Pettiness at the Top of the Left

So ... yesterday was to be a meeting at the White House, where President Trump had invited the Senate and House leadership of both parties to sit down and try to come to an agreement on a budget deal that would prevent a government shutdown.

That invitation went to the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (R-WI), and the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi (D-Mars, apparently), as well as the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the minority leader, Chuck Schumer (D-NY).  The meeting was all set up, and was on the books.

Then, of course, President Trump tweeted out that he expected "Chuck and Nancy" (their names, last anyone looked) not to be able to reach a deal because of their insistence on opening the borders and raising taxes.  Chuck and Nancy responded by taking their ball and going home, not bothering to show up for the meeting.  "We'll work with the Senate and House Republicans", they said, instead.

Now they have not been working with congressional Republicans to date, as evidenced by the zero Democrat votes on most every bill to date, so we hardly expect that their promise will come true.  They'll go do Democrat things, which means spouting notions that never worked and are counter to the interests of American citizens.

But this grandstanding thing, with or without Trump tweets, is a pretty sad approach to governance.  Donald Trump is, after all, who he is.  Facing an almost unanimously opposition press, he tweets to let the nation know what he is thinking and expecting.  If the media were, in fact, balanced, he wouldn't have to do that, but they're not, and he does.

Now, I suppose this is a case of the leftists being all happy that Chuck and Nancy decided not to meet with the president they detest, and the Republicans pointing out that without negotiations, things don't get done.

But gee, folks, at least sit down and meet.  You were going to emerge from the meeting lying about what was discussed and agreed to, since that is what you do, but you simply look petty by not sitting down.  This is not whether you are personally offended, people, this is about what is good for the nation.  If you have differing ideas about that, you're better off sharing them with the nation and the president, not grandstanding.

That all suggests to me that Chuck and Nancy, and the Democrats in general, do not want to negotiate, they don't want to deal, and they simply have only a political bent.  If they wanted to get something done that they would be OK with, the best way is to sit down and negotiate, because whether they know it or not, they look pretty bad.

They're going to get nothing done, and I just feel that if part of the Federal government has to shut down again, Donald Trump will find a way to get the country to think that it's probably a good thing.  I already do.  And that won't smell good to the Democrats, who had a chance to have some influence.

But they don't want influence.  They want power.  And the USA took that from them last November.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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