Trump’s culminating act in health care blunder
President Trump’s decision to go for broke on the repeal and replacement of Obamacare was not a smart move, tactically or politically.
You never force a vote until you know the vote will go your way. Pushing the House to schedule a Friday vote, regardless of whether the support was there, was the dumbest move Trump could have made. Pulling the plug at the last minute didn’t make things any better.
It was the culminating act in an epic farce. Trump should have led off his presidency with a nice big, nationwide infrastructure spending plan. Something that would have forced Democrats and Republicans to work, and vote, together.
Everyone involved could have looked like winners,
and for Trump, the momentum would have been set up for round two, tax reform.
Instead, he led off with an issue guaranteed to divide not just Democrats and Republicans, but various Republican factions.
What the Republicans should have done all along was to repeal Obamacare but not have that repeal take effect for five years. That would have given the party time to draft a coherent replacement and gotten all those nervous Republicans off the health care hook until after the midterm elections.
Minimum risk for your exposed members, and minimum opportunity for Democrats to beat you up.
One thing this shoddy episode has made clear: Trump, for all his lastminute wrangling, was happy to have the public see this as House Speaker Paul Ryan’s deal. The president appears to have put zero thought into the original bill, and many of the frantic, on-the-fly revisions came out of the GOP leadership, not the White House.
Trump may look bad, but Ryan looks worse, and don’t think the president doesn’t see it that way. He couldn’t care less about the fate of Ryan and the rest of the congressional Republicans, and for their sake, they’d better be smart enough not to care about his.
Hooray for the Democrats. Their grilling of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch revealed that he is philosophically to the right of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, giving them a legitimate reason to filibuster his confirmation vote.
It should be quite a show, starring not only Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, but also our own Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein. There is still hope.
The Smuin Ballet fundraiser at the San Francisco Design Center the other night netted $500,000 for the freewheeling dance troupe. Board of Supervisors President London Breed stole the show when she performed the opening rap to “Hamilton” en route to selling three pairs of tickets to the musical for $15,000 total.
Fund drive chairman John Konstin and his wife, Athena, made one mistake. They made the event “black tie optional.”
The women came dressed spectacularly. Some of the men, however, looked better suited to digging post holes on the back 40.
Movie time: “The Last Word.” Shirley MacLaine really does get the last word in this story about a young obituary writer assigned to get the real story on a still living and overly controlling businesswoman. Great supporting cast, and worth every penny spent and tear cried.
Thanks to everyone who showed up at my birthday party to help with raising money to light up the Conservatory of Flowers. The party at the Devil’s Acre in North Beach was a real San Francisco event, right down to the rainy skies and the traffic that made getting there a chore.
Mayor Ed Lee was present, as were Supervisors Jeff Sheehy, Aaron Peskin, Malia Cohen and London Breed. But the real stars were the hundreds of people who showed up with $20 and $30 contributions. These are sincere people.
And because I didn’t take their names and addresses, I’d like to thank you all.
I’d also like to thank the three waiters and chef from Original Joe’s who showed up unannounced to cater the event.
One of my on-the-street friends said to me: “Willie Brown, you know what the motto should be for the Trump administration?” “No.” “Elect a clown, and you get a circus.”