No. of Recommendations: 7
The Democrats shouldn't be voting for any Republican bill unless they either get something for their votes or at least only vote to continue the status quo.
Ah, but that's why they had to vote for this - because it was so close to the status quo. It was a CR, not the GOP's budget package. So it did, in fact, almost entirely continue the status quo.
But wait - "almost entirely"?!? That means it wasn't continuing the status quo. True, but the GOP was clever enough to keep the spending levels nearly unchanged. They didn't use the CR as a back door for their substantive budget priorities. The major difference was in the technical language that normally gets inserted into these bills that directs the Administration to spend the way Congress has directed - super important, but good luck conveying that to the average voter.
So what the Democrats got for their votes was the government didn't shut down in a situation where they would have taken most of the blame. That isn't anything awesome, but it ain't nuthin'.
Again, this is the frustration that Yglesias was channeling. Democrats are put in this position because they lost all the elections. Which means the GOP holds the pen in drafting everything in both chambers, which means they can do things the Democrats can't stop - or at least, they can't stop without blowing up the government, which is far worse. What Democrats ought to do is let their national figures do the things that need to be done to win the next election, so that this doesn't happen again. What Democrats are doing instead is getting mad at their leaders for not taking politically unpopular positions that don't actually stop what's happening but then make it harder to win the next election cycle.
Vote no when it doesn't destroy things if you succeed in killing the bill. Don't vote no if killing the bill shuts down the government and you don't have anything in the bill you can point to that the voters will understand and believe is worth shutting down the government for. This CR was crafted to not be different enough from the status quo to allow that argument.
