In a strange column, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein begins by urging Senate Democrats to shut down the government:
The case for a shutdown is this: A shutdown is an attentional event. It’s an effort to turn the diffuse crisis of Trump’s corrupting of the government into an acute crisis that the media, that the public, will actually pay attention to.
Right now, Democrats have no power, so no one cares what they have to say. A shutdown would make people listen. But then Democrats would have to actually win the argument. They would need to have an argument. They would need a clear set of demands that kept them on the right side of public opinion and dramatized what is happening to the country right now.
The current funding for the government expires at midnight on September 30, with October 1 being the potential start of a partial government shutdown.
This could go terribly badly for Democrats. Yes, the Democrats will have all or almost all of the mainstream media on their side, obscuring the fact that Republicans have a bill to keep the government operating and Senate Democrats refuse to allow it to come to the floor. Yes, Democrats will have all kinds of Trump outrages and provocations to point to and denounce. But the question is, what will Democrats want in exchange for keeping the government open? What concession could Trump and Republicans offer that will make Democrats believe they got a good deal? What concession could possibly please a Democratic grassroots that has told their elected leaders to “be willing to get shot” in the name of resisting Trump?
(Notice that Senate Democrats have been absolutely ruthless in their use of blue slips to hold up Trump’s appointments; 149 picks are awaiting Senate confirmation. Does any progressive grassroots activist think Senate Democrats are doing a good job or fighting hard enough? Nah. They’re trapped in this self-serving narrative where Democrats always lose because they’re too nice and conciliatory and Republicans always win because they’re mean and aggressive.)
In the end, what grassroots Democrats really want is for Trump to not be president, and that is not something that any elected Democrat can deliver.
Klein acknowledges:
And right now, Democrats have not picked those policies or settled on that message. Right now, they are no more prepared for a shutdown than they were in March. There is a huge debate inside the party on whether they should talk about Trump’s corruption and authoritarianism or instead say that armed troops in Washington are a distraction from the price of groceries and health care. And there is the reality that Democrats’ best issue is health care, and Trump looting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts is the kind of thing they should never let voters forget. I don’t think it’s impossible to turn this into one message.
Okay, but remember which messengers will be carrying that message. As I wrote after the last time Chuck Schumer backed down from a potential government shutdown:
Schumer is not exactly a whirling dervish of raw political charisma, and the moment it became clear that Kamala Harris wasn’t going to win any of the swing states, Schumer ascended to the leader of the opposition by default. He’s probably not the right guy; to use one of my favorite metaphors, he’s not a “wartime consigliere.”
Leadership of Senate Democrats has been on autopilot for nearly a decade. Schumer was unanimously elected by his caucus in 2016, and this week marks the first serious talk about someone else leading the caucus. I think many Democrats would acknowledge that the last eight years have not been great for their party.
Finally, when the government shuts down, who gets hurt the most? Yes, we will see news stories about Mrs. Othmar’s first-grade class that wanted to make a field trip to the Smithsonian museums, and how disappointed all the kids are. But the folks bearing the worst burden will be federal workers who will either be declared nonessential and told to stay home or be declared essential and told to show up for work and not get paid until the shutdown ends.
A federal government shutdown is a mild annoyance at most to many Americans who work in the private sector. A federal government shutdown can be a major financial burden on government employees, depending on how long it lasts.
Schumer and congressional Democrats got into a government shutdown fight with President Trump in late 2018 and early 2019. It was the longest in U.S. history, at 35 days.
Do you envision Trump making significant concessions to ease the pain and suffering of federal government workers? No, I don’t, either. Schumer and the Democrats will have gotten themselves into a high-stakes fight with Trump where one of the party’s key constituencies – government workers – feel the most pain, and it gets worse the longer it drags on.
By the end of the column, Klein seems to have talked himself out of his own proposal.
I’m not going to tell you I am absolutely sure Democrats should shut the government down. I’m not. At the same time, joining Republicans to fund this government is worse than failing at opposition. It’s complicity.
I’m not a political strategist. I hope somebody has better ideas than I do.
Democrats have little leverage because they’re in the minority in the House and Senate, and negative coverage of Republicans from the mainstream media is much less consequential than it used to be. A government shutdown isn’t going to change those facts.