Trump to learn even more in next 100 days
One hundred days. That’s not a lot of time to conclude whether a president is a success or failure. So let’s give President Trump an incomplete. Clearly, he’s still learning. What has he learned? Well, if he’s been paying attention, he’s learned that there’s such a thing as separation of powers in the U.S., with three equal branches of government. One of them is the judiciary, and it consists of more than bankruptcy court. When you shoot your mouth off about banning Muslims or punishing cities by cutting off their federal funding, all the lawyers in the world won’t save you from yourself.
He should also have figured out by now that there are some pretty smart people in government, like our own city attorney, Dennis Herrera, and they know how to trip you up.
And he may have noticed that his own party isn’t a reliable ally. The Republicans in Congress can’t agree on what to order for lunch, let alone how to take away people’s health care.
So what will Trump’s second 100 days be like? At some point, he’ll run out of Obama administration actions to re-
peal via executive order, and he’ll be stuck with a Congress that can’t or won’t do his bidding. We could be in for an inaction-filled couple of years.
And yet, through all the mess of his presidency to date, Trump still has a solid base of support. It hasn’t really shrunk since his secondplace victory in the popular vote. His true believers love his bluster, and somehow the lack of accomplishments doesn’t bother them.
So look for those tweets to keep on coming.
We Democrats have a great opportunity in the 2018 midterm elections to gain some seats in the House and even the Senate, despite an electoral map in that chamber that favors the Republicans. Even in California, which is already pretty blue, the Democrats figure they have a decent shot at knocking off half the state’s 14 Republican House members.
But let’s look even further ahead for a minute, to 2020.
Michael Bloomberg used to be mayor of New York. He’s been a Democrat, a Republican and an independent, and after leaving office, he toyed with running for president.
My friends in New York want him to jump into the mayor’s race again this year, on the theory that being back in the spotlight might propel him into the presidential contest in 2020 — as a Democrat.
True, New York already has a Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio. He’ll be tough to beat, but Bloomberg just might have the chops.
The Democratic bench heading into the next presidential election isn’t all that deep. Bloomberg could be the party’s best hope.
Here’s a walk in the city that’s worth your time: the Embarcadero.
Begin at Mission Street, and head north on the west side of the Embarcadero — the one away from the piers. Fewer people, no skateboards.
There’s sculpture seating places all the way to Washington Street. The trees highlighting the green grass make for an incredible urban experience.
Wonderful plan for the streets that will be laid out in the big development where Candlestick Park used to be — they’ll have the names of 49ers and Giants greats who played at the old yard.
There was a nice ceremony on the site the other day to honor some of the stars. Joe Montana, Dwight Clark and Jerry Rice were there, as were Eddie DeBartolo and Carmen Policy, who deserve so much of the credit for putting together the iconic Niner teams.
They were all as entertaining as ever, especially Policy, when he said he figured his street would be an alley where the trash is kept.
The current Giants ownership wasn’t represented. It was Sunday, after all, and they were off praying for a leftfielder who can hit.