Trump's DACA Decision is His Most Recent Cruelty

Donald Trump is a terrible bully. His decision to end DACA, or the Dream Act if it had been legislated, leaves 800,000 people in legal limbo, soon to be subjected to deportation. These people came to the United States illegally, as children with their parents. They have no "home" to go back to, no "other country" to return to, and no identity that is not entirely American. They are Americans. Donald Trump is turning his back on them, to appease a bunch of nativist neanderthals that voted for him last year. Worse yet, he's too cowardly to announce the decision himself, and instead has insulated himself in every way possible:

• Republican State Attorney Generals were threatening to sue his Administration to stop it, offering him a rationalization to make this decision at their imposed deadlines.
• He had his Attorney General announce the decision instead of himself.
• He delayed the decision for six months so that he could push the blame on Congress when (probably not if) they fail to act to protect the DREAMers.
• And finally, he called it a law and order issue, not a values judgment.

All of that is terrible, but entirely predictable. Donald Trump has a pattern of picking on the people who are most marginalized in our society, as he recently did with his ban on transgender members of the military. Meanwhile he won't pick on Vladimir Putin or the Ku Klux Klan. Bigly tough man, right?

And here's the thing- he won't pay a political price for this. Donald Trump picks on people who didn't vote for him. He knows that the 46% that voted for him don't care what he does to many of these people, so he pushes the limits. I'm very skeptical that the election would be a whole lot different if we re-ran it today, despite the fact his approval is down into the mid-30's. You really think that 10% or so that voted for him, but don't approve of him, would vote for a Democratic candidate now? I don't think many of them would. Sure, if even like 1% of them did, he'd lose, but that's still a nail biter. He may even end up benefiting from this behavior.