“Chuck Schumer caved.” And a growing chorus on the Democratic left are pointing angry fingers at him — some fools even threatening to leave the Democratic Party. (Bye, Felicia. And be sure to say hi to your new best frenemies, the Trumpards.)
I wish the Dems could have gotten more about of this, but DACA and the Dreamers are — sadly — caught up in a war and being used as hostages, pawns and scapegoats by Trump and the GOP. This is completely about control of the Senate, and the GOP was busy spinning the shutdown TO THEIR ADVANTAGE in half a dozen states that have Democratic incumbents but voted for Trump in 2016.
This, from today’s WaPo, about what Schumer was hearing from those incumbents, whose seats MUST be held in November to win the Senate..…
With the shutdown heading into its third day, they were feeling the heat and finding it hard to control the messaging war. Voters in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were getting Republican robo-calls saying Democrats had “prioritized illegal immigrants over American citizens.”
Democrats’ own internal polling revealed that a shutdown could be a bigger political problem for Democrats fighting for survival in conservative states than for their GOP challengers…..
A survey of red-state voters conducted last month by the Senate Majority PAC, which aims to elect Democrats to the Senate, showed that 48 percent of respondents would blame them for a shutdown, compared with 39 percent who said the fault would lie with Trump and the Republicans.
So are those having public political hissy-fits willing to put Tammy Baldwin, Bill Nelson, Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown, Claire McCaskill, and other Democratic incumbents at greater risk at this point — and keep the government shut down to mollify those angry constituents who — like the rest of us are furious at the way Trump and his fellow traveling GOP White Nationalists have cynically toyed with the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people? What an awful choice to have to make.
Thanks, but no thanks. GOP controls the Senate, House, and White House. Flip the House and win the Senate in November, and the world changes. Until then, we lack leverage. Keep your eyes on that prize, because, in the long arc of history, nothing else matters nearly as much as gaining control of Congress in November.
Schumer took this as far as he could with the leverage he had. Beyond this point, all the polling by Garin-Hart-Yang and paid for by the Dems, showed the Dems had far more to lose than to gain, and no guarantee of success, no matter how long the holdout. Schumer did what he had to do, and we need to understand that in war, you need to pick your battles and must take care not to respond to all your opponent’s gambits. You suffer casualties. You have disappointments. War is hell. And you fight on.
It hurts like hell that we didn’t get what nearly as much as we wanted. But we must not be deterred. We must stand united. And we must fight on. We will must win in November, and kick Trump’s enabling bastards out of power.