Democrats have once again decided it’s a good time to pick a losing fight because the party’s ridiculous, anti-American base can’t see anything through to its logical end. In this case it’s pushing for a federal government shutdown, a scenario in which Democrats have no good options, but they’re ready to pick the worst one if it means “fighting” for the sake of it.
Just as Democrats have done on virtually every other major issue — crime, immigration, bureaucratic waste — they’re positioning themselves to do the most counterproductive thing possible. Rather than vote with Republicans to keep government funding at current levels, they’re angling to shut it down, unless Republicans agree to passing more “health care” subsidies (i.e., welfare). The problem for them, though, is Republicans have no major incentive to support the additional welfare, given that they ran on and were elected opposing it, and in any event, a shutdown gives the White House immense discretion in choosing which federal agencies to keep open.
In other words, Republicans benefit either way. If the government stays open, President Trump’s agenda continues, at least until the midterms, more than a year away. If it closes, Democrats just handed the keys to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who will gleefully set about cutting hundreds more bureaucrats (Democrat voters). Democrats in Washington are well aware of the dilemma, but their base is demoralized and a lot of the party’s leaders, especially the ones who want to run for president, think it’s better to indulge it with a shutdown now, at least for a while.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, renowned for her political prowess as a master legislator, is one of those leaders. “Republicans run the Senate. They run the House, and they run the White House,” she said at an event Monday for her book tour in Los Angeles, according to Politico. She argued for Democrats to “stand firm as the Republicans shut down the government. … Because it won’t be the Democrats, it will be the Republicans.”
Please listen to Kamala, Democrats. When has she ever let you down?
Another advantage Republicans have in this absurd affair is that America has been through shutdowns before, and because all the important agencies are deemed “essential,” nothing really happens. A swath of government workers get some unplanned time off, and that’s about it. To the extent that shutdowns are actually disruptive to the average person, it’s that the dying cable news business goes into hysteria about them every time. Well, there are fewer and fewer people every day who care what CNN and MSNBC have to say.
Democrats can “fight” with a shutdown if they want to. And then they can explain to their voters what that was all about when it makes no difference and they ultimately vote to reopen the government.
Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of "Traitors: The Democrat Party’s Collapse into Anti-American Filth."