Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, January 4, 2019

Out Of The Impasse

Quite a few people are weighing in on the politics of the wall.  This has always been easier than covering actual policy, because it's primarily "this is my opinion and why I think I'm right" rather than digging into things like how much the wall will cost in real terms, the engineering hurdles, the lost opportunities to solve other problems.  Horse race journalism is easy, especially when you are talking about a hypothetical future horse race.

Anyway, the shutdown can't continue forever. How do we get out of this?

Last year (or was it 2017?) there was a package deal that would've given wall funding in return for a DREAM Act.  Trump vetoed it, because of Stephen Miller and Fox News, but it could be the only way to get the petulant baby-in-chief to sign something. 

Can Democrats negotiate that outcome with much of their base uninterested in giving Trump anything?  I doubt it.  It would probably be worth it as a political trade-off, but that's not where our politics are right now.

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