So far, hangin' tough.
2010 was a base election. Base Republicans were amped up by the Tea Party uprising and would've walked barefoot through broken glass to get to the polls. Democrats? We were demoralized and desperate to tune out the near-daily news of capitulation and hippy-bashing from the nation's capital. This was the era of Sens. Max Baucus and Joe Lieberman and a President Barack Obama more eager to make nice with minority Republicans than in fighting for the people who elected him.
Our core base was so demoralized, we lost a Senate seat in freakin' Massachusetts, of all places.
As I wrote yesterday, when the health care law finally passed in early 2010, the feeling in progressive circles wasn't one of elation, it was relief after 14 months of non-stop disappointment. We weren't about to hit the streets to celebrate a Heritage Foundation-penned plan championed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and first adopted by a Republican governor. Was it an improvement? Sure. But it wasn't what we had fought for when winning our big majorities in 2006 and 2008.
Those big Democratic majorities were also unable to score victories on immigration, labor, and other key priorities. Thus the sense in progressive circles was "why bother? It doesn't matter." Readers of this site and other super partisans voted, few others did. At a time when conservatives were hyper-amped up, we were going through the motions, disgusted at the sorry state of our party in DC. By the time November rolled around, the only question was "How bad will it be?"—and it ended up a worst-case scenario.
So here we are in 2013, waging a battle against the minority of the minority party, one that controls the US House of Representatives on the basis of aggressive gerrymandering rather than anything resembling actual democracy. Republicans are waging a scorched-earth terroristic campaign to kill a law via extra-Constitutional methods because they can't do it the right way—by winning elections and running through the proper legislative process. To them, the fight to deny people health care has become an existentialist crisis.
Democrats have the moral argument. They have public opinion solidly on their side. They have the media on their side. But best of all, this unyielding, unified party has rallied Democrats excitedly to their side. I can see it in the election time-level of traffic at Daily Kos. (Traffic to this site is a reliable bellwether of base intensity. When people are excited, they visit. When they're in "fuck the Dems" mode, they go do something else more fun.) But you don't have to trust me, since there's an even better indicator of base excitement:
The Democratic National Committee on Monday enjoyed its biggest fundraising day since the 2012 election [..] The DNC raised slightly less than $850,000 from 30,000 donors in the 24-hour period leading into the shutdown, a DNC official tells The Hill.
People give money when they're excited. We love it when our party fights hard, unites and plays hardball with the bullies in the GOP. But we're Democrats, and we're not blind to our party's history. Admit it—there's an underlying feeling of dread, a fear that we're only getting our hopes up to be dashed by yet another bout of capitulation.
If Democrats hold firm, they can ride this energy into the difficult 2014 elections, which will be just as base-centric as the 2010 ones were. If our voters turn out, we win. If they don't we lose. It's that simple.
But if Democrats decide to negotiate against these political terrorists in some misguided attempt to "be the adults in the room" or other such nonsense, then might as well call it a day. The surest way to have 2010 redux in 2014 is for Democrats to capitulate.
So far, so good. The caucus appears rock solid and there are no signs of fissure. The drama is all on the GOP side. Let's make sure we keep it that way.