Penniless

One of the strange things about the Trump Administration is its uncanny ability to enact a policy that people want, but to do so in a way that make people wish they hadn't. Case in point, the end of the penny.

“We have been advocating abolition of the penny for 30 years. But this is not the way we wanted it to go,” said Jeff Lenard with the National Association of Convenience Stores.

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“We don’t want the penny back. We just want some sort of clarity from the federal government on what to do, as this issue is only going to get worse,” the NACS’ Lenard said.

Most, although not all, Congressional Republicans seem to be of the opinion that, in the eyes of their voters, President Trump can do no wrong. This has eliminated any incentive they may have had to push back against the Administration when it's going to implement policy chaotically and haphazardly, because they believe that voters are going to hold them accountable for holding the Administration accountable. (I also suspect that they believe that once the President is out of office, they'll be able to wash their hands of Trump Administration policies that turn out to be highly unpopular.)

I am reminded of a saying that I heard once: There's no such thing as managing expectations; you either meet them, or you don't. Big picture, I think that the federal government has been failing to meet people's expectations of it for some time now. And given an explanation for that failure which claims the root cause are federal workers and elected officeholders who are actively hostile to the well-being of the public, and the Trump Administration has a convenient scapegoat for breaking things: that the process was sabotaged by Democrats and/or "the Deep State."

President Trump is often derided as a buffoon, and I can understand why... he certainly doesn't have a problem with playing one on television. But he isn't stupid; he really does understand, and channel, the anger, bitterness and frustration of any number of Americans for whom things have simply Stopped Working. And he understands what feels like creating solutions to them. There have been some missteps (there's a reason why immigration enforcement is focused almost exclusively on Blue states now), but the Trump Administration understands how their voters want to feel, and have pushed policy in that direction.

Hence the chaos and confusion around the sunsetting of the penny. The goal wasn't to solve a business problem, such as the National Association of Convenience Stores might outline. It was to be able to hold up the $56 million that the Treasury is no longer spending to mint the coins, and imply that that money is part of a bigger package of lower expenditures which would justify tax cuts. And that job has been done. But the Administration's exclusive focus on those people it perceives as loyal voters has, time and again, cost them the ability to make inroads with the rest of the public. As Mr. Lenard points out, there has been a constituency for doing away with the penny for decades. A gracefully-managed wind-down of the coin would certainly have earned points with people. But that isn't a draw for an Administration that's bent on demonstrating that the minority of the public that actively supports it is all that they need.