Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York has been having loads of fun aggravating President Donald Trump. Between slow walking the president’s nominees and whipping up scandals, the Democratic leader has indeed raised POTUS’ blood pressure. But these actions constitute harassment tactics, and the Russian gambit may backfire, thanks to the Obama wiretapping kerfuffle. But now Schumer plans to hit one of Trump’s keenest desires. According to the Axios, the Democratic Senate leader wants to stop the Wall.
Schumer believes that he can deny the president the 60 votes he needs to appropriate funding for the wall.
The Republicans won’t nuke the filibuster to steamroller the Democrats, at least not for this issue. Schumer may or may not be making a bad bet.
The problem is that Border Security is not only the foundation for immigration reform, but it is very popular among Trump’s core supporters, some of whom will be going to the polls in less than two years to vote on whether a group of red state Democrats should get new terms in the Senate. To increase the pain of voting against the wall, Republicans will likely attach funding to an overall military spending bill. Any Democrat who is incautious enough to vote against our servicemen and women will have hell rain down on them in the form of attack ads.
Even if Schumer manages to block funding for the wall, the White House figures that it can start building it anyway by moving some money around.
That brings us into 2018, the election year when voting against border security will just get harder.
Schumer’s purpose is not to block a project that he thinks is unwise. He wants to show President Trump whose boss and maybe get him to put out some alarming tweets. The strategy is risky because Trump has an uncanny ability to more the media narrative in ways that his enemies do not expect.
Schumer may think that he is playing to Hispanic voters. Trump will make it seem that Schumer is jeopardizing the physical safety of Americans out of partisan pique. Who wins that fight will be something that 's hard to predict.
