How (and when) will the Government Shutdown end?

I started this thread to talk about political strategy, which side has the upper hand and how long it will take for one side to back down. These talks about who is right are not relevant to this.

1. Yes, Trump made a campaign promise about the wall. This does (I suppose) give him some credibility. I don't think this gives him much political capital especially considering that he promised that Mexico would pay.

2. The Democrats have the simpler narrative; Trump is shutting down the government to get his Wall. The Democrats say... let's separate the issue of the wall from our need to reopen the government. The Republican message... the Democrats shutting down the government by not going along with the Trump plan... is a little more difficult to sell to nonbiased Americans.

3. Public opinion is important. There is already a battle for public opinion, I get the feeling that most Americans don't care yet. I am predicting that this will hurt Trump and that most people will be (more) against his position. Time will tell if I am correct.

4. I don't think there is much political pressure on the Democrats. Most Americans agree with them about the wall. Most Democrats are from districts that don't want the wall. There is very little political cost to Pelosi, and no Democrats who are questioning her position. There are already Republicans making uncomfortable noises about supporting Trump's wall. Pelosi is passing legislation to open the government.

5. I think there will be increasing pressure on the Republicans. Trump is a Republican and already unpopular. The Republican brand is now Trump... something that many Republicans are privately uncomforatable.

I think a deal... a few billion for "border security" in exchange for something like the Dream Act is possible.

I think you will see increasing pressure to compromise coming from the Republican mainstream.

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@maxdancona,

I have been quite clear of my lack enthusiasm for Pelosi as Speaker.

In this one circumstance... standing up to Trump with strength and confidence... I have to admit that Pelosi is a damn good politician.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

3. Public opinion is important. There is already a battle for public opinion, I get the feeling that most Americans don't care yet. I am predicting that this will hurt Trump and that most people will be (more) against his position. Time will tell if I am correct.

4. I don't think there is much political pressure on the Democrats. Most Americans agree with them about the wall. Most Democrats are from districts that don't want the wall. There is very little political cost to Pelosi, and no Democrats who are questioning her position. There are already Republicans making uncomfortable noises about supporting Trump's wall. Pelosi is passing legislation to open the government.

5. I think there will be increasing pressure on the Republicans. Trump is a Republican and already unpopular. The Republican brand is now Trump... something that many Republicans are privately uncomforatable.

I think a deal... a few billion for "border security" in exchange for something like the Dream Act is possible.

I think you will see increasing pressure to compromise coming from the Republican mainstream.

I think the Democrats are over-confident because of their recent gains in House seats. They are optimists so they want to believe it is a sign of rising Democrat popularity, when it is more than likely just a swing toward balance due to the GOP getting several Supreme Court appointments recently.

The bigger picture is that the public wants to see factionalism broken down. The Democrats don't want to make compromises except insofar they make demands so far left that they have left themselves room to compromise within their tolerances. They simply refuse to understand the people who support Trump and other republican ideology generally, which they spin away by filtering it through their lenses and demonizing it as racism, sexism, xenophobia, hate of the poor, etc. They do this because they think they can win more politically by accusing others of being enemies of the oppressed than by listening to and understanding those with different thinking than theirs.

The main reason they refuse to understand different thinking is that it conflicts with their fundamentally socialist faith that the government is an instrument for economic control and that the means to solve economic problems is to reduce the gap between the rich and poor. Anything that doesn't support this view and thus advocate more economic stimulus and spending is just ignored. Money is their only goal; getting it moving and reducing barriers to everyone in the world milking it from the US economy.

It is understandable that they want better lives for poor people and people globally, but they need to give consideration to other views than that money and spending are the only way to make life better. There are so many reforms that would cost little and even reduce economic burden on vulnerable people, as well as keeping people's savings secure against inflation, which they don't even consider because it doesn't fit the big picture of global socialism and its need to maintain liberalism to effectuate a global economy that is more about financial (re)distribution than about tangible reforms in the way people live and work.

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There were stories today about hundreds of TSA agents calling in sick (rather than coming to work without pay). If this continues, we have another pain point that directly hurts the public and the economy.

On January 29th the president gives the State of the Union speech. If it isn't over then, he is going have trouble explaining his accomplishments.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

There were stories today about hundreds of TSA agents calling in sick (rather than coming to work without pay). If this continues, we have another pain point that directly hurts the public and the economy.

On January 29th the president gives the State of the Union speech. If it isn't over then, he is going have trouble explaining his accomplishments.

I think the left just likes the game of seeing what it takes to forcing the president into subjugation to their will.

If they want him to end the shutdown, rather than reaching out to him they use tactics like trashing national parks and TSA strikes.

They must be feeling around for what pain points they can use to control him. They will only want to impeach him until they find a way to control him.

They are simply not for democracy. They are for manipulating and controlling the people they can, and pushing aside people they can't.

Democracy is about working together, not coercion and domination; but socialists don't understand that. All they understand is authoritarian power.

As such, it really surprises me they aren't all on board for the wall. What more authoritarian form of power is there than a wall, after all?

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@livinglava,

You are being silly again LivingLava. It is the job of the Congress to pass funding legislation. It is the job of the Congress to decide to fund, or not to fund, the wall. To say that Congress is "subjugating" Trump by choosing not to fund the wall he wants is sillier than most of the silly things you post here.

Think about how foolish you argument is; that Congress is forcing Trump to not build the wall he wants (and that most Americans don't want) by declining to give him taxpayer money.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You are being silly again LivingLava. It is the job of the Congress to pass funding legislation. It is the job of the Congress to decide to fund, or not to fund, the wall. To say that Congress is "subjugating" Trump by choosing not to fund the wall he wants is sillier than most of the silly things you post here.

Think about how foolish you argument is; that Congress is forcing Trump to not build the wall he wants (and that most Americans don't want) by declining to give him taxpayer money.

You misunderstand what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that overall the interest the anti-Trump socialists have is to play with individuals and find their pain points; things that will cause them to give in to social pressures.

So they hate Trump because he is very independent and strong-willed. They want people to all be subjugated to collective pressures so they can be used as cogs in social systems.

It's not just about Trump, but about his base. They are probing to see what can trigger them to seek an end to the shutdown. It's the same thing they started doing at the beginning of the trade war, i.e. looking for places to create pain within the electorate of key people behind the policy. It's like looking to see which members of a family can be tortured to cause the head of household to give in to demands.

It's basically extortion logic: In short, they don't want to reach agreements through civil discussion but by applying pressure until their opponents give in. It's very anti-democratic, but as usual anything they can get away with within the institutions of structured democracy, they consider fair game.

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@livinglava,

Let's forget about party or about personality and just ask the question in a generic way.

One person is demanding $5.6 billion of taxpayer money for a project he wants and that most American taxpayers don't want. A group of other people who are democratically elected to control the budget say "No", there isn't taxpayer support and we don't think this is a good idea.

This has to do with our democratic process of legislation. It has nothing to do with who is president.

Who is extorting who in this situation?

This is what I mean by "moral high ground". Whether we should fund the wall or not is a legislative question that should be resolved in the legislature using normal legislative processes. It should not be handled by shutting down the government. The president is not a king... if Congress doesn't go along with what he wants, sorry. That's how democracy works.

The Democrats are going to say "we should open the government, end this shutdown, and deal with the question of funding for the wall in the legislature". And the Democrats are exactly right (unless you believe that the president's will should overrule the legislative process).

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

Let's forget about party or about personality and just ask the question in a generic way.

One person is demanding $5.6 billion of taxpayer money for a project he wants and that most American taxpayers don't want. A group of other people who are democratically elected to control the budget say "No", there isn't taxpayer support and we don't think this is a good idea.

This has to do with our democratic process of legislation. It has nothing to do with who is president.

Who is extorting whom in this situation? This is what I mean by "moral high ground". Whether we should fund the wall or not is a legislative question that should be resolved in the legislature using normal legislative processes. It should not be handled by shutting down the government. The president is not a king... if Congress doesn't go along with what he wants, sorry. That's how democracy works.

I listened to Sarah Sanders explain that the wall is a need not a want. She said they were hopeful that Pelosi and the Democrats would come to work constructively with the president to get things done. Instead, they are fighting against him as usual, and I have now read statements from people outside of government that say they elected them to do exactly that.

If they elected these anti-Trump people to get more obstruction, that's what they're getting with this shutdown. Now you're complaining that he is obstructing them, but they didn't come into the legislature with any intent besides factional warfare, obstruction, and subjugation of the executive branch.

Let me ask you this: if the president of a democratic republic perceives a will to subjugate him or her instead of respecting the independence of the office and its crucial role in maintaining checks and balances of multi-branch government, what should he or she do to address the abuses of power?

To me, no one knows what Trump would do if the legislature changed their attitude toward him instead of the hostile approach they take. He might be willing to work with people who are trying in good faith to work with him, but the fact that they obstruct legitimate multi-branch government practically requires him to resist their pressures to re-open government in bad faith.

It might be a service to democracy and freedom that he's keeping the government shutdown as much as possible and as long as possible until good faith respect for democracy is restored.

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@livinglava,

1. The question on whether the wall is needed or not is something that should be decided in Congress, not dictated by the president. You are avoiding the fact that most Americans don't agree with the president about the wall he is asking them to pay for.

2. What exactly do you feel Congress is forcing Trump to do?

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

1. The question on whether the wall is needed or not is something that should be decided in Congress, not dictated by the president. You are avoiding the fact that most Americans don't agree with the president about the wall he is asking them to pay for.

Sarah Sanders is framing it as a security issue and saying the president's job is to maintain security.

Quote:

2. What exactly do you feel Congress is forcing Trump to do?

I think they have been attacking him and his administration in every way possible to try to make him/them more malleable to social pressures, as they are.

Haven't you noticed how this culture of ridicule works? People get attacked and attacked until they stop fighting. It's a collectivism of rendering people docile to social pressures.

Respect for independence is dwindling, if it was even ever there at all for some people.

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Maybe if congress would declare some kind of war, that would satisfy Trump, even if the wall wasn't specifically part of the package. E.g. maybe they could declare a war on drug and human trafficking and keep the wall as part of a possible broad spectrum toolbox to solve the problem, and that would give him something to manage that would fulfill his promise to his supporters.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

not dictated by the president

National security is dictated by the president.

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You are painting Trump as a victim rather than as a victor. And in that we agree. The (mean, nasty) Democrats have the upper hand and poor Trump has painted himself into a corner. Whether or not you agree that the Democrats are morally right, it seem clear to me that they are holding the high cards. They have the simpler narrative and they have the support of the majority of Americans. There is far more growing pressure on the Republicans than there is on the Democrats.

There is a chance that the Democrats will get a good deal on the Dream Act in exchange for a few billion dollars.

I think it is more likely that the Republicans force Trump to back down with some face-saving trick so he can declare victory even though he doesn't get money for his wall.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

Republicans force Trump to back down

Good luck with that. He will call them out and they will not be re-elected in 2020.

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@coldjoint,

We can only hope!

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

We can only hope!

Hope that Trump Republicans will challenge them in primaries, win and then win in 2020.

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@maxdancona,

maxdancona wrote:

You are painting Trump as a victim rather than as a victor. And in that we agree. The (mean, nasty) Democrats have the upper hand and poor Trump has painted himself into a corner. Whether or not you agree that the Democrats are morally right, it seem clear to me that they are holding the high cards. They have the simpler narrative and they have the support of the majority of Americans. There is far more growing pressure on the Republicans than there is on the Democrats.

The Democrat narrative adds up to empty identity politics in the service of socialist budget greasing. They are basically just trying to solicit votes from people who might identify with these new women they've recruited to sell their socialist spending to the voters.

So far these are the marketing strategies for the new Democratic house I've seen in the news:
1) Ocasio-Cortez can dance and wear bright red and all white. Of course these things are being framed as causing her to be targeted for critique so that they can paint her as a rebel who doesn't care about critique and just keeps dancing. This is supposed to appeal to a certain demographic of over 18 people who can vote but probably care more about dancing and image than politics . . . and of course money, but spreading money around is the only thing Democrats can imagine as their political substance.

2) Llaib can swear like a sailor. She is flaunting this amazing talent to prove to people that she won't be oppressed by expectations of femininity. They will not notice she is oppressed by an unbreakable will to impress leftist/feminist critics at the expense of her ability to think independently.

3) Pelosi has been cited by her daughter as being able to "cut your head off without you know you're bleeding." Don't let the graphically violent imagery of this metaphor offend or charm you too much because it's just another identity-marketing ploy designed to appeal to the latest feminist cultural strategy to portray women as unbound by constraints of polite society. Again, as with the other two above, this cultural strategy is exactly the aspect of polite society they're bound to, but because polite society wants them to appear defiant to hide their submission, they will submit in this seemingly contradictory way instead . . . and celebrate the contradictions of being a post-post-post-post modern woman in the timelessly self-aggrandizing style of (post)modern feminism.

All this is just marketing for global socialism to get a stronger grip on the US government in order to hone it as a cog in their global social-capitalist machinery. They don't care about democracy or representing anyone's views and ideas except those who fit into their authorized program. They won't engage in any constructive or innovative discussion across lines of difference throughout the political spectrum. All they will do is manipulate to get more socialists into key positions to end the tariffs, soften the border again for traffickers, and then let the global economy do what it does to move money around, control population with abortion and drug addiction, and undermine independence of thought and economic productivity as much as they can.

If they are able to win support while doing all this, they are truly marketing scam geniuses.

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Is Trump going off the rails?

He is ranting about declaring a "National Emergency".... I don't think he is being very smart politically.

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@maxdancona,

Quote:

"National Emergency".

Sovereignty. It does not look like you or the Democrats care about it. It is how a country stays a country. Terrorists and M13 are getting in. Americans are dying. That makes it an emergency.

1 Reply

How (and when) will the Government Shutdown end?

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