Presidential bargaining for dummies, I mean, stable geniuses

Last week, I predicted that nothing would happen on DACA.  However, my original prediction was that the House Freedom Caucus would kill any legislative deal to restore it.  Then... Trump did his Trump thing, and yesterday, he essentially killed any further negotiations by tweeting (of course) that he didn't think there would be a deal because Democrats didn't want one.

Scholarly reference time.  Tim Groseclose and Nolan McCarty, "The Politics of Blame: Bargaining Before an Audience," American Journal of Political Science Vol. 45 No. 1, January 2001, pp. 100-119.  Sorry, I can't give you an ungated link, but if you are on an academic terminal, this will work.

Short version:  Legislative failure can happen if you have an uninformed audience, where the president is trying to appear moderate, but Congress traps the president into a veto, making the president look more extreme by writing a bill, intentionally, that they know the president can't sign.

Within the model, though, Congress doesn't want a policy to pass.  Their goal is to make the president look like an extremist.  And the president doesn't reject deals needlessly.

Enter the Stable Genius!

First, Trump says he'll sign any deal.  Then, he rejects a bipartisan deal framework put together by the Senate's "gang of six."  Why?  'Cuz...  Was that deal veto-bait?  No.  Would the deal have passed the House?  No.  The Freedom Caucus would have killed it there.  What did he have to gain by rejecting it, then?  ...

Trump currently wants to blame Democrats for this falling apart, which... 

That's not how this works.  DACA was a Democratic policy, enacted through executive action by Obama.  Republicans challenged it as "executive overreach," going so far as to call it unconstitutional.  Trump reversed DACA personally, then personally rejected the bipartisan compromise worked out by the Senate's gang of six.  He can't avoid the blame for killing DACA.

The funny thing is, if Trump wanted to do that, he could have!  He could have let the House Freedom Caucus kill the gang of six plan!  But... that's not how our Stable Genius does things.  When Trump is the guy who walks away from negotiations after a compromise is worked out (sort of, anyway), on a policy that he already personally killed, it is hard to shift blame.  What's going on?

Groseclose & McCarty's model is about the drive to appear moderate.  Remember that dust-up during the recorded meeting when Trump said he'd sign anything, even a clean DACA bill?  His party freaked the fuck out.  Trump's goal is not to appear moderate.

Really, this has all been a sham.  DACA never had a chance.  As I said last week, I expected the Freedom Caucus to kill it in the House.  Then, Trump opened his shithole...

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