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.
Here’s a counterattack for you.
Your assertion that “Trump’s only realistic hope for reelection was to hold down turnout among the majority unhappy with his performance and then seek via legal and political chicanery to eke out an Electoral College win by the kind of small miracle he achieved in 2016 or by contesting the results.”
needs to include OR BY MANIPULATING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE.
“A real majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect a president and vice president. Now, the – another peculiar part of this system or a part of the system that is unusual is that the states have the authority to allocate the electoral votes any way they see fit.”
Elections 2020: The Electoral College
FPC BRIEFING
THOMAS NEALE, SPECIALIST IN AMERICAN NATIONAL GOVERNMENT AT THE CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2020, 10:00 A.M. EDT
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“The Constitution says that a college of electors votes for the president, and Article II of the Constitution gives states nearly unlimited power to decide how these electors are chosen.”
“Republican lawmakers have been steadfastly loyal to Trump throughout his tumultuous tenure. If Trump were to ask states to appoint electors instead of having an election, they certainly might follow his request, especially those states where the president enjoys wide popularity. ”
“In 24 of the 30 states with Republican legislatures, a majority of people approve of the president’s job performance, according to last month’s Gallup survey.”
“Those states control 224 electoral votes—enough to throw the election’s results into doubt.”
*From The Atlantic: How Donald Trump Could Steal the Election
The president can’t simply cancel the fall balloting, but his state-level allies could still deliver him a second term.
MARCH 29, 2020
Jeffrey Davis
Professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County rom:
So, everyone says that Biden won the electoral vote but that hasn’t been certified and because there is barely anything saying they can’t, Trump and the republicans (with the help of friendly states with republican governors) will appoint the electors that will vote to elect Trump, regardless of possible pledges because they can afford to pay the measly fines that result, and possibly take their secret ballots which are legal in many states (and maybe if they’re not, that can be fixed by legislation), on January 5 to be tallied at the full congressional session, and lo and behold, Trump gets at least, 271 electoral votes.
I think this strategy is obvious by the smug look on Pompeo’s face saying they are transitioning to a second term and McConnell calmly stating that “we will find out who was certified in each of these states and the electoral college will determine the winner and that person will be sworn in on January 20th. No reason for alarm.”
I’m alarmed. Is this just their usual bluster or should the dems strike first by using their strategy as it is probably our last chance to preserve democracy.
I hope I’m wrong.
P Cannon
Golden, CO