As described, her tax credit is too small and may yet die along with tax reform as a whole. But it would be a boon to many of the working women Ivanka has talked about championing, and it’s one of the few places where the Trump White House seems to be working toward anything that matches its campaign-season promise of a less plutocratic G.O.P. And under the first daughter’s eye, it’s gotten further than the various populist proposals — a higher top tax rate, a yuge infrastructure bill, Silicon Valley trustbusting —- that burned out along with Stephen Bannon himself.
Which doesn’t make Ivanka’s White House role any less nepotistic, or her attempts to maintain a Manhattan socialite’s brand in a G.O.P. administration any less foredoomed. I’m just less sure that she has failed already as a political actor, since neither the contempt of Washington society nor the ire of progressives are necessarily bars to political success.
Indeed, in a White House where everything is inappropriate, Ivanka has been considerably less embarrassing than most, and in an administration whose populist agenda keeps misfiring, she has stayed surprisingly on target.
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