I’m convinced that the wall is completely irrelevant. Trump’s — and McConnell’s — goal is to destroy the Democratic Party and with it any opposition to the neofeudalism that the Republicans want. Nothing more and nothing less.
It’s possible that Trump wants a wall as a monument to himself; I’ve thought that for a while. But I don’t think that that’s really what’s going on. It’s also a good way of appealing to his base of deplorables. But it actually harms border security, and the timing of all of this is fishy.
Trump always talked about it, but never made it any kind of priority until the election, and then really ramped it up afterwards. Why?
I believe it’s because he wants to present the Democrats with a Hobson’s choice. Either cave on the wall, and lose all credibility with the center and left (not to mention establish the precedent of shutting things down whenever the Republicans don’t get their way; they've done it before but never let it go on too long), or let the country burn. When Trump talked about letting it go on for years, I believe he meant it — literally.
(I believe there may be a secondary motivation. When John McCain was around, there was a very real risk — to Trump and McConnell — of McCain calling it out for what it is, namely terror. A senior Republican statesman seeing through this publicly would have endangered this plan, and for all his faults, I believe McCain really did care about the country. With McCain gone, the risk of a senior Republican putting the kibosh on it greatly diminishes.)
If the government stays shut down for months and it drags on to years, things will go to hell in a handbasket. His intention, obviously, is to blame the Democrats for it. Why didn’t the Republicans pass it when they had undivided control? It's very easy — and disingenuous — to blame a hypothetical Democratic filibuster for it. If the Republicans really wanted the wall that badly, they’d either have found a way through reconciliation (essentially making up numbers) or simply blowing the filibuster up. Not enough Republicans willing to go that far? Well, maybe that says something about what kind of priority it really is to them. Even in the House, the Republicans only passed something when it was obvious to all that the Senate would never take it up and the clock would run out.
No, the whole scheme relies on the Democrats having control of the House, as without that there’s no point in taking the country hostage.
Nancy Pelosi is absolutely right to hold firm. The pressure will mount. The Republicans will come up with more poison pills that they will try to ram down the House Democrats’ throats. They will continue to play the blame card — just pay the ransom and we’ll let the country live, for now (until the next opportunity). They will rely on what they hope are the false equivalences that people not paying attention think they see.
The Republicans are playing for keeps here. It’s absolutely critical that we maintain an absolutely united front on this, because the Republicans’ real aim is not to build a wall — it’s to completely destroy any opposition.