People who are predicting periods of months or years should be aware how big a deal a shutdown is. (And, yes, the people who need to be made aware include Donald Trump.)
Most shutdowns have lasted a day. The longest one in American history lasted twenty-six days and five of those were only a partial shutdown. The current shutdown has lasted twenty days.
If the government stays shut down long enough, it will start being impossible to start the government up again. And a country without a government is a country with pretty serious problems.
I’m aware it’s a big deal, Little Nemo, but we’re talking about the Orange Butt Boil, not a normal politician. Hell, we’re not even talking about a normal human being.
I voted 1 week-1 month. As every day goes by, more and more checks will fail to issue - not just for pay - and the outrage - and costs - will be made clearer and clearer.
Yesterday heard on the radio about the impact on FEMA efforts in CA districts recovering from the recent fires - districts that had strongly voted Trump. He might be too stupid to realize it, but every day more and more R congresscritters will see it as the losing game it is.
Trump’s presidency is at stake. He either gets some concessions for the wall or he loses his base. Stick a fork in him, he’s done. Running in 2020 won’t be an option. His final two years will be as a caretaker until the election.
Given that situation, Trump has nothing to lose by fighting to the bitter end.
The only question is which direction does he take? Drag out the shutdown until the Republican leadership turn on him? Or trigger a Constitutional crisis by declaring a National Emergency which the Democrats will fight? That’s uncharted water and no one knows how that will end.
This madness is over a tiny fraction of the US budget. 5 billion isn’t much compared to what this shutdown is costing 800,000 people.
Since the first poll option is “Less than 1 week,” and the poll was posted yesterday (more than a week after the shutdown began), I assumed the poll referred to how much longer the shutdown will last.
I’m the optimist who voted for 1-2 years. Hopefully the unpaid feds will stop showing up so society can expand to fill the void with hard workers and smart entrepreneurs. There will be temporary disruptions, but that’s ok. It’s good in the long run for young people that government employment is not viewed as a stable paycheck for the slackers and risk-averse.
I wish the unpaid workers well but can’t they take a hint already? You’re working for free? The taxpayers aren’t worried about supporting you, move on with your life, bud. It’s like that guy from Office Space. If someone was not worried about making sure I get paid, I’d probably question the service aspect of civil service.
For a master negotiator and businessman, he has certainly painted himself into a corner and given himself zero negotiation room. He now lives or dies over this wall and frankly that worries me. That said, I think as long as the D’s stay unified in opposition this will end badly for Trump. I read an article this morning where reports are Trump and his advisors really didn’t even consider the significant impact to a shutdown - food inspections, income tax returns, SNAP benefits, etc. and just how many millions of people were going to be hurt. They seem to have only considered the federal workers in aggregate who get furloughed and tried to either claim they supported the shutdown (absurd on its face) or that they were just lazy D’s working in cushy union jobs (also absurd). As it becomes more and more apparent that soon millions won’t be able to receive SNAP to feed their family, as income tax refunds don’t get sent hurting middle and lower class families who plan for that annual windfall of a return, and as the airport system grinds to a halt dramatically impacting business and vacation travel… Well, if Trump doesn’t fold the R’s in the Senate are going to have to have a Come To Jesus meeting and make a very hard choice. Save themselves or go down with the Wall which they all know is a useless boarder protection measure.
I voted 1-2 months because I think it’ll take that long for the pain level to reach a threshold where Trump or the R’s will have to act to end this.
Yes, this is the correct interpretation of the question, how much longer will the shutdown last as of yesterday.
As far as the gravity of the situation, I’m one of the ones who voted for multiple months. It’s not that I think things will be business as usual without the government. The problem is that Trump has no incentive to cooperate. The Republicans in the Senate and House do have some incentive to cooperate, but so far from their POV the benefits of staying with Trump outweigh the benefits of cooperating. I think it will take things getting worse, probably a whole lot worse, for enough of them to start changing their minds. It’s not enough for the usual suspects like Murkowski and Collins to consider cooperating. To get to 2/3 to override a Trump veto, 20 senators will need to change their minds. At this point I have such little regard for the decency of most of those Republican Senators that I think it’s going to take more than just some federal workers missing a check or two or for some poor people not getting their SNAP benefits to change their minds. It’s going to take things falling apart to a level that most Americans, including their constituents and not just people in blue states, to start feeling the effects.
