The Democrats just totally outmaneuvered Donald Trump

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There’s a perception out there that the Democrats simply have no idea what they’re doing. This perception is perpetuated by pundits who are trying to scare the left into staying tuned in, and also perpetuated by the fatalists of the left who mistakenly think they have to loudly insist their own party is going to fail in order to somehow give it a chance to succeed. The thing is, more often than not – particularly these days – that perception simply isn’t true.

For awhile now, we’ve heard about how Donald Trump was going to simply shut down the government in response to being impeached, and that doing so was somehow going to magically cause him to get reelected. We’ve also heard that because Trump and Mitch McConnell don’t want there to be any federal funding to make the 2020 election more secure, the helpless Democrats are simply never going to be able to find a way to make it happen. It turns out both those narratives just went out the window.

The House and Senate have agreed on bipartisan federal funding legislation that includes $425 million in new funds which will specifically go to securing the 2020 election against attacks by Russia and/or other U.S. enemies. This legislation is going to pass in such large bipartisan numbers, Trump won’t even have the option of vetoing it. He’ll have to sign it into law, even though his puppet master Vladimir Putin would much rather he didn’t.

Of course we should be putting even more money into election security, and it should have happened sooner. But keep in mind that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell absolutely do not want a single dollar to go toward election security, and yet the Democrats have just managed to steer nearly half a billion dollars to election security anyway. The reality is that McConnell is vulnerable right now as he tries to decide how to play the no-win hand he’s been dealt with impeachment, and Trump is at his weakest point period. The Democrats just steamrolled on this, because in politics, leverage is everything.