The prospect of Donald Trump and the Republicans passing any meaningful reforms through Congress before next year’s presidential election is now close to zero.
The simmering stand-off between Trump and the Democrats has become open war. The president’s dramatic claim today that he will not work with the Democrats on anything until they stop investigating him sets the scene for indefinite gridlock in Washington.
It is a gridlock which holds risks for both the president and the Democrats. The only certainty is that it will hurt the interests of ordinary Americans.
Trump has now locked himself into a corner by stating he will not deal with the Democrats on infrastructure or any other policies unless they stop investigating him.
In the real world of politics, Trump knows there is no way that the Democrats will not use their majority in the house to keep probing him on issues including Russia, his personal taxes and business interests.
Trump’s attempts to portray himself as the most persecuted president in history because of these investigations is inaccurate.
Congressional Republicans were also relentless in their investigations into Democrats presidents Barack Obama and especially Bill Clinton.
Like them or not, they have been a part and parcel of modern American politics for years.
But with Trump having now drawn the line in the sand over dealing with the Democrats, he will lose face if he relents.
Given that the investigations will not stop, the scene is set for Congressional gridlock where no meaningful legislation is passed between now and the presidential election in November next year.
This hurts Trump. It means he has no hope of achieving important campaign promises such as delivering an historic infrastructure package as well as lower prescription drug prices or a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Trump will also be unable to win Congressional approval for his reworked North American Free Trade Agreement, to be called the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
It also means Trump will fail to win a comprehensive deal on immigration, one of his key agenda items.
It may be that Trump has calculated that he will not achieve any of these things anyway because of the obstructionist nature of the Democrats. This means his decision to stop dealing with them is a tactical one aimed at re-election. It allows him to argue on the campaign trail that it is the Democrats — not himself — who are to blame from stopping him from completing his promise to Make America Great Again.
Yet there are also risks for the Democrats in their relentless investigations into Trump.
While the ebbs and flows of Congressional hearings into Trump garner solid news coverage in Washington and with the US media, they barely register with the voters outside of Washington who will decide the next president.
A Democrat party which invests enormous time and resources into investigating Trump is a party that is distracted from selling itself and its message to Americans ahead of the primary contest which begins in January. This plays well for the president.
Trump may be, as Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi suggests, trying to ‘goad’ the Democrats into impeachment proceedings — a move that could easily backfire on the Democrats.
Either way, this political deadlock now looks unbreakable. Washington is polarised like never before and there are no winners.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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