Trump’s Take It Or Leave It Approach Makes Sense [Greg Laden's Blog]

In real estate.

I’m not an expert on this but I’ve seen the sausage being made a few times. Individuals with investment money, commercial businesses that might use new space, other possible tenants, maybe or maybe not some designers or builders, municipal or other government stakeholders, community stakeholders such as neighborhood associations, etc. consider a real estate deal. Perhaps there is a bit of condemned land the county wants to sell cheap if only you clean up the brownfield and develop something nice. Maybe the investors include a person who owns an underexploited business venture in a particular property, and some other investor owns the property, and they’re building a subway stop down the street.

All kinds of possibilities for a bigly deal. Plans are made, temperatures checked, conversations happen, money is put down on options to buy, a partnership is formed, etc.

And then, at some point, bait has to be cut, or put on the hook. One must do number two or leave the loo. All the parties involved have to agree on the deal, so they do.

Or, they don’t.

If they don’t, you move on to some other deal. You have not, most of your life, committed to seeing a 7-11 market in a mixed use housing project on the corner of Main and First Ave. It was never really your your dream to build a strip mall on that old landfill by the bus station. You have not woken up every morning of the last 30 years wondering how you could achieve an office building by the new cloverleaf next to the park and ride. Any of those things might have been nice, bit it didn’t work out.

Even more importantly, you are smart if you figure out sooner than later that it won’t work out, and move on sooner rather than later. You may even be smart to move on even if there is a small chance of pulling off the deal.

Donald Trump, as of this writing (and things are happening very fast at this moment, so this could change) is saying, vote on Trumpcare now, if the vote is no in the House, drop it. We’ll do something else unrelated to health care. That is a wise thing to do, in the real estate world. I’m actually surprised to see Trump doing something that makes sense in any context at all. Maybe he isn’t a total failure as a businessperson after all!

Unfortunately, Trump is the President of the United States and the deal we are talking about is with Congress and the People, and it is not a strip mall somewhere, but the health care insurance system.

There are people who have a life-long commitment to seeing affordable healthcare. It was always their dream to build a system of insurance that would be affordable and fair for all. They woke up every morning of the last 30 years wondering how to achieve this goal.

They’ve tried before, failed, and got back up and dusted themselves off and tried again. Obamacare was the first real success since the old days, but even that was not enough and there are people ideologically, politically, and for humanitarian reasons committed to an even lofter goal.

The arc of justice is long but bends gently to the left, in this case to the more universal and fairer health care system. It is convenient that the path Trump has decided to take is a hard right turn followed by … well, parking the car on the side of the road and taking a bus to some other place. Maybe go golfing or something.

We’ll see what happens today (over the next two or three hours). I wonder if Trump will address all of his issues this way. I wonder if he’ll address the presidency this way. I wonder if some day, soon, Trump will say to Paul Ryan, “Build the wall, and get Mexico to pay for it. I’ll be at the Florida White House while you work that out.”

Then, when Ryan tells Trump, “There is no way. It can’t be done. There isn’t a mechanism for that, and we don’t have the votes anyway,” that trump will respond in the same way, but more bigly.

“Call the vote,” Trump tells Ryan. In my fantasy. “If it doesn’t pass, I’m outa here.”