No. of Recommendations: 2
You have a very limited view on what it’s all about. It was never about extending the ACA, although Americans would have been better off if they succeeded. It was about confronting authoritarianism and standing up to the rising threat of fascism. The ACA subsidies offered an opportunity to highlight the cruelty of Republican Party, a cruelty they doubled down on during the shutdown.
Okay - but how long do you do that? Until November 2026? Have the country go without a national government for another year?
At some point, the shutdown has to end. Once you've already highlighted the cruelty of the Republican Party by raising awareness of the issue, you can't keep going with that until the next election. If the Republican party is being cruel, it's one thing to let that be on display for a while. But if you keep it going indefinitely when you have the ability to stop it (even though it's their responsibility), then you run the very real risk of being adjudged cruel yourself.
Or to put it another way, if the GOP is perfectly willing to hurt people, how long are you willing to watch them get hurt without stopping it?
The reason the Clintonites collapsed is not because they care too much, it’s because they were afraid. They cling to the chummy belief that the last ten months were an aberration and that their concessions will get us back to politics as usual.
I don't. I don't assume anything of the sort. I do assume, however, that elections matter and that political power is held by the party who holds the majority of seats. The Democrats weren't going to keep the government shut down for a year, and so they were eventually going to have to vote for the CR. And because public opinion didn't turn against the GOP the way the Democrats hoped it would, the GOP wasn't going to fold - which means that the Democrats were going to have to eventually vote for the CR without an ACA extension.
Which means that if the Democrats were eventually going to vote for the CR without an ACA subsidy extension, there was very little to gain by holding out longer - and a lot of suffering that was lined up that was not going to be laid at just the Republicans' feet going forward. Again, I ask - do you think the Democrats should have held out until next November and just gone a year without a federal government?
It's frustrating, because the folks who wanted a fight got what they asked for. They wanted the Democrats to fight, and the Democrats fought. If they wanted the Democrats to fight and win, that was never going to happen - as I think you acknowledge. So what, then, is the disappointment about?
