The government, controlled entirely by Republicans, shut down last night, and the personal responsibility respecters have done what they always do and blamed Democrats for their own failures. The banners strewn across government websites blaming the party with mathematically speaking, zero power to do anything without Republican aid, have some of the biggest loser energy I have seen in American politics–second only to many in power at the very top of the hollow press who fundamentally do not understand shit about fuck. This New York Times headline change is an art form in the ongoing manufacturing consent series all these Very Serious idiot know-nothings are producing. The second post below is completely disqualifying for anyone who considers themselves a serious political thinker.
The first one could just be A/B headline testing, but that second one is unforgivable. Axios‘ Alex Thompson is out here with Jake Tapper lecturing the entire world on how important it is to make sure our president has a functioning brain, all while he is proving that he should fix his own problems on that front before pointing any fingers. I wish I could write an article just talking about GOP and mainstream media ineptitude in this government shutdown, but unfortunately, we live in Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries’ world.
Even though the Democrats deserve literally zero blame for the government shutdown under a government run entirely by Republicans, they are still playing a good hand badly, per usual. There is a very clear and logical argument Democrats could make that would put Republicans on the back foot, and it’s that previous Congressional deals have not been adhered to, in defiance of the Constitution. The Supreme Court is abetting Trump’s violation of Congress’s rights, as they cleared the way last week for Trump to withhold $4 billion in foreign aid already approved by Congress. Trump is overturning Congress’s fundamental job to assign funds from the U.S. government and has basically rendered Article I of the Constitution a relic of the past. Why would Democrats agree to any deal when they know (or at least should know) that any wins they extract are likely to be tossed out when the bill actually gets implemented?
The Democrats should unify around a simple and constitutional argument that they can’t negotiate with someone in good faith who has proven to operate in bad faith, and Article I of the Constitution must be restored. Any negotiation with Trump must be preceded by enforceable guarantees that the deal will be adhered to, or else it’s not a negotiation at all. It’s a PR stunt to try to give Trump cover to blame Democrats that will, as the above demonstrates, get picked up by his lapdogs in the stenographic mainstream media.
But they’re not making this demand, because it’s forever 1996 in these empty suits’ outdated firmware. Jeffries and Schumer are making an ask that, while rooted in an understandable human appeal, is a horrific political move that helps Republicans far more than it helps Democrats. They are demanding that some of Trump’s healthcare cuts in the wildly unpopular bill they passed this summer get delayed past this next election cycle, specifically a set of tax credits in the Affordable Care Act set to expire at the end of the year. This understandable attempt to temporarily spare pain for people is dependent on Democrats taking power in the coming elections and reversing these gargantuan healthcare cuts, and this stupid negotiation posture makes that primary objective more difficult. This is just another exercise in kicking the can down the road, a Democratic Party specialty.
Now to be fair and do the #NotAllDemocrats shtick, there are some making this straightforward demand to reinstate Article I. “Nobody has any incentive to reach a deal if it’s not going to be honored,” said Senator Jeff Merkley. “It’s in the interest of Congress to not allow the executive to rescind funding that Congress has already approved,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. “He is unchecked at this point,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur. “We have to check him. No one should have that kind of power.” Unfortunately, this far more compelling and simple narrative than tax credits was referred to by the Senate Minority Leader as “the other issue that was sharply drawn” in negotiations with Trump. Schumer’s own framing presents tax credits as more important than the basic constitutional powers getting stripped from him by an autocrat sharing and then deleting fake AI videos of himself. What a weenie.
Republicans are wildly unpopular, and have been more unpopular today than they were yesterday every day of this shambolic presidency that’s led to generals face-palming in front of the Secretary of Defense for the whole world to see. The political motive here is simple: let Republicans deal with the consequences of their actions. They’re in power, the Democrats do not need to save them from themselves. They passed this bill stripping Medicaid from their own constituents that is already shutting down some rural community hospitals and is certain to come for more. This ACA tax credit extension Democrats are demanding does not solve anything long-term, and it only helps Republicans. KFF estimated that if these tax credits established in 2021 are not extended, it would more than double what subsidized enrollees currently pay for health insurance premiums next year, a pretty good election year talking point if you ask me. The numbskulls at the top of the Democratic Party who have led it to its most unpopular standing ever are banking on being able to make an argument they have tried and failed to make before: that they can dink and dunk their way to incremental healthcare progress which supposedly proves they can Get Things Done for the American People™. As the forever online Will Stancil correctly pointed out, this is “the same thing Dems said in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.”
Republicans are idiots for not taking this idiotic deal offered by the Democrats trying to spare them from an election year hurricane of angry voters with huge bills. Both these parties are so unfathomably stupid that logic suggests that this stupidity must be a choice. But no, what we are witnessing in the GOP and the Democratic Party is what it looks like from the outside when you watch people living in a bubble. Every Congressional office you walk into in D.C. has brain poison (AKA cable news) on every TV, and you can tell which way that Congressperson leans by which brand of brain poison they have on. After the Republican Party and the oligarchs spending their unearned gains on rolling back the progress of the last century, I firmly believe that America’s biggest problem is the mainstream press, which is a big part of the problem with the Democratic Party. Poll after poll proves how the mainstream press are seen as Moses coming down from partisan Democrat Mount Sinai with today’s Ten Commandments, and the biggest problem the party has is that the rest of the country rightly sees the mainstream press as an outdated institution trafficking in their own narratives. Democrats will never come back to any kind of shared reality so long as they admire goobers who don’t understand the difference between a fucking push poll and a scientific one.
It may sound callous, but we do need to bring some personal responsibility back into politics, and if voters voted against their interests, it’s not Democrats’ fault when the inevitable happens. It’s hard to have too much sympathy for struggling farmers who still voted for Trump when his trade war already forced a billion-dollar soybean bailout in 2018 and they know full-well how many undocumented workers they employ (and if they don’t, they’re unqualified to run their business). Republicans are clearly feeling stressed by their plummeting polls, hence why they’re trying to steal seats in Texas as they get annihilated in red districts across the country in special elections just months after they won them in a landslide. Delaying these healthcare cuts does not spare people from them and it’s not a guarantee Trump would stick to a deal he negotiated along these tax credits’ lines anyway. This move only helps Republicans in the near-term. Democrats should have one demand, that Trump very publicly agree to operate in good faith with enforceable consequences if he doesn’t, or else this shutdown is so clearly the fault of the party in power. Now Democrats like Schumer and Jeffries have given Republicans a braindead talking point about demanding concessions from a bill already passed, and allowing the even more braindead press to believe it. Even when they’re handed a win, Democrats’ first instinct is to find a way to turn it into a loss.
