HOW CLUELESS DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO WRITE SOMETHING LIKE THIS?

From Politico's Playbook:

WHEN WILL DEMOCRATS start making PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP pay a political price for the administration’s refusal to cooperate in congressional investigations? Will Democrats start demanding testimony and document production before they consider partnering with the president on legislation like an infrastructure bill? REMEMBER: Democrats have tons of leverage here. The president needs them to do anything, including keeping the government funded and lifting the debt limit, not to mention more lofty goals like some infrastructure package or a prescription drug bill.

How could you have lived through the past two years and four months, especially as a professional journalist specializing in American politics, and write something this ridiculous?

President Trump doesn't believe he needs legislative accomplishments in order to be reelected. (Being reelected is his only real goal as president, because he likes the glory and he wants to stay out of legal trouble.) He doesn't care about an infrastructure bill or a prescription drug plan. And because he's a malignant narcissist, he's not concerned about the harm he might do if he plunges the U.S. into another debt ceiling crisis, any more than he cared about the harm that came from shutting down much of the government late last year.

Trump has one goal from now until November: to maximize his lib ownage every day. He thinks he can win reelection with a base-only strategy, and he may be right: the Electoral College, vote suppression in red-but-trending-purple states, third-party candidacies, and the likely complicity of the mainstream media in catapulting GOP propaganda all mean that he could very well win. Sure, he'd take a couple of legislative accomplishments, but for his one win in that area, the tax bill, he relied on Mitch McConnell to do all the hard work, and since McConnell knows that the success of his delegation depends exclusively on lib ownage, he's not going to lift a finger -- certainly not to pass legislation that appeals to moderates and might get Democratic votes.

So, no, Democrats have no leverage -- not that they'd use it if they had it, because, y'know, they're Democrats. There's nothing Trump feels he needs that only they can provide, so they have no power over him at all.