So Here's the Actual Situation

1. Trump and Republicans are losing support, not gaining it.

This means that the current tactic is not moving the Overton Window in the right direction. It's moving it in the left direction.

Nancy Pelosi is winning the shutdown as it's currently occurring. Why would she back down or negotiate when her best play is to just keep on doing what she's doing?

This is like a football team running the ball every play and getting stuffed for a half yard loss every play. And then one coach says "Maybe we could mix things up with a pass or trick play" and other coaches say, "That's for The Gayz. Let's keep running to show we're not afraid to run."

Okay, we could do that.

But what are we hoping to accomplish there, beyond demonstrating our capacity for masochism and willingness to eat political failure in order to crap policy failure?

What is the actual upside of "keep on doing what we're doing?" Someone please explain this to me. We're losing. Keeping doing what we're doing means more losing.

I feel like there's some underpants gnome logic going on here:

1, do the same thing which is not working

2, ???

3, profit politically, win the wall

I need to know what "2" is there.

2, Trump needs a change in dynamic if he wants to come out of this with anything because his current trajectory is We're losing so much you're gonna get sick of losing.

To use another sports metaphor: In basketball, when the other team is on a 12-2 run, you call a timeout. You try to disrupt their timing, their flow. You try to develop a new plan and make personnel adjustments.

You don't just sit there doing the same thing letting a 12-2 run turn into a 26-8 run.

Is this temporary time-out enough to change things? Almost certainly not!

But it's better than doing what we're doing, which is failing.

3. Shutdowns never work for either party.

If anyone can name a government shutdown in which the party shutting it down actually won the political issue they were seeking, please name it.

The Democrats even lost their shutdown, with all the Media Privilege they have! Not even the combined might of the Democrat Media Complex can win a shutdown.

These things always fail. This was a failure from the beginning. Not a single shutdown has ever succeeded; why would this one succeed? This was about proving to the base "we mean it," even though we don't mean it.

4. This was already all lost when Trump couldn't get a Republican controlled Congress to appropriate funds to build the wall.

How's he gonna get Democrats to do what Republicans refused to do?

First, he didn't press the issue. That's on him. He's lazy and easily distracted. He has energy. He does not have focus or follow-through.

Second, Failure Theater Director Mitch McConnell permitted a "filibuster" in the Senate to kill wall funding, which is what Mitch McConnell wanted.

This is failure theater. As Derek Hunter explained (or reminded) in a Daily Caller podcast just before Christmas, the Senate rules actually require a talking, real filibuster for a filibuster to actually stop a bill. That means that everyone has exactly two (2) times to talk, and they can talk as long as they want, but they must talk, and they cannot take breaks. That would end their speaking slot.

When all speakers who want to speak have spoken twice -- that's it, filibuster is over. Cloture now happens by majority vote and we proceed to a vote on the actual substance of the matter.

McConnell knows damn well this is the rule for filibusters but he's made a gentlemen's agreement with non-gentlemen that they will pretend they've done a real filibuster if they merely refuse to vote for cloture.

McConnell doesn't want to force a real filibuster for several reasons.

1, he doesn't want the wall. He's not being paid by corporate interests to reduce the flow of low-skilled labor into the country.

2, he is stupid enough to think that Chuck Schumer will honor his side of the gentleman's agreement and permit this Lazy Filibuster when Republicans are in the minority.

3, he's super lazy and old and doesn't want to have to stand on his feet for hours and hours talking. That's hard. It's also a test of endurance that favors younger men, and these old, weak men of the Senate do not want to put themselves through that and do not want to be seen failing at that -- if an old senator fails to stand his post, that invites a primary challenge from a younger, more robust man.

Imagine if there were a real filibuster on one of the Obamacare votes and some old GOP senators like Thad Cochran were exposed as huge liabilities that broke the filibuster and allowed Obamacare to pass. He'd've been out next cycle.

These old men don't want to play young men's games.

They want to serve forever and they don't want to work very hard. So they're going to go with the Old Man Filibuster until Schumer (or Harris, or Booker) gets into power and decides it's worth scrapping.

So we failed the moment the Congress changed from R to D. Since then we've just been playing at theater, stagecraft, and battlespace preparation.

The only real part of this is Trump making the case that he can/must use his emergency powers.

Everything else is just pure kabuki.

And finally:

5. Trump can't back down or he will not be reelected. But on the other hand, Nancy Pelosi can't back down or she'll lose her majority.

So this is pointless. Both sides know this.

The only thing that's going to resolve this issue is Trump declaring a national emergency and building a wall using his inherent and statutory powers.

The only useful part of the shutdown, and it's barely useful, is making a case to a Hawaiian judge that Congress is dysfunctional and cannot act in the face of an actual emergency and therefore Trump's has plausible justification to declare an emergency within the meaning of the statutes.

posted by Ace of Spades at 03:06 PM

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