,
8 tweets,
2 min read
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1/Key point: Trump is not going to reopen the government until he gets his immigration bill passed but offers 1) a plan which cannot pass Senate or House 2) path which would preclude regular order - no committees, hearings, studies, debate, votes. Process normally takes months.
2/And to me this is the rub - the President is literally trying to change how our democracy has worked for hundreds of years. He has to do this because his immigration plan can never pass as is, and he needs to break the system to get what he wants.
3/Debate isn't really abt immigration/border it's abt Trump and McConnell conspiring to make Trump something more than a President, an authoritarian, a Mad King. Trump made no concession today. He just changed the terms of his anti-democratic demands. medium.com/@Simon_Rosenbe…
4/More on all this in a thread from earlier today: . Bottom line - Trump is asking for something no Speaker can ever give him - a structural weakening of the legislative branch.
5/Folks need to keep asking - why can't the President just bring his immigration ideas to Congress as all other Presidents have for hundreds of years? Have the debate, go thru the process we set up in the 18th century. Why does the govt need to be shutdown? This is the issue.
6/So the reasonable scenario now is Trump’s bill fails in the Senate, Dems pass their own bill with no wall funding. Where are we then Mr President? Is this leadership and a path forward? It’s monumental incompetence and intolerable stupidity, holding us all hostage.
7/And some thoughts on why Trump's extraordinary effort to sell his fear "of those people" strategy, America First, just isn't working here in the US.
8/As a matter of politics Trump's border obsession helped lead to a disastrous midterm; a precipitous drop in his standing; and a collapse of the GOP brand in the SW/CO/CA. Has not just been failed policy but also calamitous politics. More on SW/CO/CA 👇 ndn.org/blog/2018/11/g…
