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NRaleighLiberal

(60,014 posts) Fri Oct 13, 2017, 01:31 PM Oct 2017

Josh Marshall on Trump - TPM - "Do What I Want'n No One Gets Hurt, Alright?"

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/do-what-i-wantn-no-one-gets-hurt-alright

By JOSH MARSHALL Published OCTOBER 13, 2017 11:19 AM

The big news out this morning is the overnight decision to end so-called CSR payments to insurers. We’ll have articles out today with technical details. But these are payments which are part of the framework which keeps insurance rates affordable in the Obamacare markets. Doing this directly, intentionally makes rates spike. They may not say it out loud. But many Republicans, especially in the Senate, had no appetite for this action, mainly because they know the consequences will fall largely on them.

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Why is Trump doing this? That’s a question I want to address on a broader canvas below. But why is he taking this particular step? Part of it is dominance. The desire to act, dominate, destroy. There’s the need to produce something for his most ardent supporters. But the biggest drive is what is contained in this tweet. To force Democrats hands by using Obamacare beneficiaries as hostages.

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The underlying driver here is Trump’s transactional, bullying way of approaching business which he brought from his predatory business to the White House. I don’t think you can understand what’s happening here except through that prism. For Trump, Democrats own Obamacare. It’s theirs. If he breaks it, it’s still theirs. It’s all on them. The “Obamacare” brand is the entirety of it. The more he breaks it, the more they need him to fix it. It’s like if the Democrats owned a building or a company. They more he damaged it, the more they’d need him to stop. This is a logic Trump understands. It’s his native environment. This is an organized crime mentality, one he used again and again in his private business. But that’s not how big social programs like this work.

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Most of us have seen this raft of articles talking about rising pressure in the White House, that the President is coming apart, angry, isolated. I’m skeptical of these reports, to the extent they suggest he’s about to blow apart or lose it entirely. But he does seem increasingly erratic, impulsive. He’s under pressure because he feels like he’s losing. For Trump these policies and policy moves are not just about politics. They are characterological. The more pressure rises, the more he feels besieged, the more he’ll take unilateral actions to assert himself, to balance himself.