General Discussion

The amount of economic loss and costs is enormous. The national parks have been vandalized. The federal workers, especially the air traffic controllers, have suffered severe stress and hardship, and all of the other hassles this shutdown caused. The question is WHY even do it if you knew you had little leverage and limited stomach for the fight? We know that Republicans are ruthless and will gladly cut the baby in half in this game of chicken.

Dems are the governing party but that isn’t gotten us very far on the scale of effective messaging. Pretty thankless result. We are weak and any GOP game theory will predict we wouldn’t have the stomach for playing hardball, even after an election winning cycle Tuesday. We cave. So again, the question is why even try? It almost looks worse when you got NOTHING for the effort and distracts the attention from Trump’s cruel fleecing of the poor and middle class?

And Schumer is not going to get out of this easily despite him stacking the deck with senators voting that have no election coming up and allowing him to be vocal saying he’s a “no vote”. He’s not fooling anyone that this was a stacked deck that he supprted to get them out of this mess. Maybe we shouldn’t be calling for all the heads of the Democrats, but we certainly should be calling for Chuck Schumer’s. He’s been an ineffective leader and has well worn through his shelf. This is not the time for statesman and old school 74 year-old diplomacy that is from a long bygone era. We need strategic thinking and fighters, not strongly worded letters.

Give us his head and maybe that will allow for Democrats voters to move forward. But it is hard if nobody pays for this shutdown fail.