Dem
47
GOP
53
Wednesday night, CNN posted a thought piece by Stephen Collinson with the headline "Democrats May Have Overplayed Their Hand in Shutting Down the Government." Then, on Thursday, someone apparently decided that was not an editorial position the outlet wanted to stand behind, so the headline was changed to "The government shutdown is a slow-boil political crisis." At around the same time, a new piece from Aaron Blake, with the headline "Democrats Could Have More Shutdown Leverage Than People Realize," was posted.
The point here is that nobody really knows where this is headed—not the politicians, not the commentators, not the historians, not the Washington press corps. In large part, that is because this shutdown is not really like any of the others. There's a lot of moving parts here, so we're going to put a bunch of thoughts to paper (well, to pixels), and maybe something instructive will come out of it. At this point, wrapping up the second paragraph of this item, we're going to guess we end up with 3,000 words. At the end, we'll check and see how good that estimate was:
A Couple of Corrections: To start, let us point out a couple of mistakes we've made in the past couple of days. First, we wrote that the federal employees who are currently working without compensation (which is most of them, including the military) usually get back pay once the budget is straightened out, but there are no guarantees.
As many readers wrote in to point out, after the 2018-19 shutdown (aka, the longest shutdown in U.S. history), Congress passed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, which requires that employees receive back pay once the money spigot has been re-opened. Obviously, any law Congress can pass it can also reverse, and if any political faction was ever going to try to screw federal staffers out of their money, it would be MAGA. But that would probably be a bridge too far for at least some Republican members (and would definitely be a bridge too far for Democrats, assuming the filibuster survives this mess—more below) so barring very unexpected developments, people are going to get paid eventually.
The other error we made was writing that the vote in favor of the last-ditch effort at a can-kicking bill got the support of all the Republicans in the Senate plus two Democrats (John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada) and one independent (Angus King of Maine). That's how the Library of Congress bill tracker had it when we were writing, but in fact, there was actually one Republican who crossed the aisle, and you already know who it was without our needing to tell you: Rand Paul of Kentucky.
This bears watching, because the one thing Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) is certain to do is bring up can-kicking bill after can-kicking bill, so Republicans can go on TV, social media, etc. and say "We've given the Democrats [X] opportunities to reopen the government, and they insist on keeping it shut down." And if any member of either caucus switches their votes on Thune attempt #2 or #5 or #10, this will be treated as VERY IMPORTANT and a sign that the resolve of one side or the other is weakening. And it may well be VERY IMPORTANT and a sign that the resolve of one side or the other is weakening. But keep in mind that, as Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) has taught us oh-so-many times, flipping the second-to-last vote is many orders of magnitude easier than flipping the decisive vote.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Part I: There is a famous scene at the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly where Blondie (the good), Angel Eyes (the bad) and Tuco (the ugly) are in a triangular, three-way standoff, where none of them can risk drawing their gun and firing at one of the corners of the triangle, due to the risk of getting shot by the other corner of the triangle. For example, Tuco thinks he can't take a shot at Angel Eyes, because he might get shot by Blondie while making the attempt. As it turns out, Tuco is wrong, because Blondie has stacked the deck. But Tuco doesn't know this until the standoff is over.
Everyone knows the term for this kind of setup, especially since it's now been ripped off by a hundred other directors, especially the directors, like John Woo and Quentin Tarantino, who like to make very slick, highly stylized homages to B-movies. We can't actually use the term, because it's racist, but we think the concept might be useful. We've been thinking a lot about this shutdown, because that is what we do. And while we are open to being persuaded otherwise, we're not sure this is as simple as "Republicans vs. Democrats." It seems to us there may actually be three different chairs at this table, with none of the participants willing and/or able to yield to the others.
The most important of the three, by virtue of both his high office and his bully pulpit, is Donald Trump (and, of course, his underlings, who may be taking orders from him... or may be using him to advance their own goals). It is true that Trump loves to "own the libs" and that he certainly doesn't want to make any changes to the BBB, since it is perfect as is. But is that really his only motivation here? The shutdown is only a few days old, and yet it's clear that the answer to that question is "no." Trump, and even more so OMB Director Russ Vought, clearly want to squeeze this "opportunity" for all it's worth, in terms of gutting the government, punishing the libs, delaying things the administration wants delayed, and creating a distraction from things like, say, the Epstein files.
Anyone reading this knows, at this point, that the administration threatened to fire hundreds of thousands of federal workers. Trump has certainly been leaning into that, and into the notion that Vought is his personal grim reaper. Last night, for example, Trump (or whoever is running his social media) posted a very odd AI video that features a mediocre cover of "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult, and images of Trum̈p and Voug̈ht as "Death." This screen capture conveys the general vibe:
We have absolutely no doubt the clip is meant to be pro-MAGA. But we also have absolutely no doubt that many people who see it are going to be reminded of one of the most famous of all Saturday Night Live sketches, where the butt of the (now-legendary) joke is... the guy playing the cowbell on the song "Don't Fear the Reaper."
Trump's social media postings aren't the only clue that Vought is looking to deploy his scythe. Yesterday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was chatting with one of the entertainers on Fox, and he said what is maybe supposed to be the quiet part (we're not sure) out loud:
It's going to harm [the Democrats] because Russ Vought, the OMB director, has been dreaming about this moment, preparing for this moment since puberty. Russ Vought has a plan, and that plan is going to succeed in empowering, further empowering, Trump. This is going to be the Democrats' worst nightmare, and it's of their own making.Lee, who has always had a curious relationship with what seems to be the basic precepts of his LDS faith, is clearly very happy with what he's seeing.
That said, despite the threats, the White House largely has not begun swinging the axe yet. And even the threats have gone from "hundreds of thousands" to "tens of thousands" to "thousands." Maybe the administration, which is not exactly a well-oiled machine, is just getting its ducks in a row. Maybe it fears losing a bunch more lawsuits. Maybe there is pushback from Republicans in Congress. We'll have to wait and see.
Though the mass firings are not yet underway, Trump and his team have seized on the "opportunity" in other ways. For example, Vought announced yesterday that he was freezing $18 billion earmarked for infrastructure improvements in New York City, "to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles." Because, after all, there is nothing worse than a woke bridge or a woke subway tunnel. The administration also canceled nearly $8 billion in green-energy grants across 16 states. By a truly remarkable coincidence, all 16 states happen to have given their electoral votes to Kamala Harris in 2024. We wonder if they considered cutting ¼ of Nebraska's funding.
Similarly, there is nothing that Trump loves to do more in court cases than delay, delay, delay (at least, cases in which he's the defendant). So, one of the hack attorneys he has working for him tried to secure a postponement in the case addressing whether the administration can, or cannot, keep National Guard troops in Washington, DC. Judge Jia Cobb was having none of it, however.
One other benefit for Trump, which is probably not by design, but which undoubtedly pleases him, is that the various monthly reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics aren't going to be produced until after the shutdown is over. Since those BLS reports are usually pretty grim these days, and since E.J. Antoni won't be able to muck around with them, this is a win for the President.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Part II: The second corner of the triangle is the Republican leadership in Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and John Thune, who are kind of like Switzerland right now. We don't mean to suggest that they are neutral, exactly, more like they are largely throwing up their hands and staying out of this fight. They know that neither the Democrats nor Trump are likely to back down anytime soon, so all Johnson and Thune can do is stage show votes and then tell reporters how there's nothing they can do here. The Speaker, for example, said yesterday that "I quite literally have nothing to negotiate," while Thune said that "I don't know that, you know, negotiation is going to accomplish a lot."
Johnson also did his best Baghdad Bob impersonation when asked about the White House's posture:
Russ does this reluctantly. He takes no pleasure in this. Because Russ has to sit down and decide which policies, personnel, and which programs are essential and which are not. That's not a fun task and he's not enjoying that responsibility... if they keep the government closed, it's gonna get more and more painful.Why does the Speaker issue forth with such obvious falsehoods? If you want the truth of how Vought is actually feeling, see the quote from Mike Lee above.
Interestingly, in a moment that he apparently did not realize was being captured by cameras, Johnson may have shown more of his cards than he intended to. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) confronted Johnson outside the House chamber and, making reference to Trump's speech at Quantico, said that Johnson simply has to do some leading, because "The president is unhinged. He is unwell." Johnson's response was: "A lot of folks on your side are too, I don't control him..." Many are interpreting that as a tacit admission that Johnson agrees with Dean. We will leave it to readers to decide for themselves if they agree.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Part III: And then there are the Democrats. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (both D-NY) know full well what Trump and Vought are up to, and that damage will be done, to both federal employees and to blue states. They know that, depending on what happens, the Democratic Party could get the blame for the shutdown. And they... are OK with that.
Don't interpret that as meaning they are happy right now (they most certainly are not) or that they don't care (they most certainly do). However, politics ain't beanbag. Sometimes, when you're in the kitchen, and the heat is rising, you have two choices: (1) the bad choice and (2) the worse choice. The two Democratic leaders have decided, either of their own volition, or with the "encouragement" of their caucus, that they have to make a stand here. First, because the Democratic base wants it. Second, because none of the other checks on Trump is functioning very well right now.
Jeffries and Schumer also know one other very important thing, and it's the thing that makes this shutdown effectively unique. In past instances, the unpopular maneuver (shutting down the government) was initiated by a faction that was pushing an unpopular policy position. Remember that the first Trump shutdown was over wall funding, the Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) shutdown was an attempt to kill Obamacare, and the Newt Gingrich shutdown was an attempt to ram a bunch of cuts to social programs down Bill Clinton's throat. None of those positions had majority support.
By contrast, the thing the Democrats are fighting for (at least, the one that isn't inside baseball) is health care subsidies. Those, in contrast to the other policies named, are wildly popular—support is in the 70%+ range. So, Jeffries and Schumer can tell themselves—perhaps rightly, we'll see—that they may be executing an unpopular maneuver (filibuster/shutdown), but they are doing so in service of a popular cause, and that the latter factor will carry the day.The Messaging: Since the two (or three) sides aren't negotiating, and since they are likely to be at an impasse for a while, that means it's time for everyone to crank up their messaging operations. Well, it's time for the White House and the Democrats, at least. Consistent with their Switzerland-ish approach, Republican leadership in Congress isn't really saying all that much.
The Trump administration, for its part, continues its usual sledgehammer approach. A whole bunch of federal departments now have banners on their webpages blaming the Democrats for the shutdown in highly partisan language. Here are half a dozen examples:
Not all of the departments have these messages, mind you; several of them have the very neutral sort of message we would expect to see if a grown-up was in the White House. We're not sure what the explanation is; the obvious guess would be that it's at the discretion of the department head, but that doesn't work, because Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem are as fanatical as anyone in the administration, and their departments' sites don't have wild messages.
The White House is also endeavoring to use federal employees' out-of-office messages to peddle the administration's spin. In some cases, employees have just been given instructions as to the (extremely partisan) text they should use for their out-of-office responses. In other cases, the employees' out-of-office messages have apparently been changed without their consent. This is a very clear violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive branch employees—excepting the president and vice president—from politicking while acting in an official capacity. It's obvious enough that HUD Secretary Scott Turner, who is presumably responsible for the delightful message at the top of the above image, was asked about it yesterday. He said he is "not worried at all." He's probably right not to be worried; the law is certainly being broken, but its teeth are somewhat flimsy. And the teeth don't matter at all if you have a Department of Justice that has no interest in enforcement.
In addition to videos inspired by a song that was a hit... in 1976 (aka, the decade in which Trump absorbed all of his cultural references), Trump has also been leaning into pictures and videos of Democrats in sombreros. There was one with Jeffries in a sombrero earlier this week, and there were a couple more yesterday. We wondered what exactly this was about, and it turns out that the GOP thinks this is the best way to sell their message that Democrats are trying to save health care benefits for undocumented immigrants. Even if that was true, it hardly seems Christian to oppose such a notion. After all, Jesus said "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another." He did not add "But be clear, that sh** stops the moment you get to the fu**ing border." And, in any case, it's not true. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for either Medicaid or Obamacare.
As to the Democrats, we've seen a lot of pieces with a version of the Will Rogers critique. You know, "I'm not a member of any organized party. I'm a Democrat" (see here, here, here and here for some examples). We think maybe that critique—and remember that Rogers made his joke almost 100 years ago—has become a bit of a lazy cliché, because the Democrats' messaging seems pretty clear and simple to us: "We want to save the health care subsidies." That's also fighting for something, whereas the Republicans' main message—"the radical left is shutting down the government"—is basically a slightly more verbose way of saying "Democrats bad!" Our guess is that won't persuade too many people beyond those who already believed that before the shutdown.
The two Democrats do have a couple of potential aces in the hole. First, are there any individual members of the House or the Senate who are better at communicating their side's message than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)? Yes, there are a few Republicans who get about as much attention as those two, but people like Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tend to be rogues who speak for a party of one. Certainly, if there ARE better salespeople in Congress than AOC and Bernie, there aren't many of them. And both of them are already working overtime to get the blue team's message out there.
The other potential ace in the hole is a past president's strongly worded opinion on shutdowns:
[I]f there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the President of the United States. He's the one that has to get people together [and] if you say who gets fired, it always has to be the top. I mean, problems start from the top, and they have to get solved from the top. And the president's the leader, and he's got to get everybody in a room, and he's got to lead.That past president in question, of course, is also the current president. Trump said that in response to one of the shutdowns that took place during the Barack Obama years. The footage is already all over social media, and one could imagine it finding its way into news broadcasts and maybe even commercials, depending on how long this thing lasts.
The Polls: As we have now observed several times, everyone is going to be looking at polls for potential chinks in their own armor, or that of the other side. We noted the results of three major polls on Wednesday. Yesterday, The Washington Post added a fourth poll to the mix. Their numbers say that 47% of respondents blame Trump and the Republicans for the shutdown, 30% blame the Democrats, and 23% are not sure. To move into the stronger position, then, the red team would either have to win over nearly all of the "not sure" crowd, or would have to peel off some of the 47% that currently side with the blue team. Also of interest is that the poll found that 71% of respondents want to keep the Obamacare subsidies.
The Impact: If the polls ARE going to change markedly, then that will be because some segment(s) of the American public is/are affected by the shutdown, and express that by changing their position on the matter.
There are already some very significant effects being felt, most obviously by the federal workers who are already furloughed, or are about to be. There are also the various government agencies that, on the whole, won't be available to perform their usual services for people who need them.
When and if we get to October 15 or so, there will be a couple of key developments. SNAP will run out around then, and the federal courts will also begin to slow down markedly or to shut down entirely. If we get to early November, there will be a couple more key developments. First, ACA enrollment will begin, and people who are losing their subsidies and don't know it already will learn the unpleasant truth then. Second, on Nov. 4, it will become the longest shutdown in history. There will be a lot of headlines pointing that out, and a lot of headlines pointing out that Trump broke his own record, making him responsible for both of the two longest shutdowns in U.S. history.
Trump's strategy, of course, is to try to steer as much pain in the direction of Democratic states and Democratic voters as is possible. Hence, for example, the two funding freezes (the NYC infrastructure and the green-energy projects) that were announced yesterday. However, as we've already pointed out a couple of times, it's not so easy to wield the scalpel here. Remember the (accurate) line about how "There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than New York, more Trump voters in New York than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont." Trump can try to hurt blue-state voters, but he's also going to hit a bunch of independents and moderate Republicans, too. Meanwhile, there are also parts of the shutdown that WILL affect his base, whether he likes it or not. For example, the Farm Service Agency has no money right now, and so cannot operate. That hurts farmers a lot, and farmers are very GOP these days.
Unless this shutdown goes on for months and months, it's unlikely that many voters will factor the shutdown itself into their decision next November. But people who are harmed most certainly could use their vote to express their unhappiness. The Democrats aren't actively trying to harm anyone right now, whereas the leader of the Republican Party most certainly is. If Trump cannot do the job of selling "This is all the radical left-wing Democrats' fault" much better than he was able to sell steaks, vodka, branded Bibles or cheesy guitars, he could be helping contribute to a blue wave next November.
The Way Out?: We've been trying to figure out how this might end and, for what it's worth, we can conceive of three basic possibilities. The first, which is probably the least likely, is that one side or the other becomes so fully persuaded that its position is weak that they basically capitulate. So, the Democrats surrender and agree to the continuing resolution (at which point we presumably do this all over again in a month or two) or the Republicans surrender and agree to put back the Obamacare subsidies.
The second possibility, which is probably the most likely, is that the Democrats agree to vote for the CR, and the Republicans promise to negotiate about the Obamacare subsidies (and maybe the recissions) during the can-has-been-kicked window. Then, we presumably do this all over again in December or January or February, except with the GOP having made commitments that won't be too easy to shake off.
The third possibility, which is probably in the middle in terms of likelihood, is that the Republicans kill the filibuster, and ram through a funding bill. If the GOP does do this, they would not strike down the filibuster entirely; they would just create yet another carve-out, either for budget bills in general or CRs in particular. There would certainly be some members of the Republican conference (e.g., Mitch McConnell, KY) who would not be happy about this. They would realize that: (1) the Democrats would be able to ram through THEIR budget bills once they have the trifecta again, and (2) yet another giant carve-out would be one step closer to axing the filibuster entirely. So, who knows if the votes would be there?
There you have it, our latest thoughts on this train wreck. And the grand total is... 4,819 words. Oh well, the best laid plans of mice and men, and all that. (Z)