March 14: Democrats Really Were in Disarray Over Spending Bill
Having spent much of the week watching the runup to a crucial Senate vote on appropriations, I had to express at New York some serious misgivings about Chuck Schumer’s strategy and what it did to his party’s messaging:
For the record, I’m usually disinclined to promote the hoary “Democrats in Disarray” narrative whereby the Democratic Party is to blame for whatever nightmarish actions Republicans generally, or Donald Trump specifically, choose to pursue. That’s particularly true right now when Democrats have so little actual power and Republicans have so little interest in following laws and the Constitution, much less precedents for fair play and bipartisanship. So it really makes no sense to accuse the powerless minority party of “allowing” the assault on the federal government and the separation of powers being undertaken by the president, his OMB director Russ Vought, and his tech-bro sidekick Elon Musk. If congressional Republicans had even a shred of integrity or courage, Senate Democrats would not have been placed in the position this week of deciding whether it’s better to let the government shut down than to let it be gutted by Trump, Vought, and Musk.
Having said all that, Senate Democrats did have a strategic choice to make this week, and based on Chuck Schumer’s op-ed in the New York Times explaining his decision to get out of the way and let the House-passed spending bill come to the floor, he made it some time ago. Nothing in his series of rationalizations was new. If, indeed, “a shutdown would be the best distraction Donald Trump could ask for from his awful agenda,” while enabling the administration to exert even more unbridled power over federal programs and personnel, that was true a week ago or a month ago as well. So Schumer’s big mistake was leading Senate Democrats right up to the brink of a collision with the administration and the GOP, and then surrendering after drawing enormous attention to his party’s fecklessness.
This doesn’t just look bad and feel bad for Democrats demanding that their leaders do something to stop the Trump locomotive: It also gives the supreme bully in the White House incentive to keep bullying them, as Josh Marshall points out in his postmortem on the debacle:
“[P]eople who get hit and abused and take it tend to get hit and abused again and again. That’s all the more true with Donald Trump, a man who can only see the world through the prism of the dominating and the dominated. It is a great folly to imagine that such an abject acquiescence won’t drive him to up the ante.”
The reality is that this spending measure was the only leverage point congressional Democrats had this year (unless Republicans are stupid enough not to wrap the debt-limit increase the government must soon have in a budget reconciliation bill that cannot be filibustered). Everyone has known that since the new administration and the new Congress took office in January. If a government shutdown was intolerable, then Democrats should have taken it off the table long before the House voted on a CR. Punchbowl News got it right:
“Let’s be blunt here: Democrats picked a fight they couldn’t win and caved without getting anything in return. …
“Here’s the lesson from this episode: When you have no cards, fold them early.”
Instead, Democrats have taken a defeat and turned it into a debacle. House and Senate Democrats are divided from each other, and a majority of Senate Democrats are all but shaking their fists at their own leader, who did in fact lead them down a blind alley. While perhaps the federal courts will rein in the reign of terror presently underway in Washington (or perhaps they won’t), congressional Democrats must now become resigned to laying the groundwork for a midterm election that seems a long time away and hoping something is left of the edifice of a beneficent federal government built by their predecessors from the New Deal to the Great Society to Obamacare. There’s a good chance a decisive majority of the general public will eventually recoil from the misrule of the Trump administration and its supine allies in Congress and across the country. But at this point, elected Democrats are going to have to prove they should be trusted to lead the opposition.
???
it’s WTFSJFKD.
With Kerry only down by 2% in Virginia, Edwards is a great choice. Virginians up and down the state are really down on Bush and with Max Cleland leading the charge at the recent convention, Kerry has a great strategy to appeal to veterans in Virginia.
I was shocked to find a great deal of Democratic support when I went to Roanoke a few weeks ago. Everwhere we stopped along Rt. 11 there were Democrats.
Speaking of Congressmen, we also have a great candidate running against long-term incumbent Frank Wolf in the 10th District. James Socas is a viable candidate raising lots of money and running a great campaign.
He is a “sunshine populist” who excites the base as well as moderates.
In a word, he is Clintonian.
Now we need to start concentrating on winning back congress. One place that we can win is Virginia’s 5th district, currently represented by a vulnerable fanatic, Virgil Goode (thegoodereport.com), who’s being challenged by Al Weed (alweed2004.com), a progressive veteran and farmer. The House is within our grasp, check out Al Weed!
It’s Edwards baby!!!
WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Edwards is a great choice. Edwards helps a little in many states simultaneously. He is a great campaigner and will take it to the enemy.
Gephardt would’ve been the wrong choice. In this field of candidates, Edwards has the most “shine” and that virtue makes him the best underside of the ticket.
> Looks like it’s Edwards
And I think Kerry has made a fairly good choice too, after thinking about it for a while! Yes — Edwards doesn’t exactly bring a lot of military/foreign policy/antiterrorism experience to the table. But he will make a great cheerleader on the campaign trail. He is a “sunshine populist” who excites the base as well as moderates. It’s bound to be an asset as Kerry tries to define himself as a positive alternative to the current President; not merely the anti-Bush.
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Dick Gephardt would have been less risky, but I think Kerry needed to take risks and pick someone who symbolizes change and the future rather than the past.
MARCU$
Looks like it’s Edwards
The link does work. But it’s only in the “an” portion of the highlighted phrase. “Excellent article in the Sunday New York Times” is not uncluded in the URL.
The link doesn’t seem to work currently. Here’s the correct line:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/04/business/yourmoney/04carrie.html
So should Kerry add Louis Uchitelle to his speech-writing staff?