Should Democrats cooperate with Trump on trade?

BloombergOpinion Early Returns

Jonathan Bernstein

Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. As House Democrats negotiate with the White House over the new treaty to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, they're taking heat within the party from some who think agreeing to the deal would be political malpractice and those who think it's a political necessity.  They're probably both wrong. Democrats should bargain to get their policy preferences enacted as best they can, and if the result is something they think is beneficial they should agree to it; if not, not. They shouldn't worry about the effects on the 2020 elections, because they're likely to be small and unpredictable — or quite possibly nonexistent. The case against a deal is based on a strategy that Republicans followed when Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were president. The goal was to deny the White House any policy successes, and especially any bipartisan achievements. The theory wasn't nuts. It was based on the idea that most voters don't pay close attention to politics and don't know or care much about most policy questions. Such voters develop an easy shortcut to evaluate presidential actions: If both parties approve, it's probably a good thing. So withholding agreement prevents presidents from claiming achievements, which makes them less popular and therefore less likely to get re-elected. In our age of polarization, moreover, voters don't tend to split their ballots. So members of the out-party are better off making the president less popular even if it means embracing policies that poll badly. The odd logic of polarization means that voters will be more likely to support a Democrat who does things they don't like if they're also voting for the Democratic presidential candidate than they would be to vote for a Democrat who does things they do like if they're voting to re-elect President Donald Trump. To be sure: This is a good argument against supporting the deal as a way to give individual Democrats an accomplishment to campaign on. But as a general principle for out-party strategy, it's exaggerated. If the NAFTA update passes, Trump will get a nice signing ceremony out of it, most voters will pay no attention at all and then it will likely disappear as a political issue. Indeed, voters ignore most legislative action or quickly forget it.  Of course, a president can campaign on legislative accomplishments. But Trump's style renders that possibility irrelevant. He claims fictional achievements all the time: He regularly touts his success in passing a program for veterans that actually became law in 2014. He just claimed credit for the opening of an Apple Inc. factory that has in fact been making the company's products since 2013. House Democrats can't prevent Trump from making false statements. So it probably matters less if they give him a real win to mix in with the fictional ones. Similarly, Trump will blame Democrats if the trade deal stalls. But so what? He's already blaming them for not passing a variety of items that they have in fact passed but which are now stuck in the Senate. One more isn't going to matter.  So if it doesn't help individual Democrats to pass the deal, and it won't hurt Trump if they block it, what should they do? They should feel free to decide this one on policy grounds. 1. Andrea Silva at the Monkey Cage on the long-term effects of California's Proposition 187.  2. Matt Glassman on legislative diplomacy. 3. Seth Masket crunches numbers and tentatively sees a relatively close election in 2020.  4. Calla Hummel and V. Ximena Velasco-Guachalla on detecting election fraud in Bolivia. 5. Lee Drutman sees reasons for optimism about U.S. politics in the near future. Perhaps. I'm not convinced that there's a mechanism to get from here to there — and I'm not thrilled that his best analogy is to Progressive Era reforms, which (overall) I dislike more than he does. Recommended for those who read my stuff regularly, since he and I disagree on many things. He may be correct!  6. Matt Grossmann talks to John Sides about momentum in presidential primaries.  7. And Julian Sanchez explains the conspiracy theory that Trump seems to believe about Ukraine. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.

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