And if they’d got a commitment for the House to vote on the Senate’s DACA bill, I’d feel differently.
What exactly is the Democratic messaging when they block the next spending bill, with DACA legislation being separately voted on?
The DREAMer hill seems like a really silly one for the GOP to die on, too. Why are they fighting so hard for this? You have kids who were 2-10 yrs old (or whatever), raised in this country. A lot of them speak only English and never have known their origin country. You’re going to die on a hill of whether it’s the right thing to do to send them back to that country, where many of them have nothing at all? It makes no sense at all, even for the GOP. They’d be better off targeting people who came here illegally as adults.
That’s the point! It’s a hill that the GOP will die on, because they will either really alienate their base, or really alienate moderate Republicans and everyone else.
“Trump said he loves the DREAMERs, the American people overwhelmingly want to help them. Yet the House won’t act. All we want is an up-or-down DACA vote in the House. Paul Ryan could end the shutdown today if he wanted.”
The median age at which they arrived in the United States is six years old. For federal crimes in the US, the minimum age for criminal responsibility is eleven. They did not commit a crime.
Their parents did. But we don’t generally punish children for their parents’ criminal acts.
Enthusiasm is highest in the suburbs, and a shutdown would also ramp up Rep enthusiasm, which is bad.
Suburbanites don’t like shutdowns, they want DACA but not at that price.
The reality is that voting to end the shutdown is the smart move for Dems at this point.
They don’t control the government. They can’t FORCE things to go how they want. All they can do at this point is get some compromises. The only way they can force anything, is by being willing to just blow everything up, and say “The government will stay shut down forever.”
That’s not a tenable position for the Democrats (or really, any reasonable person). Especially not for them, because they don’t hate the government. They support government programs. Having all the government programs shut down is, inherently, antithetical to their position.
They shut the government down briefly, and that alone is a non trivial act. They’ve forced some concessions, and got part of what they wanted, which is that this is going to be revisited again in a few weeks.
And if it doesn’t go through? Then they can say, “Hey, if you want these things, you guys NEED TO ELECT MORE DEMOCRATS.” This shit shouldn’t depress voters, it should motivate them. If you don’t want the GOP running the show, then you need to actually make it so they don’t control the entire fucking government.
The folks who are suggesting that the Democrats should have just broken everything, forever, until the GOP caved are being absurd and childish. Why would the GOP cave? Because they… what? Like the government services more than the Democrats? Derp. No.
The Democrats made a stand, and got some small concessions. There are things they want that are in this CR. And it’s just a CR. It’s not a real budget. The fight ain’t over.
This was the correct move.
…in exchange for the promise…
So naive.
OTOH, they control 0 branches of government, so better luck next time.
With Chip reauthorization for 6 years, and only a two week extension, this seems like a win for democrats to me. Even though gop probably had every intention of supporting chip, they no longer have that card to play. In return, the funding lasts until after the state of the union.
The other thing the democrats get here, is leverage going into the next fight in a few weeks.
Because they are being reasonable here. They are playing ball.
If in a few weeks the GOP refuses to budge on any of this stuff, again? The Democrats can pretty much say, “Hey guys, we already gave you a pass once. This time, we’re gonna do it right, or not at all.”
That’s as good a position as they can hope for right now.
3 weeks is good, because that’ll force another vote prior to the DACA deadline. I agree that this is likely the best that the dems can do at the moment. It gives three weeks to pound the GOP on DACA in the press and hopefully get it passed prior to the next need for a CR.
Of course, we are all assuming that the president will even sign this thing.
I have almost unlimited faith in politicians’ ability to spin anything (especially the national GOP) - but even I am having a hard time imagining how the WH could spin a veto of a bipartisan CR as “the Democrats fault”.
They have already done exactly that in the past week, have they not? (Not a veto per se, but a flat rejection of a bipartisan proposal)
I’m just glad all the Dreamers will be able to see the Democrats waving from their moral ground as they get deported :P
(For what it’s worth, I’ll begrudgingly acknowledge that moving things along was probably the right long term play here, even though it’s really fucking disgusting politics the Democrats are agreeing to play. End of the day, they’re still in the mud with the Republicans because the mud is 40 feet deep)
Not an actual veto, no.
Yeah, corrected
Best case for the Democrats is if either the House or President refuse to go with it. Then the Democrats win the PR battle conclusively.
Trump himself was waffling for a couple days. It was his staff who did the rejection initially IIRC, unbeknownst to him.
It’s literally all they can do… And this lets them force the fight, FOR REAL, in 3 weeks.
At that point, if the GOP wants to deport the DACA kids, then they are going to have to straight up vote to do so. No more of this bullshit, “Hey, we totally love the Dreamers but, reasons and stuff, and mumbles…”
Folks need to recognize, that the Democrats can’t call the shots. If the GOP is really committed to deporting the DACA folks? Guess what? That’s gonna fucking happen. Full stop. The end.
What the Dems can do, is force the GOP to do so in the most overt way possible.
If folks wanted to save the DACA folks, they should have elected Clinton. And if they want to prevent this stuff from happening in the future, they need to flip the house in November. You can’t blame the Democrats for not winning with the garbage hand they’ve been dealt by voters.