The Pelosi-Trump State of the Union Address Chess Match

this morning's editorial in the Wall Street Journal

https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-the-shutdown-fiasco-11548460112?mod=hp_opin_pos1

After the Shutdown Fiasco
Trump lost round one, but we’ll now see if Pelosi wants any deal.
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By The Editorial Board
Jan. 25, 2019 6:48 p.m. ET

President Trump cut his growing political losses on Friday by agreeing to reopen the government for three weeks pending new border-spending negotiations. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi emerges as the winner in this showdown, at least in the short term. We’ll now see if she’s serious about negotiating a deal on immigration or simply wants to humiliate Mr. Trump.

The President agreed to sign the short-term funding bill without money for his border wall. He had little political choice. Most voters blamed him for the shutdown, and the costs to the public had begun to build. Flight delays multiplied as air-traffic controllers called in sick—an abdication of duty—while White House economist Kevin Hassett said the shutdown was hurting the economy. Maybe someone told Mr. Trump that Presidents get the blame when the economy suffers.

All of this was predictable, since shutdowns never work politically for the party seen to trigger them. Mr. Trump’s strategy, to the extent he had one, was to hold his breath until Mrs. Pelosi gave in. She merely had to do nothing to win. Yet the same immigration restrictionists who told Mr. Trump to shut down the government are now calling him a wimp for not watching his approval rating sink even lower. They care more about their own TV ratings and book sales than they do Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s problem now is that he is still largely at Mrs. Pelosi’s mercy. He said Friday that without money for his wall he’ll shut down the government again in three weeks or declare an emergency himself and use funds from other accounts to fund the wall.

Democrats win in either outcome. Mr. Trump would be blamed for another shutdown, and an emergency declaration would be enjoined by the courts or set a precedent that the next President could exploit to go around a GOP Congress. An emergency will also divide Republicans more than Democrats.

The only way for Mr. Trump to improve his negotiating position is to reframe the political debate by seeking a larger deal on border security and immigration. Mr. Trump laid out the narrow outlines of this deal last Saturday, offering enhanced legal status for so-called Dreamer immigrants and other expiring visa holders in return for money for border security. That at least offers Democrats something they claim to want.

Mrs. Pelosi still might withhold the money, bowing to her left wing that wants to deny Mr. Trump any accomplishment. Mr. Trump can’t control for such bloody-mindedness. But he can make Mrs. Pelosi pay a price for it by making his offer again and again.

Instead of merely repeating a litany of border woes, he could show his reasonableness on immigration by appearing with Dreamers. He can also broaden his offer to include a path to citizenship for all Dreamers. Mr. Trump has to persuade Dreamers and voters that Mrs. Pelosi is now the obstacle to a reasonable immigration compromise.

He also can’t do that as long as he listens to White House adviser Stephen Miller, the hard-line restrictionist in the White House. He needs to turn the negotiations over to someone who really does want to make an immigration deal. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is the voice to listen to here.

This will also be a test for Mrs. Pelosi, or it should be. Does she want to ease the deportation fears of more than a million residents, or does she want to spite Mr. Trump and flog immigration as a political issue through 2020? The risk for Democrats is that, sooner or later, the voters will figure out that Democrats are using the Dreamers and undocumented immigrants as political pawns. That’s the case Mr. Trump should be making to the voters to recover from this shutdown fiasco.



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