This may be controversial here, or anywhere, but I am going to say screw the conventional wisdom right now, because I think it is a bunch of crap. People are saying this was bad the Democrats to end this shutdown, and while we didn’t get what we wanted, I think this shutdown had become untenable. The thing is, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake were defecting back to the GOP, and the shutdown was going into a Monday. These made the optics bad for the Democratic lawmakers, without the support of some GOP Senators aside from Lee and Paul, they couldn’t very well say they had much GOP support because Lee and Paul are contrarian 100% of the time anyway. Likewise, the optics of the government being shut down going into a workweek would not look good for either side, and that combined with the lack of token GOP support would’ve made the blame game easier for the GOP. The optics would be crap for the Democrats, even if it wasn’t good for the GOP either. It isn’t worth the risk.
So why do I think it isn’t worth the risk? I am taking the long view with this, McConnel isn’t going to keep his promises obviously, but the Democrats know and they are counting on that. This may sound strange the Democrats actually counting on McConnel screwing them over, but hear me out. The thing is, if we reach the next deadline with nothing done, then you are probably going to see more of the GOP senators starting to bail out because of sheer frustration with McConnel and join Democrats to block invoking cloture and limiting debate. Likewise, the Democrats are setting themselves up with a great talking point by biding their time, next time the CR comes up, they can pull up McConnel’s own statements promising them a vote they didn’t get and really up the pressure should another shutdown showdown come up (personally I’d put the chances above 75%).
Would it have been better to get a deal now? Of course it would, but the shutdown game was becoming politically untenable, and it was going to spiral out of control if both sides dug in and it became Democrats vs Republicans as Graham and Flake flipped votes. Ending the shutdown was the least of the crappy options the Democrats had, and it is probably more prudent to bide their time and catch McConnel in a lie. Then the Democrats have more ammunition to say that Trump, Ryan, and McConnel aren’t fair dealers because they got burned when they tried to play ball. I feel like at this point, the Democrats don’t have enough support and talking points to really dig in.
Monday, Jan 22, 2018 · 6:15:42 PM +00:00
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Space Butler
Also, my thoughts on the CR itself, because I totally skipped over that part. Well, the CR is a POS, it is an absurd POS that shouldn’t even be considered. Ideally, we would have a basic CR with no BS provisions, just something to keep things open and put the pressure on the pols in the GOP to let things get done rather than blocking everything. Instead, we get this three week CR crap with these crap provisions, if we have to swallow this CR, it should’ve been cut down to a week. Then it wouldn’t be three full weeks of stalling, but an unpalatable CR may be the lesser of two evils compared to a shutdown that throws things into chaos. Politics is a regular beach.