The Cracks Are Starting To Show

Well, everything seems to be on schedule. It’s  been just one year, and already the cracks are starting to show. No, not those cracks, the other ones.

The obvious cracks in the Trump administration were easy to see and just as easy to predict. Just looking at his family shoehorning their way into the circle of power in the White House - and listening to their endless bland interviews about being champions of women’s rights and running the company business just like Dad would have done it - was enough to tell you all you needed about the power struggle taking place behind what was a very transparent curtain.

And, no, not the bitter bickering among the hired help - the people who thought they were sharing power with our President - over who got to look more important or who was promised a second scoop of ice cream after dinner was over. As they dropped away, one by one, it became clear that watching the Trump staff was like watching a game of musical chairs, everything going faster and faster as the players dropped away, until only one was left. Then, the Donald would come and pull their chair away. As I said, predictable.

No, the cracks I am talking about are more fundamental and will cause a lot more damage as they widen.

The first crack is in Congress, where the Republicans - without real Democratic opposition - are fighting among themselves more and more. Some have tested the political winds and decided not to run again. All their votes for the rest of the year will be cast with one eye on a future job, and the guys who want to work as high=paid lobbyists for solar energy companies are not in lockstep with their future coal lobby brethren.

Worse, the ones who think they will serve for a decade or more are starting to worry about the deficit and realize that the nation can’t keep adding a trillion dollars of debt every year. Sooner or later, the voters will blame them. There’s one big crack to patch up.

The second crack is showing among the one per-centers. You know, the ones that got most of the tax breaks.

Now - to borrow a line from a really famous author - the rich are different from the rest of us. Among other things, they know they are not in the same boat. They don’t deal with lines or traffic jams, don’t have to worry about making reservations for a plane. They take a helicopter to the Hamptons and look down on traffic, or just fly to some other hideaway not savaged by global warming.

But, just as they don’t suffer from the problems most of the rest of us face, they also are beginning to realize that - in one sense - we really are all in this together.  Yes, the stock market has made that point rather well.

They could smile modestly as Donald Trump claimed, over and over again for the past year, that it was reaching new heights almost daily, all thanks to his administration and the tax breaks he provided. Heck, they all trusted their accountants to look at the detailed tax code changes most of us couldn’t read and understand anyway and assure them that they were going to make far, far more after tax income than any minor loss they might suffer in the short term.

Heck, it wasn’t as if they were losing their jobs because of consolidation. And, they could promise huge bonuses - especially using the phrase “up to” to set limits - to keep everything warm and happy. After all, CEO’s make most of their money through bonuses, it is time workers did the same. Right? Well, wrong, wrong, wrong.

People who live paycheck to paycheck, the way much of our workforce does, can’t live on the hope of an end-of-year bonus. Heck, the bank they go to for a loan won’t count a one-time bonus as income when they try and decide if the loan will be approved.

So, as our nation goes marching into the golden dawn of the new Trump economic era, all those companies who were waiting for big new trade deals with other countries are beginning to see they don’t really have any. Our solar panel industry might be grateful about the 30 per-cent tariff Trump imposed on Chinese solar panels, if only there was an industry big enough to take up the slack. But, there isn’t.

So, Trump’s wealthy backers are doing what wealthy backers always do, which is to calculate how much they are really gaining and how much they are really losing, and how big a liability is building because of what they have already done. 

You can’t just spend a lot of money and put your name on an opera hall and more and avoid the social pressure that your name recognition is generating. Heck, they know a bad deal when they see one.

Finally, crack number three is showing, in the Democratic party. Now it’s fair to say the Democrats were not prepared for Hillary’s loss and a huge leadership crisis developed, one that was showing cracks along generational lines, regional lines, socio-economic lines and racial lines almost from day one.

But when Nancy Pelosi pushed so hard for the Dreamers that the Democrats shut down the government - and made an eight-hour speech begging Paul Ryan to allow a vote on saving them - it sort of put all her cards on the table. With no political capital left to raise the stakes.

Now there is supposed to be a big budget deal coming up for a vote that might set things right, if enough Democrats and Republicans go along with it and if the President agrees to sign it.

But, why should he? After all, he gets what he wants by walking away from existing deals and insisting they be made better. More money for the wall and he might sign it. Or not. What does he have to lose?

Could he be losing Paul Ryan? That’s the crack I’m watching for next.