Trump wants to live in a world where the government does not function in any lawful sense and he can govern by executive order. He's already suspending constitutional amendments by EO, ignore congressional appropriations while Congress stands meekly by, and tried all manner of lawless actions while dancing on the line of violating judicial orders. Shutting down the government vastly increases his discretion about how the government works, and further defangs Congress from any pretense of oversight.
Say a judge orders federal marshals to enforce a judicial action he doesn't like while the government is shut down. He doesn't even have to fire them or order them to do something: he can just declare those specific marshals "nonessential" and tell them to go home.
This redux looks even more wise given the NBC poll that came out recently. It shows that not since 2004 do so many think the US *is* on the right track. And the Democratic Party is polling the most unpopularly since a long time.
Goes to show, most of American voters want what trump is giving them and only Democratic voters would hate it and their party for not doing what they want (but can’t do)
Am I really going to spend Saturday morning refuting a day-old post point by point? Sadly, yes. This post is that bad. Yglesias is not just wrong, his arguments are terrible. Worst post ever, and I've been reading him since Think Progress days.
1. & 2. Not thoughts. Table-setting.
3. Bold thesis, let's see if he can make a case.
4. to 6. Irrevelant history to the issue at hand. Self-indulgent.
7. "Senate Dems "don’t have the cards"? So long as the filibuster exists they have the cards.
8. Is the bank shot speculation in the last sentence plausible? (House Democrats could have it both ways — playing the hero to the base who got stabbed in the back by Schumer without dealing with the actual consequences of a shutdown") No. MY should had the self-control to press delete.
9. MY starts with a phony premise ("Shutting the government down to halt DOGE") and itemizes point about the phony premise. Why phony? a) No one sensible thought a shutdown would stop DOGE. b). Democrats would not be shutting down the government, the majority would be failing to pass their own CR (don't throw filibuster at me, filibuster exists at majority sufferance). c) The main point is Democrats can't be complicity in Repubublican criming.
Even under the phony premise the sub-points are terrible:
9a. The main problem with DOGE is that it is lawless. Noting that both the CR and a shutdown are bad for federal workers does not draw a distinction between the two. Why is badness A worse than badness B?
9b. Sloppy. Furloughs and lay-offs are not the same. At all. As in furloughs are explicitly temporary and lay-offs aren't. I just don't know why MY let this slop leave his keyboard.
9c. Really? Democrats refuse to vote for a bad Republican CR because criming against federal workers has to stop and the AFGE, after a few weeks, reverses their position? Federal workers want to go back to the good old days of DOGE wilding? If MY want to speculate so counter-intuitively maybe he should argue his point rather than simply assert.
9d. Say what? Impoundment is being challenged in court CR or no CR. MY writes as if it is clear the administration would obey a court order (it isn't) and as if this issue is about legislation telling the administration to stop criming. It isn't. (see below)
10. An argument for filibistering the CR
11. An argument for filibistering the CR
12. The base wants "some kind of act of Congress saying that Trump and Musk need to conduct the government differently."?? Really? The base knows such legislation will not pass with this congress! The base wants leaders who understand power and use the small scraps of leverage they have. The base wants leaders who will not cooperate with law-breaking. Opposing the Republicans is good politics, necessary to lowering Trump's popularity which in turn is necessary to stopping the madness. That is the game, failing to see that is failing to see what is happening.
13. Yes, we lost the White House and congress, and the Supreme Court was stolen. We get that! All the more reason not to squander what little leverage we have. I mean really, MY sees this as an argument against filibistering the CR? When you lose you roll over? That works in politics?
14. Self-indulgent. Support for Filibustering the CR came from all over the map. Josh Marshall is a lefty progressive? The Bulwark are lefty progressives? It looks to me like personal animus is warping MY's judgment, converting personal beefs into arguments.
15. Not a thought about whether the CR should be filibustered. Schoolmarmish.
16. The weakest of all 16 points? I think so! The filibuster is certainly not a boon if we won't use it! The filibuster is bad on net, but this is one of the times it is good. If you don't like the filibuster use it when you are in the minority. It makes the other side hate it. Trump doesn't like being frustrated, ruthlessly filibustering bad stuff could cause Trump to demand dumping it, we know senate Republicans are great at standing up to Trump. Let's review: If you like the filibuster now is the time to filibuster, and if you don't like it now is the time to filibuster. So what is MY's point here? More score-settling?
James Carville told Democrats to sit back and watch while the Republicans implode. Instead, the Republicans are following Carville’s strategy. And, it’s working.
Polling considerations aside, normalizing shutdowns by minority parties seems like a bad thing. If Democrats do a shutdown because the Dem base is outraged, Republicans will do a shutdown the next time the Rep base is outraged over something (which is all the time). You just need a single looney senator for a filibuster, and then the rest of the party will face the same pressure to vote against cloture that Democrats are facing now ("are you betraying your own base? when Democrats shut down the government the last time?"). That's just no way to run a country. Also the pain caused by it is very asymmetric, since Democrats generally want the government to do more and Republicans generally want the government to do less.
Can Democrats just vow to give DC statehood the next time they have a trifecta if Republicans start to fuck around with the DC budget? That seems like a much more appropriate response, and should also be more threatening to Republicans as it would permanently alter the balance of the Senate.
This was a cataclysmic failure by moderate Democrats years in the making, and it's going to result in the utter rejection of the entire concept of moderation. Moderate Democrats made sure the Filibuster survived the Biden administration, at calamitous cost to the country, only to fail to use it here. Already, this is an utterly discrediting thing.
But far worse is that Schumer had no plan. He was apparently caught flat-footed by the success of the R's in passing a bill, and had no ideas for how to follow it up. If he truly believed that filibustering was the wrong choice here, he should never have allowed his caucus to get to this point. Instead, he drummed up drama, made sure everyone was looking at him, and then fell on his ass in public.
As a standard bearer for the Moderates, you should also be furious at Schumer for his failure.
What happened to 'Just do popular things'? This one is NOT popular, at all.
These comments show that even Slow Borers have a tough time thinking through second and third order impacts when emotions are running high. Somewhere, Boehner is swirling his wine, chuckling and shaking his head. "They'll finally understand", he says.
Everyone is complaining but nobody is addressing what seems to be an underrated point to me, 9(b):
>Under the circumstances of an appropriations lapse, Trump and Musk can just furlough 100 percent of the federal workers they would like to lay off and declare whoever they don’t want to lay off “essential,” and they’ve already achieved their endgame.
Also, because Democrats generally suck at talking about things, I have zero doubt that Republicans would successfully win the public opinion battle if a shutdown did in fact happen.
Matt is not reckoning with just how far we have already progressed toward authoritarianism. Everything is about getting Trump's popularity way, way down so a wedge can be driven into the Republican Party.
Here are specific things Matt gets wrong:
"Shutting the government down to halt DOGE did not make sense on a number of levels"
Smart people did not claim filibustering the CR would stop DOGE. The words to remember are complicit and slush fund. Democrats haad to do all they could to block the CR to avoid giving a slush fund to Elon Musk, and to avoid being complicit in DOGE. A continuing resolution continues the criming. Yes, the criming will continue either way, 'at least we tried' is a lot better than 'we had no choice'.
"neither House Democrats nor the people voting “no” in the Senate nor the people getting mad on Twitter have an actual strategy for getting what the base wants out of this, which is some kind of act of Congress saying that Trump and Musk need to conduct the government differently.
The base knows we won't get that bill, it is not what they want. The base wants integrity. In this case integrity means 'No, this is unacceptable. Republicans have both houses, if they want to ruin the country they can, but I will have no part of it.'
Progressives who are tone deaf to the nation and lost us seats... That is real. But the good arghuments aren't coming from them. Moderates like Josh Marshall can see what time it is, and they concluded filibustering the CR is the best path. The point 14. rant about progressives is not an argument, if anything it reveals bias.
"We see once again that the filibuster is not the boon that moderate senators think it is". I am all for getting rid of the filibuster. NOT USING IT when Republicans are in power is a great way to keep it. Thsi is so obvious I can only shake my head that Matt thinks the filibuster cuts his direction here.
Other commenters have pointed this out, but my fear is that regardless of whether this was a good idea or not, we may face a future where Trump and DOGE just continue on with their wrecking ball regardless of what any judge tells them in the future, or what Congress passes in the future, whether that is party-line or a forced compromise because the GOP House can't get enough votes. If Congress is left a powerless husk before the mid-terms, we could elect all the normie moderate Democrats we want and it wouldn't matter. I don't know what the likelihood of that scenario is, but if so, then what?
Some of the frustration - some of my frustration at least - is that Republicans in the minority obstruct until the cows come home most of the time; during Biden's term, there was legislation that passed with bipartisan support, and it was fairly moderate; when Dems have had a majority, legislation passed seems mostly moderate to bring in moderate dems and appease the obstructionist minority Republicans; when Republicans have the majority, their fringiest members get to drive the bus, usually right over a bunch of norms and regulations with no consequences. I'm not advocating a far left agenda, but every election cycle the negative consequences of the far right agenda get more and more existential, so "wait two years and hope we elect a bunch of Josh Shapiro/Gretchen Whitmire clones" seems like a much bleaker prospect in the short term. I will also admit here that my knee-jerk feelings may not exactly match the legislative record. I am generally not a doomsayer by nature, but man, every day feels kind of catastrophic.
The furious reaction to Schumer’s actions are 100% vibes-based.
I get it. They’re shitty vibes. But it is not Schumer’s job to give you catharsis, and there are a lot of ways Democrats can parlay the situation from here. (And the furious reaction is possibly an element you can use for that.)
Trump wants to live in a world where the government does not function in any lawful sense and he can govern by executive order. He's already suspending constitutional amendments by EO, ignore congressional appropriations while Congress stands meekly by, and tried all manner of lawless actions while dancing on the line of violating judicial orders. Shutting down the government vastly increases his discretion about how the government works, and further defangs Congress from any pretense of oversight.
Say a judge orders federal marshals to enforce a judicial action he doesn't like while the government is shut down. He doesn't even have to fire them or order them to do something: he can just declare those specific marshals "nonessential" and tell them to go home.
This redux looks even more wise given the NBC poll that came out recently. It shows that not since 2004 do so many think the US *is* on the right track. And the Democratic Party is polling the most unpopularly since a long time.
Goes to show, most of American voters want what trump is giving them and only Democratic voters would hate it and their party for not doing what they want (but can’t do)
Am I really going to spend Saturday morning refuting a day-old post point by point? Sadly, yes. This post is that bad. Yglesias is not just wrong, his arguments are terrible. Worst post ever, and I've been reading him since Think Progress days.
1. & 2. Not thoughts. Table-setting.
3. Bold thesis, let's see if he can make a case.
4. to 6. Irrevelant history to the issue at hand. Self-indulgent.
7. "Senate Dems "don’t have the cards"? So long as the filibuster exists they have the cards.
8. Is the bank shot speculation in the last sentence plausible? (House Democrats could have it both ways — playing the hero to the base who got stabbed in the back by Schumer without dealing with the actual consequences of a shutdown") No. MY should had the self-control to press delete.
9. MY starts with a phony premise ("Shutting the government down to halt DOGE") and itemizes point about the phony premise. Why phony? a) No one sensible thought a shutdown would stop DOGE. b). Democrats would not be shutting down the government, the majority would be failing to pass their own CR (don't throw filibuster at me, filibuster exists at majority sufferance). c) The main point is Democrats can't be complicity in Repubublican criming.
Even under the phony premise the sub-points are terrible:
9a. The main problem with DOGE is that it is lawless. Noting that both the CR and a shutdown are bad for federal workers does not draw a distinction between the two. Why is badness A worse than badness B?
9b. Sloppy. Furloughs and lay-offs are not the same. At all. As in furloughs are explicitly temporary and lay-offs aren't. I just don't know why MY let this slop leave his keyboard.
9c. Really? Democrats refuse to vote for a bad Republican CR because criming against federal workers has to stop and the AFGE, after a few weeks, reverses their position? Federal workers want to go back to the good old days of DOGE wilding? If MY want to speculate so counter-intuitively maybe he should argue his point rather than simply assert.
9d. Say what? Impoundment is being challenged in court CR or no CR. MY writes as if it is clear the administration would obey a court order (it isn't) and as if this issue is about legislation telling the administration to stop criming. It isn't. (see below)
10. An argument for filibistering the CR
11. An argument for filibistering the CR
12. The base wants "some kind of act of Congress saying that Trump and Musk need to conduct the government differently."?? Really? The base knows such legislation will not pass with this congress! The base wants leaders who understand power and use the small scraps of leverage they have. The base wants leaders who will not cooperate with law-breaking. Opposing the Republicans is good politics, necessary to lowering Trump's popularity which in turn is necessary to stopping the madness. That is the game, failing to see that is failing to see what is happening.
13. Yes, we lost the White House and congress, and the Supreme Court was stolen. We get that! All the more reason not to squander what little leverage we have. I mean really, MY sees this as an argument against filibistering the CR? When you lose you roll over? That works in politics?
14. Self-indulgent. Support for Filibustering the CR came from all over the map. Josh Marshall is a lefty progressive? The Bulwark are lefty progressives? It looks to me like personal animus is warping MY's judgment, converting personal beefs into arguments.
15. Not a thought about whether the CR should be filibustered. Schoolmarmish.
16. The weakest of all 16 points? I think so! The filibuster is certainly not a boon if we won't use it! The filibuster is bad on net, but this is one of the times it is good. If you don't like the filibuster use it when you are in the minority. It makes the other side hate it. Trump doesn't like being frustrated, ruthlessly filibustering bad stuff could cause Trump to demand dumping it, we know senate Republicans are great at standing up to Trump. Let's review: If you like the filibuster now is the time to filibuster, and if you don't like it now is the time to filibuster. So what is MY's point here? More score-settling?
Worst post ever.
James Carville told Democrats to sit back and watch while the Republicans implode. Instead, the Republicans are following Carville’s strategy. And, it’s working.
Sorry. This is weak, Matt.
Yes yes yes
You are wrong on this one. Normally agree with you. Nate's right. Democratic risk aversion is killing them.
Polling considerations aside, normalizing shutdowns by minority parties seems like a bad thing. If Democrats do a shutdown because the Dem base is outraged, Republicans will do a shutdown the next time the Rep base is outraged over something (which is all the time). You just need a single looney senator for a filibuster, and then the rest of the party will face the same pressure to vote against cloture that Democrats are facing now ("are you betraying your own base? when Democrats shut down the government the last time?"). That's just no way to run a country. Also the pain caused by it is very asymmetric, since Democrats generally want the government to do more and Republicans generally want the government to do less.
Can Democrats just vow to give DC statehood the next time they have a trifecta if Republicans start to fuck around with the DC budget? That seems like a much more appropriate response, and should also be more threatening to Republicans as it would permanently alter the balance of the Senate.
No, because that would involve Democrats not being completely self-defeating cowards
This was a cataclysmic failure by moderate Democrats years in the making, and it's going to result in the utter rejection of the entire concept of moderation. Moderate Democrats made sure the Filibuster survived the Biden administration, at calamitous cost to the country, only to fail to use it here. Already, this is an utterly discrediting thing.
But far worse is that Schumer had no plan. He was apparently caught flat-footed by the success of the R's in passing a bill, and had no ideas for how to follow it up. If he truly believed that filibustering was the wrong choice here, he should never have allowed his caucus to get to this point. Instead, he drummed up drama, made sure everyone was looking at him, and then fell on his ass in public.
As a standard bearer for the Moderates, you should also be furious at Schumer for his failure.
What happened to 'Just do popular things'? This one is NOT popular, at all.
These comments show that even Slow Borers have a tough time thinking through second and third order impacts when emotions are running high. Somewhere, Boehner is swirling his wine, chuckling and shaking his head. "They'll finally understand", he says.
The DC budget cut just seems like a pure infliction of pain on a city that voted what 90% against Trump?
Everyone is complaining but nobody is addressing what seems to be an underrated point to me, 9(b):
>Under the circumstances of an appropriations lapse, Trump and Musk can just furlough 100 percent of the federal workers they would like to lay off and declare whoever they don’t want to lay off “essential,” and they’ve already achieved their endgame.
Also, because Democrats generally suck at talking about things, I have zero doubt that Republicans would successfully win the public opinion battle if a shutdown did in fact happen.
Matt is not reckoning with just how far we have already progressed toward authoritarianism. Everything is about getting Trump's popularity way, way down so a wedge can be driven into the Republican Party.
Here are specific things Matt gets wrong:
"Shutting the government down to halt DOGE did not make sense on a number of levels"
Smart people did not claim filibustering the CR would stop DOGE. The words to remember are complicit and slush fund. Democrats haad to do all they could to block the CR to avoid giving a slush fund to Elon Musk, and to avoid being complicit in DOGE. A continuing resolution continues the criming. Yes, the criming will continue either way, 'at least we tried' is a lot better than 'we had no choice'.
"neither House Democrats nor the people voting “no” in the Senate nor the people getting mad on Twitter have an actual strategy for getting what the base wants out of this, which is some kind of act of Congress saying that Trump and Musk need to conduct the government differently.
The base knows we won't get that bill, it is not what they want. The base wants integrity. In this case integrity means 'No, this is unacceptable. Republicans have both houses, if they want to ruin the country they can, but I will have no part of it.'
Progressives who are tone deaf to the nation and lost us seats... That is real. But the good arghuments aren't coming from them. Moderates like Josh Marshall can see what time it is, and they concluded filibustering the CR is the best path. The point 14. rant about progressives is not an argument, if anything it reveals bias.
"We see once again that the filibuster is not the boon that moderate senators think it is". I am all for getting rid of the filibuster. NOT USING IT when Republicans are in power is a great way to keep it. Thsi is so obvious I can only shake my head that Matt thinks the filibuster cuts his direction here.
Other commenters have pointed this out, but my fear is that regardless of whether this was a good idea or not, we may face a future where Trump and DOGE just continue on with their wrecking ball regardless of what any judge tells them in the future, or what Congress passes in the future, whether that is party-line or a forced compromise because the GOP House can't get enough votes. If Congress is left a powerless husk before the mid-terms, we could elect all the normie moderate Democrats we want and it wouldn't matter. I don't know what the likelihood of that scenario is, but if so, then what?
Some of the frustration - some of my frustration at least - is that Republicans in the minority obstruct until the cows come home most of the time; during Biden's term, there was legislation that passed with bipartisan support, and it was fairly moderate; when Dems have had a majority, legislation passed seems mostly moderate to bring in moderate dems and appease the obstructionist minority Republicans; when Republicans have the majority, their fringiest members get to drive the bus, usually right over a bunch of norms and regulations with no consequences. I'm not advocating a far left agenda, but every election cycle the negative consequences of the far right agenda get more and more existential, so "wait two years and hope we elect a bunch of Josh Shapiro/Gretchen Whitmire clones" seems like a much bleaker prospect in the short term. I will also admit here that my knee-jerk feelings may not exactly match the legislative record. I am generally not a doomsayer by nature, but man, every day feels kind of catastrophic.
The furious reaction to Schumer’s actions are 100% vibes-based.
I get it. They’re shitty vibes. But it is not Schumer’s job to give you catharsis, and there are a lot of ways Democrats can parlay the situation from here. (And the furious reaction is possibly an element you can use for that.)