Some of my good friends on the right are chortling with glee because Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said that he will not try to stop the continuing resolution passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to keep the government from shutting down as the Ides of March come upon us. But Mr Schumer has a good reason, that few have realized.
There is the alternative that Chuck Schumer really, really doesn’t want. The so-called nuclear option was used by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on November 21, 2013, because evil, reich-wing Republicans were filibustering the judicial nominations made by President Barack Hussein Obama, and judicial nominations except for the Supreme Court could now have cloture invoked by a simple majority vote.
Then, during President Trump’s first term, Senator Mitch McConnell turned the tables on the Dems, and, using the same procedure, removed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations as well.
Well, here we are again: the Republicans control the Senate, and can change the rules with a simple majority vote that can’t be filibustered, and they could just end the filibuster rule altogether. Because of the narrow majority in the House, all bills passed have to satisfy virtually every Republican, including the hard-liners, and the Republicans in the Senate realize that the Dems will filibuster all that they can.
Senator Schumer realizes that, too, and he knows that the GOP are likely to retain control of the Senate even if the House will probably change hands.
The Distinguished Gentleman from New York also knows that, with a continuing resolution to keep the government open having already been passed by the House, and the Republican majority in the Senate ready to pass it, if the Democrats successfully filibuster it, they will be blamed for shutting down the government, all to defend the ridiculous spending that Elon Musk and his crew have discovered.
Of course, the hard left of the Democratic Party are waxing apoplectic! From my friends at the Delaware Liberal, from which I have been banned 🙂 to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to the very lovely Amanda Marcotte to the socialists at The Nation, the outrage has been spittle-flecked!
Schumer said on Thursday night: “There are no winners in a government shutdown. It’s not really a decision, it’s a Hobson’s choice: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.”
He added: “For sure, the Republican bill is a terrible option. It is not a clean CR. It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address far too many of this country’s needs. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he added. “I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s White House is gleeful. It’s a “heads we win, tails you lose” situation, one Trump official told Politico. “They’re 100 percent gonna swallow it,” another said. “They’re totally screwed.”
But there’s still a third option: If the Democrats can message that they are standing up to Trump and Musk’s shutdown of government since January, maybe they won’t be “screwed.”
Democrats are not screwed, unless they screw themselves. And us.
Which they probably will do.
Will Bunch hasn’t published a column on it yet, but he made his feelings known in skeets on Bluesky.
Well, the left can weep and wail and gnash their teeth, but if they do what the hard left want them to do, they lose.