Unequal To The Moment

 The Republican strategy for the shutdown was clear from the first week: make Americans miserable. The efficacy of this strategy was borne out last Tuesday, as voters rewarded Democrats with victory after victory. Republicans responded by ramping up the pain on the American public. The specter of snarled air travel for Thanksgiving loomed alongside the growing hunger for many Americans. 

It was, in fact, very painful.  I get that.

However, the Traitorous Eight who capitulated last night - and it was very much a capitulation - have made sure that the suffering that did happen was for nothing. What seems to have gripped their (mostly old) brains is the idea that the Senate Club will insure that the deal will be honored and vulnerable Republicans will have to take a vote on ACA subsidies at some point in the future.

This misunderstands the politics of 2025. First, let's assume that Thune actually does call a vote on ACA subsidies. Maybe it does pass, but I have my doubts. Does anyone think Mike Johnson will even allow that Senate bill to come to a vote in the House?

What's more, this moment is a fight with emerging dictatorship. If you can't see that, I have no idea what blinders you are wearing. Autocrats are bullies, by definition. Bullies thrive on weakness. What the Traitorous Eight have demonstrated to Trump and his ghouls is that bullying, starving and immiserating the American people is a sound strategy. This capitulation largely empowers Trump at precisely the moment that Democrats were handed a victory in the off year elections.

It's a fascinating rogue's roll of hacks, too. There are Very Sensible Centrists in King, Shaheen and Hassan, then you have both Senators from Nevada for some reason. You have Senator Shrek who's become the new Sinema -  a worthless toady of the worst impulses. Tim Kaine I guess wanted to protect his constituents who are Federal workers, but still...Finally there is Dick Durbin who took whatever reputation he may have clung to and lit it on fire and pissed on the ashes. He should resign and let Pritzer select his replacement.

Needless to say, in the overheated moment, people are blaming the entire Democratic Party for this and that's both unfair, unfortunate and unsurprising. Durbin's participation suggests at least some tacit approval from Schumer, even he personally voted against it. They needed eight votes and got eight votes, and it's not clear that Schumer really whipped against it.

A great example of where this is heading is that Mike Lee, Rick Scott and Ron Johnson - three of the absolute worst in that awful chamber - were not going to vote for the measure until Trump told them to. Not EVERY Republican  Senator is completely supine to Trump - Rand Paul is a no on the CR - but enough are that even if Democrats get a vote to extend the ACA subsidies and EVEN IF IT PASSES, it's folly to expect Trump to follow it, if he feels it manifests weakness.

I think it was Josh Marshall who coined the term Senate Brain to describe a certain mindset held by Senators that theirs was a cozy club of like minded public servants who only had a few partisan differences, but the institution was all that mattered in the end. Certainly in the background of this fight was Trump's threat to end the filibuster, which would have been a positive development in the long term health of democracy in this country, even if it would have ended the shutdown without getting ACA back.

Josh Marshall suggests that this isn't the end of the world. Of course it isn't, and he does have a point that the CR only goes through January; that this has focused attention on the ACA subsidies and who is killing them. What he also notes is that we need a new Democratic Party in the Congress. We can't be the fucking doormats that we have been in the past. Some - like Chris Murphy - get that. These mealy mouthed losers - and that is the name for those who lose - don't get that. If this pushes us further down the road to a Senate caucus without people like Dick Durbin or Shrek, then so much the better. 

I'm a Big Tent Guy, and I think heterodoxy is important. Healthcare, though, is not one part of the Democratic Party's beliefs; it's the central tentpole. That's why Republicans want to kill it. If you can't understand what you're fighting for or what the stakes are, you have no purpose being in Congress in 2025.