Why I Changed My Mind About the Shutdown ‘Surrender.’
Seven
days ago, I thought we were seeing another episode of ‘DACO’: Dems Always
Chicken Out. Now I think a deal I opposed is giving anti-Trump forces a
stronger hand.
|
|
|
|
This week I changed my mind on the politics of our era. This post is
about the reasons why, and what I’ve learned about immediate reactions versus a
longer view.
Spoiler alert: I’ll be talking about the eight US Senators—seven
Democrats and one Independent—who “caved” last weekend to break a filibuster
and allow passage of a budget that gave Republicans most things they wanted,
and gave up most things Democrats had been asking for.
Like many people, I saw that moment as a turning point. But I’ve changed
my thinking on what kind of change these past few days might mean. Contrary to
my immediate reaction, I now think that the move has hurt Donald Trump and Team
MAGA. It can help the Democrats, if they recognize what has happened, and act
on it.
I’ll go through this in several steps.
-First, some “stages of grief” waypoints: Reasons why the senators’
announcement came as such a blow to so many people who had so recently, and in
such numbers, turned out at the polls and turned up at demonstrations. Why give
up, now?
-Then, a powerful statement from another senator, which caught my
attention as a modern version of the timeless ‘join or die’ guidance. It
suggests a high-road way out of a low moment.
-Then, some consequences of the ‘capitulation’ that have become clearer
and more important than most people could have expected one week ago. The big
revelation to me is how many of these effects are breaking against the MAGA forces that
apparently ‘won’ the filibuster battle, and in favor of the resistance. I don’t
think the eight senators could have planned this. But it’s what we’re seeing,
and why I’ve changed my mind.
Here we go:
1) The first stage of grief: The way we were.
Let’s take ourselves back to the American politics, as it existed seven
days ago—on late Sunday afternoon, November 9. At that point:
·
The Democratic party was coming off mainly-unexpected
landslide election wins just five days earlier. The New Jersey governor’s race
was supposed to be close. Then Mikie Sherrill won by double-digits, and in
Virginia, Abigail Spanberger led a Democratic sweep. TV networks were able to
call results for California’s Prop 50 less than one minute after the polls
closed. Democrats won crucial down-ballot votes in Pennsylvania, in Georgia,
and elsewhere, including Mississippi! The reflexive ‘Dems is disarray’ stories
looked like tired clichés.
·
One day after those elections, the Supreme Court—yes, that Supreme Court—held
extended oral arguments that made prospects look very dim for Donald Trump’s self-assigned role as tariff-master to the
world. When you’ve lost Neil Gorsuch … Meanwhile federal district-court and
appeals-court judges across the country kept telling ICE, the Border Patrol,
and the whole Trump team to back off. And a jury acquitted the DC “sandwich guy.”
·
The country as a whole was coming off the largest mass demonstrations
in most Americans’ lifetimes. These occurred in every
state, in communities large and small, replete with US flags and patriotic
chants, with virtually no violence or confrontations. And practically no
offsetting “We love MAGA!” turnout.
·
The US Senate—yes, that Senate—was coming
off a series of tariff votes in which enough Republicans sided with Dems to
form an anti-Trump majority. Four Republicans flipped in
some cases, five in others. Either way, enough.
·
The Trump war on higher ed appeared to be stalling out,
or at least losing momentum, as more and more institutions found the spine to
resist his demands.
·
Donald Trump’s approval ratings plummeted to new depths day by day. In its damage to the American
public, the government shutdown was reaching painful new levels. But as a
political reality, the longer it went on, the harder the opinion polls were
turning against Trump and the GOP.
That was the mood of a “Dems in array” opposition party as of
seven days ago. Embattled. But encouraged. And ready to stand firm.
Then Angus King, Maggie Hassan, and others came to the microphone.
2) The second stage of grief: ‘They were stronger. We gave
up.’
We’ve learned, through later news, that many Democrats in the Senate had
a heads-up about the deal their eight colleagues were about to announce. But
for most of us, the news came out of the blue.
It came as the glow of nationwide voting triumphs still suffused the
party. Then, in breaking-news broadcasts last Sunday night, we heard the
senators who had negotiated this deal present it in the most hang-dog way
possible. Two of them notably set the tone.
-Angus King, an Independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, made an
extended case about why the filibuster and shutdown should not go on. You can
read it on his official site, here.
But the line that stuck was one he repeated on Morning Joe the next day. “Standing
up to Donald Trump did not work.”
What King “meant” was of course more nuanced and complicated. But words
matter in politics, and he said just the wrong words. This was not what people
still doing their best to stand up needed to hear.
-Then came Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New
Hampshire, who also had a prepared statement about the real-world damage the
shutdown was doing. She emphasized the cruelty the MAGA team was inflicting on
SNAP recipients, federal workers, travelers, and many other groups. This had to
end, she said.
But then, taking questions, she ad-libbed another unfortunate line that
rang out at the moment, and will stick. What if the Republicans didn’t honor
their agreement to offer “a realistic platform to get the [medical payment] tax
cuts done”?
Her answer:
“If that is
not successful, then shame on the Republican party. And shame on Donald Trump!”
To review: The first stage of grief came with a no-advance-warning,
downbeat message at what should have been an upbeat moment. The second was the
out-of-touchness summed up by the idea that “shame” had any traction in
MAGA-world at all.
Let me emphasize again that this is how the world
learned about the ‘deal.’ Including millions of
people who were disappointed, puzzled, dismayed, angry.
And including me. Now you give in? (I may
have yelled at the TV.) In my head, I yelled more of the same to myself—words
like capitulation and cave. My fingers were
angry enough that they typed out a bit of social media snark, saying it was
disappointing not to have had a closing statement from Sen. Neville
Chamberlain. I shouldn’t have let my fingers do that. But they couldn’t help
themselves.
3) ‘Eyes on the prize.’
The next day—this past Monday—as I looked through details of the deal, I
started writing in my head the kind of statement Democratic leaders could have given. The kind
of statement a leader would give after an apparent (or real) setback, to help
discouraged people feel that their cause was just, and that they were still
destined to succeed. It didn’t have to go as far as Winston Churchill’s “we shall
fight on the beaches… we shall never surrender” after the Dunkirk evacuation.
But something a little grander and more inspirational than “shame on them” and
“it didn’t work.”
But on Monday I realized that I didn’t have to bother with this project.
That is because a Democratic senator who was not part of the original Group of
Eight had already composed and delivered just the kind of message those shocked
by the “deal” needed to hear.
That was Sheldon Whitehouse, of Rhode Island. You can
see the three-minute video of his speech on Whitehouse’s Facebook site, here. He later discussed the speech
with Lawrence O’Donnell here.
I think his statement is good enough, and concise enough, to be worth
quoting (nearly) in full. Here is my transcription (via Otter.ai), with emphasis added to match his delivery, plus a few [annotations] by me. He
began:
I know that a lot of
people are feeling some strong feelings today. Feelings of frustration.
Even betrayal. [Explicitly addressing, as King, Hassan, and others did not, the
surprise nature of this news.]
I have somewhat the
advantage, from being in the Senate, of being a couple of days ahead of
everybody seeing this was going to happen. So I’ve had a bit more time to process it than people who
discovered it yesterday. [“Process” an artful way to say that this will be
difficult news for many people. And look carefully at this next paragraph.]
And while I think
everybody is entitled to their feelings on this, and I don’t
want to derogate those in any way, we need to remember the battle that
we’re in. And that every ounce of energy that we put into
fighting with each other, fighting with other Democrats, is energy that
is lost to the fight to defend our country, from Trump and MAGA. [As
delivered, this paragraph has an important point of tone: Nothing dismissive or
condescending in his reference to hurt “feelings. And an important point of
substance: We can disagree later, but we need to stand together now. Join, or
die, as Benjamin Franklin might have put it. The zero-sum emphasis of every ounce
of energy is a usefully clear, vivid way of making the point.]
Two things
that are coming up that are really important.
One is that in December,
there will be a vote on extending the Affordable Care credits that we fought
for. That gives us from now until then, weeks to hammer the
Republicans so hard that we actually get
a good Affordable Care credits bill. Not because we trust them. [Contrast
“Shame on them!”] Not because they want to get it done.
But because in those weeks, we have continued to ramp up the pressure on them,
to where they have no choice. [On substance, this is the answer to “Why did you
give up on Obamacare?” He is saying, the real fight has just begun.]
If, instead of doing that in
those weeks, we’re fighting with each other, we’ve missed an
opportunity for a big win for people we care about who receive Affordable Care
credits. [‘Join, or die,’ in modern form once more. He followed by some budget
detail I’m skipping.]…
So really, the sum of my
message is, whatever your feelings are, I validate
them. Great. Feel that way. [You can imagine these preceding four words—“Great.
Feel that way”—being delivered as a put-down. That’s not how they came across.]
But we’ve got
a battle on our hands. [Back to the main point.] It’s a battle whose real game
day is November a year from now, when we have the chance to throw speaker
Johnson out of the Speaker’s office, and put the Senate under Democratic
control, and put real obstacles in the way of Trump’s corruption and
misconduct.
That is the prize on
which we must keep our eyes.¹
Whatever we may feel, strategy to get
that done I think is now our highest obligation.
United, and fierce, we can do that.
[“Fierce” is an unexpected word here—and therefore all the more striking as
a mot juste.]
This is the way you talk when you’re asking people to keep standing up.
And it is the most effective sort of “eyes on the prize” rhetoric:
Acknowledging doubts, concerns, misgivings, “feelings.” But saying: We can do
this. And we must.
4) The attention economy.
In today’s world of media and politics, attention is quicksilver. Seven
days ago, it seemed as if the Shutdown Showdown might have lasting political
effect.
And what has happened since then?...
