In the service of pushing his tax-and-spending megabill over the finish line, Donald Trump has spent recent days cajoling, threatening and meeting with lawmakers. His message to them was simple.
“It’s a great bill,” the president explained at a Florida event Tuesday. “There is something for everyone.”
erhaps there is, but the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill is still missing one key element — an overarching plan to create and lock in a durable Republican coalition.
It’s an astonishing oversight. Over the past decade, Trump has unleashed the tectonic forces of political realignment. He has torn his party down to the studs and then remade it in his image. He has splintered the Obama coalition and accelerated a class-based political reordering that stands to upend nearly a century of convention. His most recent win was marked by a more racially and ethnically diverse voter coalition than in his two prior campaigns.
These are accomplishments most presidents have only dreamed of. Yet the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agenda does almost nothing to harness any of it in the service of a permanent MAGA governing majority. He is spending every last cent of his political capital on a bill marked by its lack of ambition and vision.