This was blogged earlier on Dkos, www.dailykos.com/...but needs to be amplified. Sen Van Hollen proposes no votes in Senate until Gov't funding is restored.
Democrats consistently don’t pay enough attention to the media narrative. We need to remember that to the Republican party there is only narrative, nothing else matters (except perhaps tax cuts to the rich, and government handouts and concessions to their favorite industries and donors.)
Trump doesn’t give a crap about starving the nation. A starving nation just becomes more vulnerable to directing their anger at a false enemy. (e.g. Germany after WWI, Hitlers narrative on Jews and gypsies.) Look at his poll numbers, still holding strong. Because he can punch his followers in the face by crashing the economy and say Democrats did it, and they will believe him.
President Trump would almost certainly not be able to continue shutting down the government over his megalomaniacal border wall obsession if it weren’t for Mitch McConnell. The Senate majority leader is refusing a Senate vote on the bills that House Democrats have passed funding the government — shielding Trump from possibly having to veto a bipartisan measure reopening it, which would be politically disastrous for him.
Now one Democrat is pushing a plan to force McConnell’s hand. It’s a good one.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) tweeted over the weekend that Senate Democrats should block any and all measures in the Senate that are unrelated to funding the government until the Senate votes on reopening it.
This creates the narrative “Republicans refuse to re-open gov’t” — Dem senators can rightly say this every time the media asks.