October 13, 2016

TRADE, THE WoT AND INFRASTRUCTURE:

How Hillary Clinton Could End Washington's Gridlock (Josh Kraushaar, 10/11/16, National Journal)

Giv­en her prag­mat­ic in­stincts and pro­duct­ive work­ing re­la­tion­ships with many top Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans, Clin­ton would have a rare op­por­tun­ity to gov­ern from the cen­ter fol­low­ing a gen­er­al-elec­tion cam­paign in which she's been reach­ing out to mod­er­ate Re­pub­lic­ans. Un­like Pres­id­ent Obama, who in­her­ited a Sen­ate su­per­ma­jor­ity in 2009 and faced a once-in-a-life­time win­dow to pass through a wave of lib­er­al le­gis­la­tion, Clin­ton would need to build up her polit­ic­al cap­it­al and work with an op­pos­i­tion party that would be try­ing to pick up the pieces in the af­ter­math of Don­ald Trump.

Just con­sider: For the first time since 2008, an in­sur­gent wave of primar­ies against mod­er­ate mem­bers of Con­gress nev­er tran­spired. Clin­ton has warm re­la­tion­ships with many Sen­ate Re­pub­lic­ans, and has pledged to im­prove re­la­tion­ships with Con­gress on the cam­paign trail. To main­tain power, Clin­ton would need to cater to the in­terests of her party's most con­ser­vat­ive mem­bers in Con­gress. Re­pub­lic­ans and Demo­crats even demon­strated a rare bit of bi­par­tis­an­ship to pass a short-term spend­ing bill cov­er­ing fund­ing for the Zika vir­us and the Flint wa­ter crisis, avert­ing a gov­ern­ment shut­down.

Just as the entire point of the Obama Presidency was winning the office in and of itself, Hillary doesn't really have much of an agenda.  What she does have the GOP is perfectly amenable to : finishing the lingering free trade agreements, passing some kind of infrastructure bill and moving on to the anti-Sa'ud phase of the WoT.  Heck, they may even have confirmed the UR's Supreme Court pick before she gets there out of fear she'd choose him instead.

Posted by at October 13, 2016 5:29 PM

  

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