Joe Manchin. Claire McCaskill. Joe Donnelly. Heidi Heitkamp. Jon Tester. All of these people are Democratic senators from red states won by Trump, and all of them purportedly were willing to work with the GOP on the tax bill. If the bill had been any good, they probably would have supported it. The GOP would then have been able to claim that the bill was bipartisan, and it would have been a more difficult target in 2018 and 2020.
As it turned out, the bill had absolutely zero support from Democrats, even the most vulnerable, which tells you the following:
- There was no real outreach to the Democrats in the process;
- The bill is a terrible, extremely partisan piece of legislation;
- The bill is so unpopular, the Democrats in question do not fear the consequences of opposing it; and
- Trump lacks the clout to make them pay the price for opposition.