#TrumpShutdown May Have Cost GOP 2020

I am so glad we've ended the #TrumpShutdown. The havoc this numbskull move created and the damage it inflicted on Americans will be long-lasting and significant. The numbers we use to measure our economy may not shift much, but perhaps that's more a comment on the insensitivity of those measures to the personal effects of missing paychecks for a  month. Federal workers need their back pay as quickly as the checks can be written. The next obvious - and compassionate - move by government is to make those millions of government contractors whole, too. They were also hostages to the President's vanity.

So let's assume the Congress and the White House reach some accomodation in the next 21 days that prevents further imprudent behavior by the President and keeps government running. That won't include "the wall," of course, but some symbolic victory will have to be part of the final arrangement to appease the President's base, a vital political consideration for the Trump 2020 campaign.

But I'm wondering now if the #TrumpShutdown hasn't already cost the President re-election? This is a man, after all, who lost the popular vote in 2016, has been shadowed by the Mueller probe's relentless indictments and imprisonments, has publically sided with our adversaries, has shambled from one meaningless international gesture (moving our embassy to Jerusalem) to another (that hollow deal with North Korea) and generally behaved in a manner entirely inconsistent with the gravitas of his office.

And now the #TrumpShutdown has exposed his administration's indifference to the lives of Americans. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross's comments about furloughed workers getting loans and the President's childlike faith in the generosity of grocery stores perfectly distill the elitist nature of this Presidency. Republicans have long had to deal with charges of siding with big business over private citizens. The last 35 days have made the disconnect between the millionaires and billionaires in the highest levels of government and the citizens they purportedly serve even more dramatic.

As the economic impacts of the #TrumpShutdown reverberate in the coming months, Democrats will be certain to emphasize that disconnect even more. That's a powerful advantage they'll be certain to exploit. It's not difficult to see Donald Trump as the first President since G. H. W. Bush to serve a single term.