Very soon, if not already, American households across the country are going to suffer the very real consequences of Donald Trump's political stunt on blowing up the coronavirus relief deal with Democrats.
Trump along with his chief henchman, Mark Meadows, clearly thinks it was a big win to refuse to make a deal with Democrats so he could swoop in, sign several practically meaningless executive actions, and say he saved the day. In fact, just a month away from the start of early voting, it was one of his dumbest political ploys yet.
The vast majority of Americans waiting and hoping for a little more federal help to survive Trump's disastrous pandemic response will soon figure out that money isn't coming, regardless of what headline they read or news outlet they watch. The impact will be felt at kitchen tables where food will be scarce and anxiety will be plentiful. It will be bore by those who finally surrender the roof over their head for cover in the backseat of their car. And it will be measured in the misery of millions of households slipping into crushing debt that threatens to haunt them indefinitely.
Trump and GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell couldn't even assemble a deal that drew the support of McConnell's own caucus, meaning any relief bill that emerged would have to be passed entirely on the backs of Democrats in both the upper and lower chambers. Trump needed Democrats—they were essential to his survival but he wasn't smart enough to know it.
Democrats knew Trump needed them and held the line, trying to make certain the relief deal would, at a minimum, shore up struggling households, block evictions, enable state and local governments to continue paying essential workers like first responders and teachers, and make certain school systems had the money they needed to safely and effectively return to teaching this fall. Trump keeps demanding that schools reopen, but when it came time to help them do that, he left them high and dry.
Still, Democrats offered to back off the starting point of their $3 trillion bill to meet Trump in the middle at $2 trillion. Nope. The response from Trump, who was providing damn near zero votes to pass the bill (and therefore, had zero leverage) was, it's my way or the highway.
So the highway it was. Trump, the world's worst negotiator, was too daft to realize he held none of the cards and carried all of the risk. So he walked away.
But when those checks don't come and that food runs dry and the shelter isn't there, it's not Democrats who will be on the hook. Republicans run the White House and the Senate, and they were simply too hapless, dysfunctional and, frankly, didn't give enough of a crap to make this work for the American people.
"This isn't just about dollars, it's about values ... and our bill was very precise about meeting those needs," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC Friday. “This is life and death,” she added.
Next month, when Americans start sending in their ballots for early voting, they're going to look around and ask the question that Ronald Reagan famously posed in 1980: Are you better off than you were four years ago? And for anyone who isn't a GOP dead ender, they're going to know who is responsible for their misery—the guy in the Oval Office who was too incompetent to contain a pandemic on the front end and too indifferent to assist struggling Americans on the backend of his manmade disaster.
On November 3, Trump and Republicans will finally feel the pain they just heaped on the American people.
