many people involved said before they shithole comment they had a deal

something else will need to become a hot topic though to get back to a deal

1/22/2018 2:49:59 PM

good lord the Democrats are straight weak and control zero of the conversation

1/22/2018 3:38:12 PM

The only thing I can hope is that this helps dems in the midterms. A long shutdown probably rallies republicans to the polls. Now this whole thing is a nonissue in the fall and the republicans obvious “betrayal” when they don’t deal will rally dems. Immigration is a losing issue anyway for dems as the minority party, it’s too easy of an issue for Rs to win the messaging on by just “confusing” legal and illegal immigration. College educated folks will “get it” but there’s a lot of voters that buyin to the talking points.

1/22/2018 4:57:32 PM

Dems up for re-election in 2018 caved because polls over the weekend showed the majority of Americans didn't support the shutdown and placed blame correctly on the democrats. as much as the media tried to spin this onto Trump, polling showed a different story.

1/22/2018 5:54:08 PM

My suspicion is that Schumer & Co. have had the following thoughts in mind:

1) It will be embarrassing for the President to hit the anniversary of his inauguration in a shutdown. True, as far as it goes, though I don't think it goes very far with Trump's base of quasi-literate bipedal swine-people.
2) At the same time, Senators from red states can't afford to make a stand on this very long.
3) If you set McConnell up with a promise like this, then you can play any failure to move forward on DACA as bad faith on the part of Republicans - even if Turtle Boy Mitch is true to his word and it's Trump or his battered spouse Paul Ryan who actually throws a wrench in the works.

If you take those three points as true, then this was the way to swing it - keep the shutdown going just long enough to ruin Trump's weekend and bleed into the work week to really scare everybody, then you help cover your red state senators and wait for McConnell to either give you what you want or reveal himself to be a liar in even more spectacular fashion than he usually does.

My main objection here is that I don't think the Democrats are good enough at messaging to make (3) matter, but otherwise I'll tentatively give Schumer & Co. the benefit of the doubt - particularly because the alternative is too depressing, this being that all the red state folks turned coward at once.

It's also true that this wasn't a particularly good hill to die on. This shutdown is not going to be a major issue by midterm voting time. There will be 400,000 scandals/tweets/disasters between now and then. Remember Scaramucci? I don't. I had to look up his name just now.

1/22/2018 6:02:22 PM

I think this was a huge failure for the democratic party. Optics matter, messaging matters, and the democrats managed to give the president a win while deflating their energized base and make it look like they were to blame for the pointless shutdown.

1/22/2018 6:23:45 PM

Out of curiosity, what messaging strategy do you think would have been effective? Unfortunately, "Trump did this" and "We did this for DREAMers" aren't compatible messages. I think you people are overvaluing the hand Democrats had to play here. Sure, DACA is popular across the political spectrum, but shutting down the government for DACA is not. Polling showed this.

Also, the other thing to remember is there actually is no "liberal media". Everyone from MSNBC to NYT were displaying chyrons and publishing articles either blaming Democrats or at best both-sidesing. It just wasn't possible to win the war in this manner.

[Edited on January 22, 2018 at 7:46 PM. Reason : .]

1/22/2018 7:40:40 PM

This is what I'm thinking. For 2.5 weeks we have DACA protestors being dragged out of the capitol. Every media outlet runs articles about the plight of some of these people, literally soldier's families could be deported, that shit writes itself. Every time a reporter catches part of the Klan caucus in the halls of congress they ask "where is your bill, where are negotiations?" They won't have an answer because most of them aren't actually interested in helping dreamers in any way. In general, "immigration hardliners" seem to suffer from a lack of ideas and typically just depend on thinly disguised racism anyway. With any luck even Trump, god of the temporary shiny object distraction, might not be able to move the news cycle (a long shot, but we'll see). The cherry on top will be when some of these asshats get frustrated and knee jerk into racist dog whistles, it's all they know.

When the GOP isn't able to produce anything that'll pass both houses of congress, or even if they just flatly ignore the issue and go about their other priorities, Dems can claim they at least tried. They bent over in order to keep the government open. They can take the position of being the adults in the room, a position a LOT of people are yearning for right now. Dems can then attempt to add DACA as an amendment to every bill from now until November 2018, while in the meantime ICE is demanding to see people's papers on the bus and ambushing dreamers at their jobs, or school, or emergency room, etc.

That's how I'd play it.

1/22/2018 7:59:45 PM

Yeah, I'm really curious what folks were expecting in the way of realistic outcomes.

The pile of campaign ad fodder will be nice.

[Edited on January 22, 2018 at 8:14 PM. Reason : GGG]

1/22/2018 8:12:49 PM

Quote :

"Out of curiosity, what messaging strategy do you think would have been effective? "

Honestly I think any time not using Republican words from the last shutdown against them - especially Trump's "The President is responsible" talk - was wasted time. They should have been hammering that home every chance they got. There should have been ads about it. You can't sustain that for too long, but I think that even int he short run it might have frightened Republicans into a better deal. It certainly had more potential than...whatever the actual plan was.

Quote :

"Everyone from MSNBC to NYT were displaying chyrons and publishing articles either blaming Democrats or at best both-sidesing."

CNN, at least, was all but saying "This is the Republicans' fault." And watching Anderson try to spin this debacle in the Dem's favor tonight was almost pathetic.

1/22/2018 9:16:35 PM

Oh man, I'm so glad the shutdown is over. I don't know how I survived the last few days...

1/22/2018 10:01:58 PM

What was the point of going through with the shutdown if you were just going to budge immediately?

What's the point of constantly being the "adult in the room" when you constantly budge to the big wet baby at every turn?

How can you possibly expect and demand the latino vote when you just demonstrated to every hispanic voter that you are not willing to go to bat for them? I thought the entirety of the Democratic strategy going forward was to chase "changing demographics" in key states like North Carolina or Virginia where there is a rising latino population?

How can you possibly expect them to show up to the polls when you just demonstrated that you are not willing to fight for them?

1/22/2018 10:09:04 PM

Quote :

"The future of the party will be places like North Carolina, which is demographically very similar to Virginia, and southern states with growing hispanic populations."

--Shrike, 11/8/2017

Quote :

"The Democrats were never going to get DACA"

Shrike, 1/22/2018




In less than two months time, Shrike went from confidently declaring that changing demographics and rising hispanic populations would assure democrats future electoral wins, to brushing off issues important to hispanic populations as not important.


With friends like these

1/22/2018 10:26:45 PM

This is why the democratic party is a joke. No backbone whatsoever. Stand for nothing. Turdferguson's post capture their entire strategy.

Quote :

". Sure, DACA is popular across the political spectrum, but shutting down the government for DACA is not. Polling showed this."

How about stand for something instead of worrying about how everything will play in the polls?

Quote :

"What was the point of going through with the shutdown if you were just going to budge immediately? What's the point of constantly being the "adult in the room" when you constantly budge to the big wet baby at every turn?"

being re-elected. you have to pretend to have progressive idealss just enough but not too much.

Quote :

"How can you possibly expect them to show up to the polls when you just demonstrated that you are not willing to fight for them?"

You don't have to do anything for them if your entire platform is that you won't actively do anything against them and the other side will.

Progressive values will never be realized until the democratic party is destroyed.

[Edited on January 23, 2018 at 12:10 AM. Reason : trump wins]

1/23/2018 12:09:19 AM

Quote :

"Out of curiosity, what messaging strategy do you think would have been effective? "

Dems write a funding bill restoring DACA, CHIP, and ACA cost sharing reduction payments (which actually save the gov money), get all 49 to sign on, ask for 11 more GOPers to sign on.

When/if they reject, beat them over the head with it, since these are all items that have overwhelming public support, encourage people to write their GOP congresspeople.

[Edited on January 23, 2018 at 1:07 AM. Reason : ]

1/23/2018 1:07:32 AM