The Way Forward

A failure of politics and a failure of messaging.

I don’t know if it’s true that a shutdown would only help Trump destroy the government. (If true, won’t he find a way to engineer one no matter what?). But, if it is true, shouldn’t Schumer and the leadership have determined it in advance, and not had him make his “we will kill the CR” announcement yesterday, only to flip-flop today?

Personally, I suspect the real reason was, not that Schumer reached that conclusion, but that he found overnight that the Fettermanchin wing of the party had enough votes for cloture anyway, and so decided to put lipstick on a pig. Hint: it didn’t work. All it did was make Democrats look weak and ineffectual. And, as someone else noted on this thread, voters will choose someone who’s strong and wrong over one who’s weak and right. Guess what Democrats look like right now, even to those who will be hurt by the Trump agenda? If you think that won’t hurt come 2026, you’re dreaming.