These exercises are not just reckless and ineffectual on their own terms.
These exercises are not just reckless and ineffectual on their own terms.
R epublicans did not derail the implementation of Obamacare when the GOP shut down the government in 2013. Democrats did not force Republicans to write Barack Obama’s deferred deportation schedule for so-called Dreamers when they shut down the government in early 2018. Donald Trump did not win funding for a border wall during the shutdown that was previously America’s longest in the winter of 2018–2019. And, with this year’s shutdown, the Democrats did not secure the restoration of the Obamacare subsidies they themselves sunset back in 2022.
You would think that this record of failure might stand as a warning to the lawmakers who seem to regard government shutdowns as useful political tools. If they have learned from past failures, they don’t seem to have the stomach to explain this to their core constituents. Shutdowns are not just reckless and typically ineffectual on their own terms; they contribute to the radicalization of America’s political fringes.
The consensus emerging on the activist left is that Democrats caved to the GOP just as the party was on the verge of victory. Of course, Democrats did cave, accepting essentially the same cease-fire deal the GOP proposed more than three weeks ago. In the end, eight Democrats voted with the GOP to break the party’s filibuster of a government-funding bill, only with the promise of a future vote on Obamacare subsidies — a vote that is unlikely to achieve Democratic aims. But the notion that the Democrats surrendered is predicated on the fantastical presupposition that the GOP would have given Democrats everything they wanted if only Democrats in Congress had enough will to resist. That is, after all, the argument that congressional Democrats themselves were pushing.
“Every day gets better for us,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer beamed last month. “Even the threat of shutting things,” he said of the Trump administration, is “at least as negative on them as it is on us. I think more so on them.” Much of his caucus echoed Schumer’s rationale, adding that the pressure on President Trump, owing to the dysfunction associated with shutdown politics, would make him pressure Senate Republicans into capitulating. But the Senate GOP was never going to reward the authors of this shutdown with victory, much less take ownership of Barack Obama’s malfunctional health care law. Perhaps understandably, those on the left who were sold a bill of goods resent the emotional manipulation to which they’ve been subjected by their Democratic representatives. Their anger is, however, misdirected.
“Liberal social media is on fire this morning, with activists, pressure groups and wannabe Democratic senators and presidents falling over one another to condemn the deal in ever-louder terms,” Politico reported on Monday. Democrats with political aspirations that rely on the activist left are pandering to that base, competing with one another to stoke the ire that is consuming their voters. Their outrage does not hold a candle to the incandescent rage of the left-wing interest groups who have accused Democrats of colluding with Republicans to “screw over millions of working Americans.”
Democrats knew this would happen. Some privately conceded that they were setting forces in motion that they could not control. And when the shutdown ended, as it invariably would, in some accommodation with the Republicans, they knew they would get “hammered” by the activists who, thanks to party leaders, had unrealistic expectations.
The activist left is now calling for Schumer’s scalp. The shutdown, which had no higher goal at its outset than convincing the party’s most agitated voters that Schumer had the stomach for the fight, only further convinced the minority leader’s left-of-center detractors that he can’t meet the measure of this moment. But even if the activists get their way and shuttle Schumer off the political stage, they will not be satisfied. Their problem — one Democrats unwisely cultivated — is with the demands associated with minority politics in an evenly divided country and a legislature that, while dysfunctional, nevertheless still compels its members to compromise with their adversaries.
Once again, federal lawmakers have overpromised and underdelivered. Once again, the naïve and proselytized in the minority party’s ranks are seething with resentment over it. Once again, they are resolved to seek vengeance by replacing the current incompetent cast of political elites with another — one that will assure the voting public that all they need to do to engineer an enduring political triumph is elect politicians with the gumption to do what the weak-willed governing class won’t.
Once rare, government shutdowns have become commonplace. They are a symptom of increasing political dysfunction in America, but they contribute, too, to the expanding role of demagoguery.
The activists don’t want to believe that they were lied to. They’d much prefer it if the problem was with their lawmakers and their refusal to do what must be done, heedless of the risks and contemptuous of those who advocate conciliation. That’s what they would rather believe. And they’ll vote accordingly.