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.
I know both campaigns are dirty and spin whatever they do- but my intent was not to bash liberals; solely the author, a Democrat. My post was solely to show that her comment was not hypocritical and to show there are multiple sides to this argument. Let us both agree that US politics could use a Change that neither politician elected can truly bring.
“Why do Democrats waste their time trying to get an edge on every single thing that comes out of an opponent’s mouth?”
You have to be kidding? Do you not pay attention to the McCain campaign? They have been the masters at out of context comments, not to mention out of context votes, passed bills, etc… Lipstick on a pig? Whaaa waaa waaa, Disrespectful! Excessive use of powers as a governor? Boo hoo hoo, Sexists!
Even though I’m for state rights neither party seems to support that. Republicans can’t pick and choose which rights they get to choose.
Why do Democrats waste their time trying to get an edge on every single thing that comes out of an opponent’s mouth? This is a perfectly legitimate argument by Palin. I can see there IS an inherent right to privacy. The government has no right spying on what we do with our lives, what we watch, where we get or information from, etc.
HOWEVER, this doesn’t go against the belief that abortion is wrong and should be outlawed. The topic has about 50% of Americans supporting it as a “mother’s choice” and the other 50% are for saving an unborn baby! Murdering would obviously NOT be protected under the Constitution. It is a giant opinion: religion vs. science, property, life & death, etc. It’s a bundle of opinions that cross many boundaries with many pros and cons depending on how you look at it (god forbid you look with a perspective not of a staunch democrat).
Finally, HOW DARE SHE let the PEOPLE of the STATE decide on a LAW! OUTLANDISH… Oh, wait. THAT IS WHAT DEMOCRACY SHOULD BE! Much like the Constitution, this topic is not clear cut: it doesn’t just fall into the privacy clause. I think Palin handled herself quite well: She passed the judgment to the states. The government should allow privacy and butt out of a decision that states should make.
PS. Ed you are Male, if I am (hopefully) correct. You will have no baby so I suggest you let the women deal with this topic because it is far above you.