GOP's Swamp Creature Of A Tax Bill

President Trump, in his victory celebration over the passage of the Republican tax bill today, said it was a big Christmas present to the American people. More properly, however, it is really a gigantic Christmas present to the Democratic Party, because it provides a ready-made single issue to construct their campaign platform around, for next year’s midterm elections. The bill is already wildly unpopular, so Democrats should spend much of the next year reinforcing this already-baked-in perception among the public. There is a window of opportunity to do so, since nobody will really be sure how the new tax system is going to work out for their family until April of 2019 ― months after the midterm elections happen.

The basic theme Democrats should use is unfairness. Republicans are hobbled by the facts, and so far have done an abysmal job of selling their tax cut to the public. Instead, the public is already overwhelmingly convinced this is nothing more than shoveling money at the wealthy and Wall Street, at their expense. They’re right, and all Democrats need to do is to agree with the public, essentially. The big lie of “trickle-down” has finally lost its appeal, to put this another way, which Democrats have been saying all along. The opportunity to make this case has never been better, in fact.