Why Didn't Democrats Do This?

Trump is showing what it looks like to wield the power of the presidency

I gotta give the devil his due: Donald Trump is following through on his promise to take aggressive action to accomplish his goals as president. He’s pulling every presidential lever he can find when it comes to addressing many of the issues that animate him and his base.

This isn't remotely an endorsement of his decisions or the callous manner in which they are being carried out.

But it does make me wonder what it would have looked like if Democrats had wielded power this ruthlessly for good.

Democratic presidents in recent decades were in office as college prices, health care, and housing costs ballooned to insane, unjustifiable, and immoral prices. Parents (primarily mothers) continued to suffer from the burden of working and raising children with no government support for child care and lackluster or nonexistent maternity leave in the richest country in the world. Medical debt rose. Insurance companies continued to operate like criminal enterprises. Income inequality grew and grew and grew.

None of this was inevitable.

Yet, we’ve been asked to believe that the United States government lacks the power to address these problems. Bring up these issues to an establishment Democrat (versus Bernie, AOC, or Elizabeth Warren for example), and you will be told how complicated this all is and how it’s not possible to truly change anything when it comes to the many issues that make life in the US so hard.

Author Matt Stoller calls this phenomenon the Democratic Party’s “cult of helplessness” which is quite at odds with the kind of governing Trump promised to deliver during the campaign, and is in the midst of carrying out.