POLITICS & POLICY
The Resistance Failed
By
CONRAD BLACK
November 7, 2018 3:38 PM
President Trump gives two thumbs up in Cleveland, Ohio, November 5, 2018. (Carlos Barria/REUTERS)
The question now is whether House Democrats want to get something done or simply posture for another two years.
The Trump effort to drain the swamp is stalled, the Resistance attempt to defeat President Trump has failed, and the president has completed his takeover of the congressional Republicans. The more vocal Never Trumpers have gone, and those that remain, like Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, will be lonely (and his regular threats to become an independent will have no weight, given the increased Republican majority in the Senate). Predictably, the president claimed victory on election night, and it was a partial victory. Speaker-semi-elect Nancy Pelosi spoke of national unity and will have a distinguished Indian summer if she means it. The two apparently had a cordnversation on election night.
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The American system has badly broken down, which is why Trump was elected in the first place. He has reversed foreign-policy appeasement of North Korea and Iran but avoided adventurism, has a roaring economy, has saved the nation from the climate-alarmists, and is ready to deal. All observers know, and the public is aware, that the American political system has not been able to deal with the country’s principal problems: immigration, health care, gun control, abortion, deficits, and unaffordable entitlements. Trump ran as hard against the Republican establishment as against the Democrats, and can patch things up with anyone, as Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, and Kim Jong-un can attest. His party owes him a great deal for what he did these past months for its candidates, and the Democrats cannot accomplish anything without working with him.
The most likely scenario for the run-up to the next presidential election is gridlock, which the country has liked. But there is also a sense that the system is not working and that the principal problems are very dangerous. No intensification of pledges of allegiance to the Constitution will make the system work better. Perhaps there is just a chance that the leading personalities of both parties will see that working together to legislate solutions to grievous problems is a good thing, and that it may even be good politics. No such spirit has gripped Washington since the first two years of the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, but the impulse must be there, lurking and waiting to emerge. Another two years of mud-slinging and vituperative posturing won’t achieve anything, and the Democrats don’t have a combatant remotely as formidable as Trump. There were signs on Tuesday that the country has had enough of it. In a democracy, the people are always right
