On Thursday, Senate Democrats voted for the tenth time to prolong the federal government shutdown. They also voted against funding the military, so they needed the Pentagon to initiate some innovative accounting to ensure service members are paid on time.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) defended In his group's last vote, he opined: “It has always been unacceptable for Democrats to pass the defense bill without other bills that contain so many things that are important to the American people in terms of health care, housing and security.” But for most Americans, that biased hype falls on deaf ears. Most sensible Americans understand that there is no reason pay to America's warriors should be held hostage to arcane debates over housing policy.
As Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), one of three Senate Democrats who joined Republicans on Thursday to support the defense appropriations bill, said: put it earlier this week: “You know, if you're thinking about winning the election now, it's going to come down to seven or eight states… And a lot of the things, the extremism that people turned their backs on in '24, and that's how we came up short.”
It is wise advice. But Fetterman is likely to pay for being such a rare voice of (relative) reason within the party with a imminent bruises Senate primary race.
Why exactly? are Are Democrats, who control neither the House of Congress nor the presidency, still insisting on a protracted battle over the shutdown? It is a more complex issue than it should be. But the basic disagreement comes down to the expiration of Obamacare subsidies and the scope of Medicaid coverage, even in some cases. Coverage for people in the US without legal status..
In short, air traffic control operations are suffering from a potentially dangerous risk. shortageAmerica's beautiful national parks are understaffed and service members could go without pay, all because Democrats believe more taxpayer money should go to subsidizing health care.
This is a surprisingly weak negotiating position. Minor parties that are completely out of power typically don't get what they want during high-profile budget showdowns or government shutdown fights, and there's very little reason to expect Republicans to concede. Furthermore, as the shutdown progresses, polls seem to indicate which side is more to blame. gradually changing towards Democrats like more guilty side.
It's far from obvious what exactly Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) hope to accomplish as the shutdown moves into its third week. They are not going to prevail, and the longer it lasts, the worse the political situation they will find themselves in.
Democrats can't seem to avoid stumbling.
On the issue of illegal immigration, the American people are overwhelmingly opposed to his agenda. TO Harvard/Harris Poll earlier this month revealed that 56% of registered voters support deportation all illegal aliens, and 78% support deporting criminal illegal aliens. On the issue of taxpayer subsidization of transgender health care, another flashpoint in the culture war, another recent survey showed that 66% of Americans are in the opposition. The survey on trans women participating in women's sports is even clearer.
Illegal immigration and gender radicalism are perhaps the two least popular issues right now for Democrats. However, they are arguably the two issues that are most at the forefront of the current Beltway standoff, or at least the debate over the extent of taxpayer funding is.
Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military strategist, taught that a battle is won before it is fought by choosing the terrain on which it is fought. President Trump, the branding and marketing genius for decades, already has a knack for framing issues that way: the art of the 80-20 question, as this column has called it. And Democrats seem all too eager to make his job easier by choosing the side whose loss is a foregone conclusion.
Is left over?
A rational political party interested in self-preservation and electoral success would certainly take a different approach. Such a party would abandon post-2008 politics. obsession with identity politics and wokeness and return to the Clinton era's message of economic growth and cultural centrism.
The fact that the Democratic leadership is so woefully unable to do this, even after Trump's resounding victory last November in all the major swing states, indicates that the party is not currently guided by rational calculations. Today's democrats are not guided by sober empiricism, but by a fanciful ideology.
The main reason Trump prevailed in the contentious 2016 Republican presidential primary and has since gained so much popular support is that he has had little use for abstract ideology. He saw the American people as they are and sought to serve them.
Democrats would do well to do the same.
Josh Hammer's latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Fate of the West.”.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. UNKNOWN: @josh_hammer
