In the wake of Tuesday’s Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, a new narrative is emerging: Could this actually be … good for President Donald Trump?
Watch: The Daily Show explains why the Democrats’ House win could be good for Trump
“When all of his policies go wrong, he has someone to blame.”
Constance Grady is a senior correspondent on the Culture team for Vox, where since 2016 she has covered books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater.
Sure, a Democratic House will mean Democrats have subpoena power, meaning that they’ll have the power to request Trump’s tax returns and potentially launch a corruption investigation. But Vox’s Matthew Yglesias named Trump a winner after last night’s election, noting, “The pattern of 1996 and 2012 when presidents bounce back from midterm defeat — and in many ways benefit from the contrast with congressional opposition — is actually the more common one historically.”
For a president who is good at narrative-building and blame-shifting — two practices at which Trump excels — facing an opposition party that holds a modicum of power can actually make the president more popular. His agenda might encounter more difficulty than before, but now there is always someone else who the president can blame.
Or, as Roy Wood Jr. put it Tuesday night during a special live episode of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah: “When all of his policies go wrong, he has someone to blame. Stock market dropping? Blame the Democrats. Farmers hurt by trade tariffs? Thanks, Nancy Pelosi. Even the little stuff he can blame on the Democrats. Oh, your couch getting repossessed and PornHub is down? That’s on you, Maxine Waters.”
But Wood had to admit that even if the Democrats offer Trump a convenient scapegoat, a Democratic House represents a significant victory for the left. Trump, he concluded, was not the real winner of the night: “Democrats spanked that ass like they was Stormy Daniels and he was … Donald Trump.”
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