“At the end of the day, we know we have to deliver results. President Trump ran on this. He said we’re going to change America for the better. ”
When selling sausage, there is only one thing that ultimately matters: the taste.
If people like the taste, they’ll forgive you for falling short of other expectations.
Even if you oversell your sausage as big, beautiful ambrosia, the very food of the gods, if people like the taste, they’ll buy it — and may even start to believe ambrosia always tasted like Conecuh to Zeus. They’ll forgive missing ingredients, potentially carcinogenic nitrates, and preservative additives necessary for a proper curing process, and even the bloody pig slaughter, as long as the final product is tasty to their tongues.
Indeed, as I watched Alabama’s own United States Sen. Katie Britt sell the big, beautiful sausage this past Sunday on CNN with Jake Tapper (I guess there are still folks who watch that dreck) that’s the question that kept coming to my mind – will Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) ultimately taste delicious to the voters come the 2026 elections?
To Britt’s credit, she didn’t just sell the sausage; she also sold the sausage-making process. After Tapper said that “not a single Republican senator has read” the big bill, Britt gave this swift response:
That's absolutely not truthful, and you've got one right here that has. Look, Speaker Mike Johnson said about 85%rcent of this bill is the House Bill. We have been working on this, Jake, since September — tirelessly thinking about what we would do when we took control. We've had over 50, 51 meetings about this, these different provisions that might have been put out, as they've been put out, we've been reading, we've been talking, figuring out how to make them best for the American people because at the end of a day, we know we have to deliver results. … We’re going to make sure that hard-working people can keep more of their money.
We will see over the next year if the public will eat this up, assuming the OBBB passes, but I suspect the most crucial ingredient will be exactly what Britt mentioned regarding hard-working people keeping more of their money.
Not only will the targeted tax cuts on tips and overtime provide essential flavor, but the larger aims of the reconciliation package will need to come into full effect to allow the working class to savor that flavor – from continuing to lower inflationary pressures by lowering energy costs to also providing better paying job opportunities to American workers as immigration enforcement continues apace.
Put simply, the metric everyone should be watching going into the 2026 midterms is the growth of real wages for native born workers.
If blue-collar wages rise in real terms, I suspect the American people will like the taste, notwithstanding whatever ingredients may be missing or secretly stuffed in yet another massive D.C. pork-filled omnibus bill.
If wages are rising in a mouthwatering way, most people will forget the $5 trillion dollar debt-ceiling increase no matter how much deficit hawks rightfully squawk – from Elon Musk to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) – about our toxic debt costs and national addiction to spending beyond our means.
If working-class dollars can stretch further, most people will also forgive the Artificial Intelligence moratorium on states passing new regulations on “AI models, AI systems, and automated decision-making systems.”
If real wages for native born Americans continue to climb, people will soon forgive and forget all the ugly and disgusting “sausage making” full of compromises and half-broken campaign promises – and may even vote for those who sold the sausage as ambrosia, flaws and all.
Politics is, no doubt, the art of the possible, the skill of selling second-best compromises as first-rate necessities, hard-fought for and won.
Yet, even the most talented practical politicians – from Britt to the master himself, Donald J. Trump – never know if “the possible” will be enough to deliver the results until the people have a chance to actually get a taste.
Joey Clark is a native Alabamian and is currently the host of the radio program News and Views on News Talk 93.1 FM WACV out of Montgomery, AL, M-F 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. His column appears every Tuesday in 1819 News. To contact Joey for media or speaking appearances, as well as any feedback, please email [email protected]. Follow him on X @TheJoeyClark or watch the radio show livestream.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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