I decided to wait until Tuesday to write something, in part to let things percolate a bit, in part cuz TACO Tuesday, amirite?
The straight news story with explainer is Time, via Dnyuz.
The backstory on the eight Dems who flipped (just enough to offset Squirrel Hair Rand Paul, who flipped the other way) is here with brief explainer already in the main. Four "purple state" senators, the New Hampshire and Nevada contingents, with Shaheen retiring to boot. Maine independent King. Retiring Durbin. Sen. Hoodie from the Zionist Hood Fetterman, who already backed the GOP. Triangulation Tim Kaine.
In reality, somebody as mushy middle as The Atlantic notes this was a "fork in the road" on how to fight Trump. In other words, it's just like Democrats to bring a knife to a gun fight.
First, what did they get? A December vote on Obamacare subsidies. And, if the House kills it?
And, back pay for federal workers? What if Trump refuses? What will Senate, or House, Rethugs do then? Did Senate Majority Leader John Thune get even the semblance of a Trump buy-in in advance?
You know the answers. If not, this Substack will help.
First, I agree on all of it, and beyond the first paragraph. The US is close to being a failing state. Yes, in the political science world, like a Pakistan. And, no, you don't have to be poor to be a failed or failing state.
The U.S. political system is just about irreparably broken. The Democrats were “winning” the comms fight over the shutdown, but that’s a borderline-pyrrhic victory. Trump doesn’t care about his popularity, and he doesn’t care about Republican electoral losses a year from now, and he doesn’t care about mass suffering and loss. The guy went to the Supreme Court with a demand that he let him starve 40 million Americans. That’s both terrible substance and terrible optics!
And still the theory-of-change here is “well we hope that the electorate blames Trump and the Republicans for this, and keeps blaming them for another year, and then votes in such record numbers that they give the Democratic Party a slim majority in the House and Senate.”
That’s the best near-term theory-of-change available. But I keep looking around and thinking “yeah but that’s not nearly up to the task.
The government shutdown was pretty much bound to end this way. At some point, the squishiest members of the Senate Democratic Caucus were going to to get too uncomfortable with all the pain and suffering for their constituents. They were going to ask “is this worth it for what we have demanded?” And they would eventually decide “nope, not anymore it isn’t.”
This guy is still on Team Democrat, though.
At least he's not a turd-polisher, unlike Josh Marshall. (Shock me.) Here you go:
Rather than tonight’s events being some terrible disaster, a replay of March, I see it as the glass basically being two-thirds or maybe even three-quarters full.
Really? Of course, Josh turd-polishes Zionism, too, so there you go. But, let's give you more.
There was a legitimate party rebellion after the March debacle. Democratic voters demanded fight. When the time came, Democrats fought. They held out for 40 days, the longest shutdown standoff in history. They put health care at the center of the national political conversation and inflicted a lot of damage on Trump. At 40 days they could no longer hold their caucus together. And we got this.
That’s a sea change in how the party functions in Congress. And that’s a big deal. Many people see it as some kind of epic disaster and are making all the standard threats about not voting or not contributing or whatever. That’s just not what I see. It’s a big change in the direction of the fight we need in the years to come that just didn’t go far enough. Yet.
So, that's what two-thirds full is.
And, even though it's arguably not his fault this time? Chuck Schumer left the door open for this with his own surrender this spring, as noted by Marshall. #FuckChuck hashtags are never out of season.
Contra Josh Marshall, what you really have is shutdown kabuki theater, as I see it. First, if Chuckles Schumer couldn't get the Gang of Eight to look at the long term at the start, that's on him. I mean not just the long term of caving and getting the backlash, but the long term of knowing that on this one, Trump would not TACO, at least not readily.
The Hoodie in the Hood was already known as GOP Lite. Durbin looks like he just wants to keep his head down until retirement. Triangulation Tim's been suspect since being Hillary's Veep choice. King, like the Hoodie in the Hood, had voted with the GOP before. The Purple State People Eaters? One or more of those four have been squishes on other things.
What's interesting is nobody asks why Squirrel Hair moved the other way. Parliamentary procedure reasons or something more?
And the Ides of March version of Chuckles gave them room to be squishes again when the chips were done.
If that's two-thirds full, what's two-thirds empty? And, this "inflicted a lot of damage on Trump"? Yesterday's news. Marshall has a graduate degree in history and surely studied military history. Unless the country holding the battlefield at the end suffered a massive tactical loss, we all look to who's holding the battlefield.
Finally, Josh Barro notes that shutdowns as a tool by an opposition party in Congress have basically never worked. He adds that Democrats should be grateful Schumer became a punching bag.
Update and "facing" Josh? Public polling says GOP "won."
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