If you thought Democrats couldn’t possibly get any dumber, think again.
Somehow they have managed to achieve this signal feat. When it comes to the economy, President Trump is currently having some trouble, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down significantly since he took office.
Plus, there’s a lot of concern about the possibility of a recession in the near future in the United States, despite some pretty strong economic fundamentals. Even in the polling data, President Trump is moving the wrong way in regard to the economy.
If the economy picks up or continues to truck along, it does not mean President Trump can’t heal all of that. It just means that, because of all the volatility that has been injected into the economy and all the talk about tariffs, the news about the economy is not favorable to the president right now.
Thus, there’s a clear and obvious opening for Democrats.
And yet…
Democrats are not only not going to take advantage of the opening, but they are also, figuratively speaking, going to shoot themselves in the foot.
As a Republican, I approve.
Through the leadership of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — no thanks to Thomas Massie — the GOP passed a continuing resolution that will fund the government until roughly September, which gives Republicans plenty of time to negotiate a budget deal amongst themselves — to come up with the one big, beautiful bill that they need to pass — and get that done without the government simply falling apart.
That’s why the government shutdown was averted by the Republicans in the House. Now, it gets passed onto the Senate, where the GOP has a majority. Rand Paul has said he’s going to vote against the continuing resolution (CR), but there’s still 52 votes in favor. Even if it got down to 50 votes, JD Vance would then break the tie in favor of the CR.
So, if you’re a Democrat at this point, you’re looking at the state of the economy, which is somewhat dicey and volatile, because you can’t predict the future there. That is their only tool to attack President Trump. What the Democrats don’t want to do is get into the business of owning the economy. Why would you want to own that if Republicans had fallen down on the job and been unable to pass a continuing resolution? They could have blamed Republicans for the shutdown.
This was the Democratic plan in the House. It’s the reason why Hakeem Jeffries instructed Democrats not to vote in favor of the so-called clean continuing resolution, which is just a maintenance of funding at current levels all the way through September. All Democrats, except for one, did not participate in the CR.
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But now the Democrats seem to want to actively kill the continuing resolution and push America into a government shutdown that they clearly will own.
That move makes no sense, politically speaking. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported, “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threw a wrench into a Republican plan to avert a government shutdown this weekend, saying there wasn’t enough Democratic support to advance the measure funding federal agencies through Sept. 30.”
You may be wondering, don’t Republicans actually have a majority in the Senate?
Yes, they do. But in order to overcome a filibuster, in order to invoke cloture, they need 60 votes.
Democrats could simply eschew filibustering. They could just say, “Fine, listen, you want to vote for the CR? Then vote for the CR.” Instead, Democrats are now actively considering filibustering a clean continuing resolution, which makes no political sense. Most Americans are just saying, “Leave us alone,” which is effectively what the CR does.
If Democrats want to throw a wrench into that for no apparent reason, then they will own any government shutdown. And if the economy turns south, then they own it. They own a big chunk of that because a government shutdown is going to throw all sorts of scares into the market.
The Journal continued:
Republicans “do not have the votes in the Senate,” to move the resolution forward, Schumer said on the Senate floor, indicating that his party was prepared to block it. He blamed Republicans, saying they “chose a partisan path” in their bill without any input from congressional Democrats.
It sure seems partisan to use your 47 votes in the United States Senate to hold up 53 votes in the Senate, simply because your base is mad at you for not standing up enough to President Trump’s agenda.
The Journal continued, writing, “As an alternative, Schumer floated a shorter-term plan that would fund the government for a month. ‘I hope my Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday,’ he said.”
Schumer is hoping the Republican coalition will fall apart in the meantime and that the economy will fall apart during that month. He’s hoping the stock market crashes in that interim month, and then he won’t be blamed no matter what happens.
But, again, what he’s doing right now makes no political sense. He is injecting Democrats into the middle of the most dicey proposition for the Trump administration.
I don’t understand any of the logic here. The first rule of politics is do not — do not — get in the way of your opponent making a mistake. Do not interrupt your enemy when your enemy is making a mistake. If the Democrats’ idea is that the Republicans own every aspect of the economy, then they have to let the Republicans own the economy. If they inject themselves into that process in order to shut down the government, they then own what comes next.
Republicans know this, which is why House Speaker Mike Johnson said the ball is in Schumer’s court.
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The Democrats hope that funding the CR for a short term will force the Republicans to basically negotiate with Democrats. But that is not what’s going to happen. The GOP is fully willing to allow Democrats to own a government shutdown; Schumer is going to have to own it.
If you invoke a filibuster in order to own a government shutdown, you are a moron.
And what Schumer is doing here is really stupid.
It’s virtually the best-case scenario for President Trump. Let’s say Schumer does the filibuster, and the government shutdown occurs because he did the filibuster. President Trump then has the unique capacity to determine who exactly is an essential worker under federal law. At that point, he can let Elon Musk in there with the chainsaw.
They’re playing right into Trump’s hands.
