Am I the only one that thinks this is a critical PR fight for the Democrats as they take over the house on the first? Even though a slim majority of Americans are against the border wall, the Democrats seem purely obstructionist in their efforts and I get the feeling a prolonged shut-down will be blamed on them. I certainly think the dems were right to vote against the budget bill, but now they need to get out there and plug hard for their own alternative vision of border security. They should be talking about how a wall is a medieval solution to a 21st century problem and about how satellite and drone technology would work better, (don’t know if that’s true but marketing often isn’t) and the technology would keep getting better, while a wall will only get worse. It just seems like the Dems have absolutely no grand strategy. I think they were right to keep quiet about Trump so as to not wake the toothless uneducated beasts for the mid-terms, but now is the time to strike and take this fucker down.
It’s one of the least-critical PR fights, IMO. The people who will blame the Dems for the shutdown are largely people who are impervious to information and logic. Dems should continue to be purely obstructionist about it because it is something that should never happen.
The border wall costs over $5 billion (much more than that). That’s a lot of government money, at a time when the government has less income due to massive tax cuts.
From a non-emotional financial perspective, fighting the wall makes sense.
From an emotional perspective, Trump wants the wall because he’s a racist. He’s not saying “let’s build a wall to make it harder to smuggle drugs into the US” (which I’m sure would be a popular thing to say to Republican voters). He wants to build a wall to keep the number of “non-white people” living in the United States lower.
I think there are a fair number of wall-supporting fence sitters who will potentially fall to the dark side but, since you brought it up - What do you think is the most critical, winnable, PR fight right now?
Democrats have repeatedly offered Trump compromises for the wall, and he has repeatedly reneged on this compromises or publicly thrown tantrums. As Trump has happily stated this shutdown (and the other two just this year) sit squarely on his desk, I don’t know why they should give him anything other than the time until the next election.
Exactly. And most of Trump’s supporters aren’t rational so it’s all the more important to appeal to their emotions. Can you imagine how people would respond if the Dems said Trump was actually weak on border security because he was using outdated tech that cost 20x much and was 1/3 as effective? Turn the tables on that fucker. I’d love to see how Trump responded to the notion that he was actually weak on the issue.
I didn’t bring it up; you did.
The idea of appealing to Trump supporters is completely futile. Dems allowing the wall doesn’t make Trump supporters like us more. It makes it look like Trump won. It’s a huge symbolic victory, even if the wall does nothing.
And then literally everyone else, including Trump voters who don’t support him, see the Democrats as pushovers who got beaten by Trump. They aren’t happy about the wall. It’s a huge symbolic defeat, saying racism won, even if allowing the wall does nothing.
So literally no one is happy if the Democrats give in. And since the Wall is firmly Trump’s issue, and he has claimed ownership of the shutdown, it only hurts Trump and the Republicans who don’t eventually cave, like they have in every other shutdown situation.
Who do you think is out there who would think well of the Dems for giving in?
Yes, that OP is confusing, particularly when we remember that the immigration debate dominated many 2018 House races, the result then: The House did go to the democrats thanks to most of them running against the wall too. (…And getting through to most voters still 
)
It would be discouraging IMHO for many who did want to get the House (at least) to drop the three monkey act and control the Mango Mussolini. To have the House now to not fight against the Tsar-a-lago would be bad, including this nonsense about the wall.
The PR issue for the Democrats is that opposing X usually makes you appear to be in favor of whatever X was meant to prevent.
So opposing the border wall makes it look like Democrats are saying, “DON’T stop people from crossing over illegally!”
I think you said “usually” where you should have said “can” or “might”. And I don’t think that is a real danger amongst anyone who isn’t already mightily in favor of the wall.
Only for those who lack critical thinking skills and happily suckle at propaganda’s breast.
Which is unfortunately a much larger percentage of our fellow americans than I like.
Assuming that we are throwing ethics to the wind, and just going for the win at all costs, we could just start lying ourselves.
We could pull a page from the gun lobby, which says that since a patchwork of local and state laws doesn’t stop all gun violence, no laws can ever make a difference in gun violence, and point out that the walls that are already there are not stopping illegal immigration.
We can say that there is already a wall, and it worked, and that there is no longer any illegal immigration. (This has the downside of being somewhat true, in that net illegal immigration has been down for quite some time)
We can say that the military is stationed on the border, and now we are all safe.
Right, but what can Democrats do to appeal to that all-important total moron vote?
This is Trump’s shutdown, and I can’t believe (I can believe) he’s now blaming the Democrats. He said himself that it’s his shutdown. Earlier in the day that he flip-flopped, he was going to accept the spending bill to avoid the shutdown. It’s impossible for the Democrats to trust anything he says, so why should they work with him? He’s like a baby without his rattle.
I read earlier today (on some tweet – who knows if it’s accurate) that the Trump administration hasn’t even spent the last bunch of money he got for border security.
OP – what’s the border wall issue? Is it, should we spend taxpayer money on security measures that don’t work?
The Ds and Rs in congress had the budget all negotiated, with some extra non-wall “border security” funding. Then Donald got different marching orders from the talking heads on Faux News and decided at the last minute to demand his fucking wall after all.
Parenting 101: you don’t give in to a toddler who’s throwing a tantrum.
The OP is so weird to me, because it seems to be completely conceding the idea that we need souped-up border security. It’s like saying, “The Iron Curtain was a good thing, but it would have been even better with modern drones instead of fences!” That line of argument is just silly. The claim that walls are worse at defining borders is easily seen through, the argument that we need security is conceded, and the argument destroys its own objection to the wall.
I do oppose the wall because it would be an act of violence against Americans who live by the border. I reckon a fleet of drones would be a different kind of violence, and ongoing violence.
No, we challenge this on small-c conservative grounds: It is better to have vibrant border cities, nature preserves, and the farms of the Rio Grande region than to have walls of dystopian fear from the dreams of xenophobia.
And we challenge it on humanitarian grounds: Immigrants don’t need to policed like a woody vine attacking your house’s foundation. They’re human beings, and we can grant the same rights to live where they please as we would want for ourselves.
And finally, our immigration policy should be pragmatic: Integrated immigrants are preferable to un-integrated invaders. They need to integrated, they need to be above ground, and welcoming them with the open hand of tolerance gets that accomplished; in a way border security as the USA has practiced it this last generation simply doesn’t.
Current Trump supporters? Indeed. A good portion of those who voted for Trump, especially the Obama-Trump voter? Not at all futile.
The Dam side should obstruct the idiocy that is the wall but they should also avoid being merely another “party of no” and be out there saying what they are FOR right now - what better else they want that $5 billion to be used for (for example, education and be sure to include issues that are salient to Rural Americans), about being for Dreamers, and for spending smarter on border control issues, not more, not just something “big” but systems that are effective, the right people deployed in the right ways at the right places doing the right things with the right technologies as needed. Propose allowing two or three billion for border security of that sort, packaged with Dreamer protection, and the other two or three of the five billion he wants for education inclusive of some rural outreach.
You also don’t pay attention to their screaming demands and insults. I swear that if CNN.com and the other cable news shows stopped reporting on whatever Trump piddled out on Twitter during his 3 am dump to clear his bowels for another day of fast food and stop trying to perform any “analysis” on the errant ramblings of a vacuous and unfocused mind, Trump would just get bored and resign inside of a week. This would still leave us with Mike Pence, but when slaying dragons, you only slay one at a time.
As for the impact of this “critical PR fight”, we’ve just had mid-term elections in which the Democrats achieved a not-inconsequential “blue wave” in the House and in many state legislatures, and thenimpact of any particular shutdown now will be forgotten by the time 2020 rolls around. What is more important is establishing a collective will to defy this stupidiy about “Wall” and counteract the Democrat tendency toward caving on anything that seems like poor governance and the internecine fighting that tends to tear the party leadership apart under duress. If nothing else, this is a good exercise in sticking to their guns on an otherwise pointless issue. It has an unfortunate effect on the small portion of affected government workers which is shitty (especially around a holiday), but caving into Infantile Trump and missing the chance to put Mitch McConnell on the spot would be lost opportunities, and Congress can always authorize back pay for affected workers.
Stranger
The Democrats should agree to offer matching funds: for every billion Mexico kicks in, the American taxpayers will cough up a billion.
It doesn’t matter what the crybaby disgrace in the White House says. Whenever Schumer, Pelosi or any (D) is in front of a camera, the only answer should be: He said Mexico will pay for it.
And logically, either Trump is dead wrong, or anyone who pays for it is Mexico.
If the former, then maybe he’s wrong about everything, including the need for a wall.
If the latter, paying for it ourselves makes us Mexico, and why would Mexico build a wall between Mexico and Mexico?