2766

Haha. Democrats want a lot of things. Some more realistic than others.

2767

How do you know? Because that’s not how people saw it just a couple of weeks ago.

2768

Contracting ebola, actually. You gotta keep up, man.

2769

Maybe. I dont want Trump to get a dime of our money for his racism. The fact that this is less than he wants is besides the point. Every dollar given to him increases suffering on refugees not to mention gives more funds the institutionally corrupt ICE.

The fact that Republicans also agreed to this deal makes it immediately bad. I want NO cooperation with these fascists. Zero. Pelosi’s job is to resist Republicans attacks on the fabric of the USA, not work with them.

2770

Sometimes, I feel like I’ve missed something. Democrats were, for the most part actually okay with border barriers. They’ve funded fences, berms, levees, so-called “virtual walls” and even regular old walls. If the new Democrat position is “no border barriers at all from now on,” then Trump’s bullshit is going to win. People don’t want a bajillion dollars spent on Trump’s dumb WALL, but they also don’t want current barriers de-funded and falling into disrepair.

2771

The last shutdown fell on the president and the Republicans for the most part. They took a pretty big hit for that. It’s a gamble that would happen again.

The Democrats are not in this for the short-haul. They need to look at 2020. Right now, they can say, they, the other guys, caused a government shutdown, and the narrative against that is weak if existent at all. It makes zero sense to sacrifice the long haul for a shot meaningless win. You want better border policies down south, get Democrats in the other two branches.

2772

I totally disagree. Ideally, this deal would make both sides very happy.

2773

Political intuition? Taking the measure of the wind?

Trump made something like 25% of his State of the Union on border security. Republicans cannot back out of border security.

I also don’t think that if you polled most Democratic voters - and I could be wrong, of course - that if the option is A) shut down the government, forever or B) Trump gets a partially funded wall, anywhere close to a majority would choose A.

The problem with a government shutdown as leverage is that you have to be willing to go all the way. Is it worth breaking up the country to stop the wall? Defunding the military, stopping millions of tax payers their refunds (or slow them considerably?) ect? Over 1 or 5 or 15 billion?

Pelosi can just see where that goes without having to get there. It seems here many others can’t.

2774

Keeping in mind partially funded, it’s not even that; it’s laughably under the dollar amount he wanted to even call it partially funded. Most of those funds are going to the wall that’s already there.

2775

I agree with this. The number of people who actually favor the open border idea is limited to the far left. No candidate is going to run in the general election on the platform of opening up the border, it would be suicide.

I saw the start of Shephard Smith’s show on Fox today and he literally called Trump a liar three times for things he said during his short presser today.

I think even most democrats want some kind of border security. They don’t want open borders. They also don’t favor a stupid steel wall, no matter how good it looks.

2776

Shutting down the government for a week would cost more than what they’re giving him for border security.

2777

Because their constituents suffer?

2778

The options are the same as before. A budget resolution with no wall funding, or a budget resolution with wall funding. Last time, the public thought that Trump should accept the resolution without wall funding. It’s possible some people might change their mind when they hear Trump only wants $1 billion this time, but I suspect not many would.

Both sides agree the existing wall should be maintained. The question is whether more wall should be built.

Those are also Trump’s constituents.

Anyway, politics is about trade-offs. Some people will suffer if the highest marginal rate is raised to 70%, but the benefits outweigh the costs. If you are unable to cause anyone to suffer, then you don’t belong in politics.

2779

He doesn’t care if they suffer, and Dems do care. They’re going to take any reasonable budget deal that isn’t a wall funding boondoggle. They always were.

2780

So they were always going to cave in their defense of the progressive agenda, provided they didn’t have to give up too much.

You know, I keep hearing about how Democrats are in no position to extract meaningful concessions, since they only control the House. But when Republicans were in a similar position, they were able to advance their own goals much more effectively. Too bad their goals are shit, because I would like to have their expertise on our side.

2781

I sure as heck would like to see all those billions the republicans throw around like pennies on street turned to medical research or housing for the poor. You know, stuff we need that benefits our society. As opposed to a f*cking wall.

2782

Forgive me, but this is a silly argument. Certainly we don’t expect that Dems will e.g. execute children to defend the progressive agenda. There will be some line that to cross will do more harm than good.

2783

Give some examples of their legislative success when they only held the house.

2784

Give me some, too.

2785

I expected them to advance their agenda by extracting meaningful concessions from their opponents, exactly the same as Minority Leader McConnell and Speaker Boehner did.