When Trump said that he was willing, even eager, to work with Democrats, I think we can take him at his word. The real question is whether Democrats have any interest in working with him.
There I think the answer is obviously no, at least not on anything for which he is likely to receive credit. The president wasted his first year in office serving as an errand boy for Ryan and Mitch McConnell, enthusiastically defending every bad idea Republicans have had for at least a decade. Democrats want him to continue in this vein. So far from using Trump to attack the Republicans, at some level I think it is understood that the best way to limit the president’s bipartisan appeal is to use the GOP’s appalling lack of vision against him. The only thing he cares about is repealing the Affordable Care Act, cutting taxes, and helping out Wall Street? Great. Union retirees in southeastern Michigan, meet President Ted Cruz. Even if some Democrats decided to act in good faith, Trump could be counted upon to screw up, say, the Beautiful Heaps of Steel Ass-Kicking Jobs and Infrastructure Act of 2018 by insisting that it include funding for the border wall.
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