You consider them to be losing because they care about the country more than their opponents do?
If McConnell “forgets” his promise that he made in order to get dems to agree to vote on the budget, and the dems decide not to hold the country hostage in exchange for his dishonesty, does that make them losers too?
I really sincerely believe that there are people on both sides of the aisle that care for their country a great deal. I wasn’t trying to suggest that they were “losers” in an attempt to run them down, but as an observation that whatever they hoped to accomplish by voting against the funding bills offered seems unlikely to be achieved. Perhaps even that is overly-harsh though. Could you succinctly state what goal they were trying to achieve, and the likelihood you see that that thing ultimately comes to pass (DWS will thank you later)? Perhaps after your answers you could assign a one-word “success” / “failure” evaluation to that effort.
I hope the tactic of debt ceiling shutdowns gets killed for good. It may require a constitutional amendment to state that the difference between revenue and appropriated expenses is explicitly authorized to be borrowed. Failing that, just raise the ceiling to 100 Trillion or something. When Republicans are (hopefully soon) in the minority, I don’t want them playing games with the debt ceiling either.
That being said, nobody is going to say to himself in the voting booth, “Gee, I hate the Democrats for that three day shutdown in January”.
And I have no idea why you think that. Republicans got blamed for the shutdowns because they were the ones who initiated them. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and regardless of logical arguments for why the Republicans are responsible, the fact remains that it was Democrats who initiated this one. And Pubbies will use that for all it’s worth and then some.
There are those on both sides who care about their country a great deal, but I do not for a moment believe that everyone on both sides has the country’s best interests ahead of their own. Even for those who do consider the country to be highly important, their political career is even more so, because how can one make sure that this country that you love is on the right track if you don’t get elected.
Unfortunately, republicans have painted themselves into a corner with gerrymandering, leaving themselves open to be primaried. That means that they have to tack harder to the right and refuse to compromise. This means that republicans are taking more hard stances on ideological grounds to satisfy a small minority of voters. The conservative machine has done such a good job of demonizing the left that it is very difficult for a conservative to actually cooperate with a democrat without getting bad press from their own party.
Democrats are no angels, but they are not in this position. There is very little chance of a democrat to get primaried for not being liberal enough, or for being willing to work with the republicans. Maybe if we don’t fix things by 2020, and democrats reverse the gerrymandering, then they will find themselves in the same position as the conservatives are now, beholden to the fringes of their party.
Anyway, perspective done…
The goal(s) that they are trying to achieve is to run a country that is prosperous and fair. To that end, they wanted to get CHIP funded (done), they wanted to get the government running again (done for the next 16 days), they wanted a deal on DACA (McConnell has promised to let it have consideration), and they didn’t want the wall (that project seems like trump shot it in the foot).
So, a WIN, a win-ish, a second match, and a win.
Agree 100%.
I hope you don’t think gerrymandering is something only done by the Republicans, but your post makes it seem like you do.
The bill that most of the Dems voted against would have done both of these first two things you listed.
As my post pointed out that democrats aren’t angels either, and that it also contained the hope that democrats don’t reverse that in 2020, I don’t see how you could have possibly gotten that impression.
But, to the point, districts are currently gerrymandered more in the republicans favor by republicans, and also to a greater extent than had been previously done, given better information and resources than there was int he past. This gives them smaller margins, and a greater vulnerability to being primaried.
Yes, and the bill that they ultimately voted for did as well.
However, the difference is, is that now McConnell is “committed” to keeping his “promise” about DACA debate, and the wall was removed from consideration.
So yeah, they got a win out of this. Instead of just getting CHIP funded (which was a stupid and cynical hostage for the conservatives to take), and keep the govt running, they also got an agreement to debate DACA, and pretty much put a nail in the coffin on the wall.
I’d say success.
What do you mean by “reverse”? Here’s my understanding: both parties, in at least some states where they had unified control, have gerrymandered Congressional districts. Do you agree with that or do you hold a different view?
Well, Schumer said that, but he’s not really in a great position to decide what gets brought up for a vote or not, and AFAICT, no one on the Republican side has agreed with his view on this matter. Trump seems pretty adamant that he wants to see border security funding included in the DACA deal. I don’t think either one of us is in a position to know for certain what will ultimately happen.
The republicans control more states, and so have more states gerrymandered than the democrats. And the republicans have gerrymandered their districts more than the democrats have.
I do not disagree that democrats have and are gerrymandered, I just do not think that it is nearly the issue fro them as it is fro republicans.
I am saying that the democrats should learn from that, and so when in 2020 they have control of the majority of statehouses and it is time to redistrict, they don’t do as one sided a job as the republicans have. They may not get as many votes per state as the republicans managed to swing, but the votes will be safer and they won’t have to play to the fringes.
We’ll see how it plays out, but trump really did screw the pooch when he had agreed on a deal and then backed out of it. Trump will not be figuring very much in negotiations going forward unless he starts threatening to veto. If he starts threatening to veto, then he puts the republicans against him as well as the democrats.
I am curious: what is your source for this claim?
I’m certainly not convinced of that, but it’s not just Trump that Schumer needs to factor in to his calculations. A bill that passed the Senate would have to pass the House before it even got to Trump. Paul Ryan is a major factor here.
In this situation, it’s less about the shutdown than the vote they took in favor of illegal immigrants over keeping the government open. This only affects five Democrats who represent states Trump won who voted no, but it WILL be used against them in campaign ads.
Jon Tester and Bill Nelson are especially going to be hit on this. And I think they are both toast. Nelson has to face Rick Scott in 2018, and Tester represents one of the reddest states in the country yet has been pretty consistent at voting with the Democratic leadership while claiming to represent “Montana values”.
This is not THE source, but it is A source. I have seen others, but this one I got from googling “most gerrymandered states in the US”.
I am sure there are others.
Which is why it is probably going to be hard to do DACA, because even though the majority of americans want it, including republicans, and even including trump, Ryan may not allow it to come to a vote, even though he knows it would pass.
OTOH, he can’t force a vote about the wall. And the wall is a boondoggle that is best completely left off the table.
These are all things that the vast majority of americans want, and it is a bit silly that we have to fight the conservatives about which they can have.
No one was opposed to CHIP, but republicans took it hostage to use as negotiations. Most people want DACA to be made permanent, but the republicans consider the lives of these people to be a bargaining chip. Everyone wants the government to run, but republicans (trump)backed out of a deal that he made to keep the government open. No one really wants an actual wall (border security, sure, but border security != wall), but the republicans keep threatening to put it into a bill anyway.
Democrats are really representing the will of the people here, and the conservatives are fighting against that tooth and nail.
That will come back to bite them at the ballot box here in just a few short months.
The whole “favored illegal immigrants over keeping the government open” is just pure propaganda.
Not saying that it will not work with poorly informed voters, and yo may be right that there are enough poorly informed voters in Montana to vote him out, but it really is just gaslighting to actually try to claim that that is actually what happened.
People will be fooled by that statement, but you aren’t fooling anyone here.
@k9bfriender
Is $18B of increased border security worth it to you to get DACA through Congress and the White House?
Can you guarantee no cost overruns?
I could get behind 18b, but I seriously doubt that is where it will stop.
Meh, 18b for 700k people. That’s only 25k each, why not?
Virtually no government-run anything can ever guarantee no cost overruns. It’s the nature of government.
Okay then, how about a deal then, for every 25k over the 18b, we get to give another undocumented immigrant a green card.
That would seriously depopulate Mexico.
The Democrats shut the government down over DACA. It’s not propaganda, and that’s exactly how most of the mainstream media reported it. Democrats cried bloody murder over that reporting, then many of them turned right around and slammed Democrats for allowing the government that they say they didn’t shut down over DACA to reopen without getting what they wanted on DACA.