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As of precisely 12:01 am ET, the United States federal government has ceased operations. Personnel considered “nonessential” are remaining at their residences, which indicates that several governmental activities (like national parks) will be inaccessible due to staffing deficiencies. Those deemed “essential,” spanning from military personnel to aviation controllers, will persist in their duties even after the funds for their remuneration are depleted.
This circumstance is occurring, to a significant extent, due to the Democratic Party’s inclination toward a confrontation. The cessation of services could have been averted had Democrats consented to permit a vote on a “temporary funding measure” to finance the government, akin to their action in March. However, on this occasion, Senate Democrats opted to obstruct the CR via filibuster and indefinitely impede governmental funding that Republicans possess the necessary votes to sanction.
The intention is to concentrate this dispute on the realm of healthcare. Obamacare provisions benefiting millions of Americans are slated to lapse at the conclusion of the year, and Republicans exhibit no enthusiasm for their reauthorization. In a declaration issued early this morning, the party’s congressional leadership — Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries — affirmed their refusal to ratify the budget unless some arrangement regarding the provisions can be achieved.
One can discern the rationale: Democrats consistently outperform Republicans in surveys concerning healthcare; should they succeed in redirecting attention to the subject, they might further diminish President Donald Trump’s already unfavorable ratings and perhaps even secure advantages concerning health policy.
However, this rationale disregards a fundamentally crucial, glaringly evident element of context: that the Trump administration is presently engaged in an authoritarian endeavor to dismantle the constitutional framework. This paramount truth regarding our current political landscape alters every facet of the fundamental logic of political contention. By halting governmental operations over healthcare, the Democratic leadership demonstrates a failure to genuinely comprehend the significance of this truth.
Currently, they are ensnared in a predicament of their own construction — one from which they can only extricate themselves by radically altering their discourse concerning the shutdown.
The worst of both worlds
In the prior month, I posited that there exist fundamentally two strategic viewpoints regarding the manner in which Democrats ought to resist Trump’s authoritarianism: Team Normal and Team Abnormal.
Team Normal postulates that the optimal means of opposing Trump is to regard him as a typical president — that if one can orient public discourse toward “cost of living” matters where he exhibits the poorest polling results, one will be positioned to secure a significant victory in the forthcoming election and subsequently wield the authority of congressional majorities to thwart his initiatives. Conversely, Team Abnormal contends that behaving as a conventional opposition will relinquish excessive territory to an authoritarian president — that it is imperative to contend, frequently and perhaps in unparalleled manners, to forestall him from accumulating excessive authority before it is too late.
The Democrats’ shutdown strategy embodies an attempted convergence between Team Normal and Team Abnormal. The premise involves employing an extraordinary tactic of the type championed by Team Abnormal toward a Team Normal objective — redirecting public attention toward a matter where Trump’s figures are notably unfavorable.
Except that this compromise ultimately flounders by either faction’s criteria.
For Team Normal, a cessation of government functions for any rationale constitutes a significantly unfavorable notion — predicated on the straightforward fact that the historical performance of prior shutdown confrontations is exceedingly dismal for the party endeavoring to extract policy concessions. A recent piece by Matt Glassman, a professor at Georgetown specializing in the study of Congress, elucidates that all four recent shutdowns have failed to realize their intended outcomes.
“The party attempting to leverage the shutdown does not induce the opposing side to the negotiation table; rather, the opposing side merely demands an unconditional resumption of governmental operations while underscoring all the manners in which the shutdown is detrimental to defense, federal employees, and individuals endeavoring to visit Yellowstone. Public sentiment shifts against those seeking to exploit the shutdown, and they ultimately broker a facesaving accord,” he clarifies. “Each party seemingly believes it can prevail in the public opinion arena. However, to the best of my knowledge, no one has ever accomplished it.”
Glassman’s rationale is incontestable on Team Normal’s terms. However, for Team Abnormal, the singular essence of the Trump presidency alters the dynamics.
In their estimation, Trump’s abuses of authority are so exceptionally perilous that one cannot simply furnish him with an unencumbered funding measure and anticipate a favorable outcome. Instead, one must harness the crisis engendered by a shutdown both to impede Trump’s authoritarian blueprints and to galvanize the populace against his attempted regime transformation. This shutdown diverges, the rationale stipulates, because this government is dissimilar.
However, Democrats are not conducting themselves as if this government is divergent! They are articulating a demand that is exclusively the domain of conventional politics. There exists no justification to presuppose that a shutdown inextricably linked to such a mundane message can circumvent the predicaments that have doomed the preceding four unsuccessful endeavors.
What a better strategy looks like
For each of these considerations, I posit that Democrats cannot sustain their current strategic trajectory. They are obligated to select a distinct approach, either Team Normal or Team Abnormal, and recalibrate their strategy correspondingly.
The Team Normal resolution entails capitulating as expeditiously as feasible: devising some semblance of a facesaving minor concession that empowers them to terminate the shutdown and hoping that voters disregard the entirety of this episode by the ensuing November. Such a retreat would prove exceedingly humiliating and might conceivably precipitate a rebellion from the Democratic grassroots — amidst which disapproval of the party is at record levels, predominantly attributable to a perception that the leadership is not exerting sufficient effort to thwart Trump.
Alternatively, the party could transition to a Team Abnormal stance: that Democrats will solely be appeased by a funding bill that addresses this underlying issue of lawlessness. Trump is not negotiating on health care in an honest manner, given his assertion of various authorities to nullify lawfully appropriated spending at his discretion. Democrats should insist upon particular stipulations, such as those incorporated within the proposed Congressional Power of the Purse Act, which would curtail Trump’s capacity to usurp Congress’s constitutional prerogatives.
I contend that this represents the superior strategy — and I am not singular in this belief. Matt Yglesias, a co-founder of Vox and whom I typically regard as one of Team Normal’s most astute thinkers, suggested earlier this morning that Democrats should commence more candidly arguing along these lines. His perspective is that “I cannot concur with a pact the opposing side will not honor” constitutes an impregnable position for Democrats to defend in public appearances, one they can sustain until Republicans become amenable to terminating the shutdown by deploying the nuclear option against the filibuster.
However, I believe that the genuine rationale for pursuing this course is more profound than merely short-term political considerations, or even policy — as Democrats will almost assuredly be incapable of coercing Republicans into restraining Trump via legislation. Rather, it concerns seizing the occasion to cultivate broader resistance against Trump’s authoritarianism.
Within their recent publication concerning the mechanics of social transformation, philosophers Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, and Daniel Kelly assert that individuals do not necessarily enlist in causes predicated on an expectation of imminent victory. Indeed, they discover that individuals who engage in social movements can be markedly pessimistic concerning their near-term prospects for triumph. Nevertheless, in the protracted timeframe, their determination to participate during a seemingly hopeless interval engenders the prerequisites for ultimate success.
One method of recruiting individuals, notwithstanding a scarcity of immediate prospects, constitutes a tactic termed “losing loudly”: staging a spectacle of a confrontation they recognize they cannot prevail in, one that motivates others to undertake action. As a recent illustration, they cite Texas Democrats’ resolution earlier this year to abscond from the state to obstruct an attempted gerrymander. While these Democrats manifestly could not persist indefinitely, their stance facilitated the inspiration of Democrats in other states — such as California and Texas — to advocate for counter-gerrymanders in response to the Texas maneuver.
I recently engaged in dialogue with Brownstein and Madva regarding the deeper underpinnings of this theory. During our discourse, they referenced a compelling paper concerning the motivations of anti-authoritarian protesters in Russia, Ukraine, Hong Kong, and Turkey. It ascertained that these protesters did not, for the most part, believe that their demonstrations would topple the government (albeit they did in Ukraine). Instead, they acted out of a sense of shared social obligation: a perception that others are acting, and that they are indebted to those individuals to bolster them in a righteous endeavor.
Losing resoundingly contributes to the cultivation of this perception of shared identity. Even should the battle be destined for defeat, the mere fact that one is prepared to contest it cultivates a broader recognition that resistance is a collective undertaking, which constitutes the requisite element for prevailing in the broader political conflict.
I suggest that this insight is, in numerous respects, the omitted element within Democrats’ contemplation of a shutdown — and, more expansively, how to contend with Trump while occupying the political minority.
Democrats too frequently scrutinize polling data indicating that voters prioritize cost-of-living concerns over authoritarianism and infer that they must emphasize the former — disregarding the capacity of political actors to shape voter priorities. During a juncture wherein Trump is instituting unprecedented measures to reshape the government, there exist unprecedented avenues to apprise the populace of those abuses and cultivate a perception of collective responsibility to resist.
The present shutdown exemplifies one such opportunity. Should Democrats be perceived as refusing to fund the government predicated on the government’s cessation of operation in accordance with laws, they can demonstrate to the populace the gravity of this crisis — and that their rhetoric concerning a faltering democracy transcends mere cynical partisan gibberish employed to portray ordinary political disagreements over healthcare as a matter of greater significance.
Thus, this should constitute the Democratic objective: not to extract policy concessions or triumph in news cycles, which consistently proves futile, but to initiate the construction of a more expansive social ethos of resistance against authoritarianism. Absent and until Democratic leadership acknowledges this broader context and recalibrates their tactics correspondingly, their shutdown strategy will almost assuredly be destined for failure.
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Source: vox.com
