Trump is often not taken seriously. [...] And they have come to regard some of his threats as empty, concluding that crossing the president poses little danger. [...]
Asked if he personally fears Trump, [Sen. Lindsey] Graham chuckled before saying, “No.” [...]
One senior Republican close to both the White House and many senators called Trump and his political operation “a paper tiger,” noting how many GOP lawmakers feel free “to go their own way.”
The New York Times writes that Senate Republicans kept Trump at a distance while crafting the bill, preferring instead to confer with Vice President Mike Pence. And when Trump's political operation unleashed an attack ad on Nevada Sen. Dean Heller, the first Republican to truly signal a "no" vote on the bill, McConnell nuked Trump's shortsighted effort. Regardless of whether Heller votes for or against the bill, McConnell needs Heller, one of the GOP’s most endangered senators, to prevail in 2018 in order to keep his slim two-seat majority in the chamber.
The majority leader — already rankled by Mr. Trump’s tweets goading him to change Senate rules to scuttle Democratic filibusters — called the White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to complain that the attacks were “beyond stupid,” according to two Republicans with knowledge of the tense exchange.
The anti-Heller ad campaign has been halted for now.
Tuesday’s hastily arranged meeting at the White House staged to show Trump was fully engaged in the process may have been a nice photo-op, but it too backfired among the most critical audience: GOP senators.
A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan — and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange.
Mr. Trump said he planned to tackle tax reform later, ignoring the repeal’s tax implications, the staff member added.
In short, Trump mattered in the House, where district politics prevail over substance. But in the Senate, competency still matters and Trump's flagrant display of incompetency has not only neutered his influence, it's made him a total drag on the process.