Via Reason:
According to political analysts, 2018 Democrats will use the just-passed tax reform as a way to argue that the Republican Party is the party of the plutocracy, which is another way of saying that Democrats are going to use the same argument they’ve been using for the past three decades with varying degrees of success. A number of liberals have claimed that the passage of “unpopular” tax reform is historically analogous to the passage of Obamacare, which triggered the loss of hundreds of Democrat seats and, perhaps, control of the presidency.
But, wait, the Democrats were happy to pass that grossly unpopular law. And that took money away from taxpayers, it didn’t put money back into their pockets.
This is wishful thinking for a number of reasons.
Yes, the tax bill is unpopular. Then again, I’m not sure you’ve noticed that everything Washington, D.C., tries to do is unpopular. Nothing polls well. Not the president. Not Congress. Not Democrats. Not legislation. Not even erstwhile popular vote-winning candidates. Certainly, a bill being bombarded with hysterical end-of-the-world claims that are rarely debunked by the political media is not going to be popular.Republicans won’t pass anything if they wait around for things to be popular.
However—apologies to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi—they can be somewhat content knowing that voters will probably like it once they find out what’s in it.
Why do so many Americans believe that the middle class is getting a tax hike? Because outlets they trust are constantly lying to them. Both in framing and content, the coverage of the tax cuts has been impressively dishonest. “One-Third of Middle Class Families Could End up Paying More Under the GOP Tax Plan” writes Time Money (they won’t). An Associated Press headline reads, “House Passes First Rewrite of Nation’s Tax Laws in Three Decades, Providing Steep Tax Cuts for Businesses, the Wealthy.” And so on.