Trump has outflanked the left time and time again
WITH an address that called for paid parental leave, immigration reform and boosting infrastructure, Trump has wedged the Democrats, writes James Morrow.
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IN reading or listening to anything about American politics, it helps to remember two things.
Firstly, Donald Trump is not really a Republican.
And secondly, America’s Democrats are — at least temporarily — insane.
The State of the Union address has gone from its early roots when it was a simple report to Congress from the chief executive, to become a political event as big as the Superbowl and Christmas all rolled into one.
For Australians, the closest analog is our Budget night. Indeed, like the Budget, there’s even a response speech, which will this year be delivered by young Joe Kennedy III (and you thought the Democrats were the party against hereditary wealth and privilege).
But as with everything Trump, this year’s State of the Union was different.
Not just because the president unveiled a platform that veered from a very conservative-minded immigration reform program to a US$1.5 trillion infrastructure rejuvenation program that, had it been delivered by a Democrat president, would have been instantly cheered as the greatest thing since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Oh, and he also called for paid parental leave. (You see what I mean about Trump not being a traditional Republican?)
But because it takes place against a background of warring camps in Washington: those investigating Trump’s Russia links with the unstated goal of unseating the president, and those now suggesting, with increasingly credible circumstantial evidence on their side, that the FBI slow-walked investigations into Hillary Clinton and abused their power to harm Trump both before and after the election.
As speeches go, Trump’s address — particularly for Trump — was strong, and measured. Calls for immigration reform centred around the line “Americans are dreamers, too”, deftly drawing a line between himself and the progressive wing of the Democratic party that currently sees any restriction to migration as an act of backward, nativist bigotry.
Of course, there were little bits of trolling dropped throughout the text that could have come straight from one of his stream of conscience Twitter fights, a reference to “beautiful clean coal” being chief among them.
But if an Australian Budget Night sets out the government’s plan, so too does a State of the Union.
The big messages: On immigration, “Dreamers”, those undocumented immigrants brought to America as children, will get citizenship — if Democrats come to the party on building a wall, ending “diversity” visas, and limiting family migration to spouses and children.
This Trump is likely to succeed on.
Having bloodied the Democrats’ noses on immigration during the recent government shutdown, he is likely to box progressives in against a wider American population that is in favour of tighter border controls.
After that will come infrastructure, with a call for money will be poured into projects across the country — and Trump called on approval processes to be streamlined to get things moving.
Again, it is hard to see how Democrats — traditionally in favour of such big spending — counter Trump.
And on national security and geopolitics, Trump praised the troops and pointed to the threat of rogue states like Iran and North Korea — dramatically pointing to the parents of Otto Warmbier, the American student who was tortured and all but murdered by Kim’s regime.
Naturally, Democrats were infuriated by the speech, particularly his mention of crime gangs that had exploited immigration loopholes.
But Trump has outflanked the left time and time again, and if they are to win — either in the mid-terms or in 2020 — they need to articulate a positive platform that is more than just “we hate Trump”.
And of course all this could be moot given the ongoing investigations in Washington.
Soon a memo is to be released about the FBI’s alleged abuses of power in investigating the Trump campaign.
When that comes off, all this may be a sidenote.
James Morrow is Opinion Editor of the Daily Telegraph.