Or is he revealing a tell, betting too much too soon? Senator Schumer promised to put the Senate into...
...“campaign mode, with more messaging votes to put Republicans on the spot expected in the coming weeks. Democrats will soon consider legislation making contraception a federal right and probably another bill protecting access to in vitro fertilization, known as IVF, as they turn a spotlight on some Republicans’ unpopular positions on reproductive rights.”
www.washingtonpost.com/...
My spidey-sense tells me that’s a risky move.
What it boils down to for Trump, is can he afford to piss off his evangelical base if he tells the party to vote ‘their conscience’ which, in this case would be mob talk for ‘take Schumer’s bluff’’ and vote for the Democrat bill?
If I know me some Trump (having lived in the same city as this douchebag for 40+ years), who can read a poll as good as anybody, he’s looking for an exit strategy to get past his biggest polling problem: Women.
He was fine giving his evangelical base what they wanted before it mattered in terms of his polling. But now that reproductive rights have been removed, thanks in part to Trump’s three nominees seated on the SCOTUS, it’s gotten real personal with half the American electorate, and Trump knows it.
And since Trump is known as a go-for-broke kinda guy, I think there’s a better than even chance Schumer and the Democrats could pass what are meant to be message bills. At least one — making contraception a federal right — stands a decent chance of passing. Because Trump said so. Because Trump is thinking two things:
1) Where else are they gonna go? He’s the Xtian nationalist’s best champion they’ve ever had, even as they grovel in the molasses of abject Christian hypocrisy bordering on apostasy.
2) He can split the difference with IVF. What does he care? Just be happy you can keep your condoms. “I’m with you on that, Dems. See? I’m a reasonable man. I like women. We can agree that abortion is bad (he’ll say to the ev’s), but people should be able to get rubbers. Let the people have their condoms. And what they’re saying about me in the lame stream media — that I’m ‘anti-woman’ — it’s all lies. Whaddya expect, amirite?”
“Trust me.”, he’ll say, “I’ll do right by you in other ways”.
And he’ll make Evangelicals swallow it on the basis of state’s rights, and the belief that more people will care about access to condoms than whether ‘rich people’ can have access to laboratory fertilization techniques. Trump will be thinking like a Jeffrey Epstein on this tradeoff. We know enough about Trump — the Eternal Bachelor — at this point, to be able to make that assumption.
So, Schumer and the Dems, had better be prepared to have their messaging with women made a bit less effective for the campaign season, because Trump is perfectly capable of breaking a deal with his most loyal sycophants if the price of failure is too high. Because losing this election means prison time for Trump. Maybe not right away, but inevitably, even Trump will exhaust his appeals after a Biden/Harris win in November. When he looks at that polling, and feels he needs something to demonstrate both leadership and ruthlessness, while sidestepping Schumer’s little trap? Nothing out there looks better for Trump to steal a march on the Dems than to call Schumer’s bluff on these messaging bills. Politically-speaking, it might’ve been smarter to let the MAGA-GOP twist in the wind on reproductive rights, for the duration of the campaign, even as we would have to acknowledge that year between now and the earliest a Democratic congress could pass federal legislation in 2025, is an eternity for women in need of medically-sound reproductive care. Yet, the alternative is arguably the extinguishing of Hope for American democracy.
As I said, when the Biden-Harris team agreed to ‘debates’ with a candidate looking for opportunities to exploit large audiences for his own ends, “I hope they know what they’re doing.” Because Trump has nothing to lose. In fact, even if he does lose, in his mind, he can derive some satisfaction by pulling down the edifice of his undoing down around him. Like some Queens Plaza Götterdämmerung.
Thoughts?
#BillionairesShouldNotExist