“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

No, I did not make that up. I have heard it before. But until yesterday, I thought it was just one of those throw away lines. No more. I now realize why Aesop or Homer or Socrates or whoever coined the phrase. He (I know, “he” is an assumption on my part. Perhaps wrong.) was thinking of the then not even in utero American Congress.

Yesterday, on a party line vote, the House of Representatives voted to provide an unneeded additional $70,000,000,000 for immigration enforcement (think ICE and detention centers), and failed to kill Trump’s $1,776,000,000 criminal reimbursement fund. Yes, the same House of Representatives who voted this very week to curtail the president’s power to continue the war with Iran.

Of course, Trump will ignore the Iran vote as the Republicans who supported the measure expected him to. He says that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional  and impractical and they (and Trump’s Supreme Court) undoubtedly agree. And by voting for the end of the war, the few Republicans who voted with the Democrats have proven the invalidity of another saying that I have not coined. They have shown that yes, indeed, it is possible to have your cake and eat it, too.

But back to the unhatched chickens. The chickens are, if course, the cowardly Republicans who are afraid to buck Trump in any meaningful way. The warning against counting them prematurely is directed to those Democrats who were sure, until yesterday, that Trump was losing his grip on the world.

There is only one way to rein in Trump, and that is by electing a Democratic Congress (both Houses) in the mid-terms this November. Let’s call it a Disney Congress. One that can truly make Donald duck.

Two weeks ago, I suggested that the Democrats adopt as their slogan “Just This One Time!”, a campaign directed at Independents and at the 30% of Republicans who don’t back Trump. Tell them to vote Democrat in 2026, even if it is only just this one time. 2028 will take care of its self. Perhaps the targets of this campaign should be expanded to include those Democrats who think that certain Democratic candidates are too progressive, or not progressive enough. And of course, there should be a massive get out the vote campaign.

To those who say the Democrats should also develop their own positive issue campaign, I again quote Scarlett O’Hara: Fiddlesticks. Democrats this year should avoid all divisive policy debates. Stick to the one issue all Democrats, most Independents and a few Republicans agree on. And you know what that is.

Otherwise…..what’s that saying about things coming home to roost?