Shutdown Ending Fallout
With the shutdown ending, the online left did what it does best: accuse the Democrats of “caving” and lacking the “spine” for a fight, or worse being “corrupt” and “corporate.” The predictability of these one-dimensional takes does not make them less annoying. I’m not implicating everyone, of course- Dan Pfeiffer had an angry but fairminded take, Lawrence O’Donnell drew on his own experience in the Senate to give some context in defense of the deal, and Steve Benen was more “I’m not mad, just disappointed.” But by far the most common response I saw was that this was a colossal failure and that “the Democrats” (all of them?) had “caved” and should be replaced.
I confess I don’t understand how “courage” is a relevant concern here. The eight Democratic senators who voted for this bill aren’t suffering from the shutdown. If anything, it seems like it would have been easier to keep it going and get applause from the base for “fighting.” People say they want “fighters,” but I would prefer winners. A lot of people seem to prefer the visceral thrill of fighting the opponent to the dull process of winning imperfect victories. I’m distrustful of politicians who talk a good game but don’t actually do much in the way of passing laws. It doesn’t help that a lot of them (John Edwards, Anthony Weiner, Michael Avenatti) turn out to be creeps. So in many cases I think it’s more couragous to take a deal you know won’t be popular because you think it’s right. Imagine Tim Kaine gets a call from his constituent saying “I’m a federal worker, I haven’t gotten a paycheck in weeks and my rent is due.” Or Angus King hears “without SNAP, my kids have only been able to have two meals a day, and now they’re saying we might lose heating assistance going into the winter.” You can argue that it would have been the correct decision to say “you have to deal with it for a little while longer so that we can keep your health premiums low,” but I don’t see how it’s “courageous” to tell others that they have to sacrifice.
Despite all this, I think the eight Democratic senators were probably in the wrong to take the deal, but I see it as a tactical failure, not a moral one. One of the rules of just war is that a war is only just if there’s a realistic chance to win. Was it realistic to expect Republicans to extend ACA subsidies and give Democrats a “win?” That’s a difficult calculation and I don’t know the answer, but it seems to me these eight senators eventually said it wasn’t going to happen and took a compromise. There’s not much in the deal better than the status quo antebellum, although an increase in SNAP benefits is something. After last week’s election blowout, Democrats had the wind at their back and Republicans were getting most of the blame for the shutdown. Holding out another week may very well have caused panicky Republicans to vote for the subsidies or some other significant policy, or maybe they would have nuked the filibuster and fully owned the consequences of their policy. The caucus agreed to this plan of drawing a red line in front of health care subsidies, so they shouldn’t have started if they weren’t willing to stick with it until the bitter end. But at some point, you’re falling into the sunk costs fallacy- “we have to keep doing this to justify the cost we’ve already incurred” is only valid if you think you can still win. A few senators decided it was time to cut their losses. Again, I think it was a mistake, but I’ve been doing fine this last month. I haven’t been furloughed and my governor was using the emergency fund to cover my SNAP benefits, so who am I to say poor people in other states need to keep suffering for the good of the Plan?
The idea that Chuck Schumer was “too weak” to control his caucus is silly. O’Donnell’s segment went into how hard it is to keep a fractured caucus unanimous in a plan like this. They took a big swing and I’m proud of them for trying to get a win despite being in the minority. I don’t know if it would have been better if they’d never started this fight at all, but I’m glad they took the political risk instead of just going along with Trump’s policies. But when you’re getting calls from constituents who are hurting and just want the pain to end, it’s hard to say no, and enough senators must have decided that they couldn’t keep asking voters to suffer. Schumer may have agreed to let these eight take the fall, or they may have insisted that they do it and he had no choice, but I see the story as one of Democrats trying something big that didn’t work. I think it was good to show “we’re fighting to prevent health care costs from increasing,” but how long do you allow physical suffering for a messaging strategy? The problem is that we want Democrats to fight, but we also want them to win. They lost this battle, and you can disagree with the tactics, but I think they were right to pick a fight. Aside from being in the majority, though, Republicans had a big advantage: when they get calls about their constituents suffering, they don’t care. They want poor people to have to fight for everything without any “handouts” from the government. So political pressure was on the Republicans and the Democrats to do something to end it, but the Democrats actually cared. Maybe they should be more cold-blooded about current suffering in favor of “winning,” but that’s a dangerous path to start down. The bottom line for me is that every Republican wants health care premiums to raise and about 15% of Democrats let them do it. That may have been the wrong decision, but we live to fight another day.
