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Three times President Donald J. Trump has tried to kill off Obamacare, and with Senator John McCain's assertion late last week that he will break with the President, it is all but certain that the effort – regarded by Republicans as the chief goal of the Trump years – will fail for a third time. Mr. Trump had to embrace Democrats whom he had derided mercilessly in order to win a budget agreement earlier this month. He's now working with Democrats, and the rival party leader he once dismissed as "a clown," on immigration issues.

His failure to wrestle Republicans to pass a repeal of Obamacare and his dinnertime detente with Democrats underline perhaps the biggest threat to the Trump presidency. By failing to build bridges to his putative party allies, Mr. Trump is alienating the only political figures in Washington who could be his allies in what may be the real fight of the Trump years: the congressional Russia probes and the separate, and more threatening, investigation being led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

As a result, Mr. Trump is facing twin dangers: possible fatal distraction from his political priorities that, as a result, could deepen his estrangement from the few lawmakers who might otherwise rally to his side in times of peril.

Every Washington scandal investigation is different, but two elements for survival remain the same: the need for a president to retain focus on his duties rather than on his defence, and the iron requirement for the chief executive to have political support outside the White House, and especially on Capitol Hill.

"It is very, very difficult for a president to perform the job adequately – to do the duties – if he's not able to compartmentalize what is happening simultaneously in the investigation and in the political attacks and the media," Gregory B. Craig, who directed the team defending Bill Clinton during the 42nd president's 1998 impeachment, said in an interview. "Bill Clinton was the Olympic gold-medal champion for his ability to compartmentalize enough to do the job of the president."

While facing the threat of removal from office, Mr. Clinton had advantages that Mr. Trump – "traumatized" by the Russia investigations, in the characterization of a top Washington Republican with ties to the administration – does not possess, even though the current likelihood of his removal is far slimmer. Mr. Clinton had high approval ratings and also retained the support of his Democratic allies. Mr. Trump possesses neither asset.

"Increasingly it's clear that Trump is not a Republican president," Thomas D. Rath, a former New Hampshire attorney-general whose support is vigorously sought by Republican candidates in the New Hampshire primary, customarily the first in the country, said in an interview. "He is someone who won the Republican nomination to become president, but that does not make him a Republican president."

Mr. Trump's lack of Republican bona fides – despite e-mails from the President's team as recently as Sunday taunting Democrats that Mr. Trump is their president – have prompted GOP leaders to wonder how devoted a Republican, and how committed a conservative, he is, a condition that undermines his political strength in the capital.

Mr. Trump's public-approval ratings hover around 40 per cent, exceptionally low for a president in his first year. His legislative victories are scant beyond winning the confirmation of Neil A. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Allen J. Lichtman, the American University political scientist who has correctly predicted the outcome of the past nine presidential elections – and was the first and one of the very few to predict the Trump victory – is holding his third "ask-me-anything" Internet session Friday on the question of the impeachment of Mr. Trump, which he has also predicted.

The President is safe for now from impeachment, a forbidding tool employed seriously only three times in American history, in large measure because the Republicans hold control in the House (240-194) and the Senate (52-46, with two Independents customarily siding with the Democrats). But Republicans such as Mr. Rath are worried about next year's midterm congressional elections, when all the members of the House and a third of the Senate face the voters. "If we lose control or our margins are depleted," he said, "things could change."

Among the things that could change: The likelihood of Mr. Trump winning important legislative battles on myriad issues, from tax overhaul to the construction of his long-promised wall along the Mexican border. The chance that another Republican – today the likely combatant would be Governor John Kasich of Ohio – would challenge Mr. Trump here and in Iowa for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020. The (less likely) chance that Mr. Trump could face impeachment, though his removal would require 67 votes in the Senate, a figure considered beyond even the fondest hopes of Democrats.

More than anything else, the collapse of former president Richard M. Nixon's political support on Capitol Hill prompted his resignation in 1974. It was a sombre delegation of Republican senators led by Senator Barry Goldwater, a party elder who a decade earlier had been the GOP's presidential nominee, and the two Republican congressional leaders, Representative John Rhodes of Arizona and Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, who told Mr. Nixon he had lost his congressional backing.

All of which gives perspective to the Russia investigations and to Mr. Trump's ties to the party whose nomination he won last July.

Mr. Mueller, a former FBI director, is working with discretion, but with determination, on the Russia issue and it is evident that there are at least four principal elements: the activities of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner; and the president's dismissal of former FBI director James Comey, an act Trump critics believe, or merely hope, constitutes obstruction of justice.

In recent days, it has become clear that Mr. Mueller's associates have searched Mr. Manafort's home; reports that he was wiretapped were particularly chilling inside the Trump camp. It also seems apparent that the special counsel is expanding his probe to examine the role that Mr. Flynn's son may have played in any election-related collusion with the Russians.

There is every indication that Mr. Trump is preoccupied by, even obsessed with, the Russia investigations, according to capital analysts. Angry and alienated from Republicans, he has bewildered political professionals by repeatedly shifting his alliances while he has continued his Twitter offensives, even expanding them Saturday to revered American athletes Stephen Curry and LeBron James of the NBA. Looming in the background is the gathering crisis of the nuclear missiles of North Korea, exacerbated by a weekend exchange of menacing messages between Pyongyang and Washington.

"President Trump has been explicit that when he is attacked he will strike back," said Mr. Craig, who also served as White House counsel for former president Barack Obama. "That more and more makes it hard for him to concentrate on the job of being president – and on building the political alliances that he will find essential."

A proposal by U.S. Republicans to repeal and replace the Obamacare health insurance program suffered serious new setbacks within the party on Sunday, when Senator Ted Cruz expressed his opposition and Senator Susan Collins dug in with strong criticisms of the legislation.

Reuters

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