Want to win? Get organized
So maybe you’ve gone to a march and even knitted a pink pussy hat. You’ve written to your senators (unsuccessfully) to oppose cabinet nominations and you laughed at Melissa McCarthy’s impression of Sean Spicer on Saturday Night Live. You expressed solidarity with Elizabeth Warren’s persistence in reading Coretta Scott King’s letter on the Senate floor, but it still feels kind of empty.
Ready to do something tangible that pushes back Trumpism?
It’s all about the 2018 elections.
And you’d better start thinking differently right now. It is no longer enough to make a nominal contribution. This time it’s going to require a real commitment of time and energy. Get ready to hammer some yard signs, stump for local candidates and own the topics that swing voters care about the most.
President Donald Trump has about a year a half to show tangible results to “make American great again.” A short checklist of what he needs to do based on his campaign promises might include: improving the health care system, creating more jobs, justifying the building of a border wall, improving infrastructure, providing middleclass tax relief, rolling back the heroin epidemic and restoring a culture of civility and respect to American politics.
So instead of getting sucked into the daily morass of Kellyanne Conway-Nordstrom-Russia-popular vote loser-pray-for-Arnold Schwaragainst zenegger-mess, focus on the issues.
Repealing and replacing Obamacare didn’t happen on Trump’s day one, as previously promised. And as the days pass, the timetable gets murkier. And the 20 million people who experts say will be affected if Trumpcare (whatever that is) becomes law suddenly have emerged as very motivated 2018 voters. The president says that he has a cheaper, more affordable plan for everyone that also
will allow people with preexisting conditions to keep their coverage. Given that the Affordable Care Act was passed seven years ago, when do we get to see this magical new proposal? Anyone want to bet that if there is a Trumpcare by 2018, it will cover fewer people, cost more and be less effective than what’s currently on the books by the time we go to the polls again?
In the end, it’s always going to be about the economy, and Wisconsin’s top two trading partners are Canada and Mexico. The Trump administration’s wished-for renegotiation of NAFTA needs to show an improvement in the export economy that will lead to jobs for people in Manitowoc and Mequon. The Mexican president canceled his January visit to Washington and scored political points at home for doing so. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has perhaps less in common with Trump than any other international leader. A new NAFTA by 2018 looks bleak. True Reagan conservatives and liberal internationalists found common ground around free trade because they both believed in Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” maxim, “if a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.” Where are the new jobs?
Even if the stock market continues to roar as the new administration cuts corporate tax rates and tears down postrecession regulations, when does that start to help the selfemployed plumber in Sheboygan who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, but switched to vote for Trump this last time around?
Unless you believe in quick trickle down economic miracles, it’s not going to happen before 2018.
And didn’t Trump promise to fix La Guardia Airport and all sorts of bridge-road infrastructure, too? So-called fiscal conservatives should have anxiety about an exploding national debt if he does so. Is Trump a real conservative on fiscal issues?
And what about that big, beautiful wall? New estimates show it will cost $21 billion to build a barrier on the U.S.Mexico border. And now, to even get started on construction, we will have to spend our own treasure first. As the entire nation, including rural Wisconsin, reels from a growing heroin epidemic, 2018 candidates can ask voters: spend billions on a border wall 1,900 miles away from Fond du Lac or help our fellow citizens and law enforcement officials struggling to contain rising addiction and drug violence closer to home?
And then there is the general undertone of it all. Think there are any Trump supporters out there who might now have a twinge of regret about their decision to “drain the swamp?” Maybe billionaire Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will lead the charge to change the culture in D.C., but it’s hard to see how Trump’s cabinet appointments speak to voters in Two Rivers or Omro.
In 2018, it’s no longer going to be a choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton. She’s not on the mid-term ballot. The election in 2018 will be a referendum on Trump’s politics and policies, and on those career elected officials who have stood by while the new president has (take your pick) denigrated the federal judiciary, the intelligence community, diplomatic relations with allies and respect for honesty and transparency in government. Outside of Trump’s diehard supporters, many Republicans and Democrats know that America can do better than this.
No, in fact, they know that we must do better than this.
The 2018 elections will be the first time to prove it.