Democrats also don’t want to end a stalemate that is separating 800,000 federal workers from their paychecks. Having funded border barriers in the past, Democratic leaders now say funding for Trump’s wall is a deal killer.
Party leaders’ energy is going toward making the other side look bad, not ending the stalemate.
Trump has pulled back on what his own negotiators had thought were good faith offers; his unreliability inhibits Republicans and Democrats from sticking their necks out for a measure that easily could fail.
Already burned, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he won’t bring a measure to a floor vote unless Trump commits to it.
No worries. Trump supporters say his behavior shows he is no creature of the swamp. Only insiders care if the president is short-sheeting his own team. At least Trump is willing to stand by a campaign promise, the Trump voter argues. As the sage Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Council put it, Trump is “showing that he can resist political pressure.” The shutdown has changed nothing.
“The people that are with him are with him,” quoth Olsen. “The people that are against him are against him.”
In a play to differentiate themselves, House Democrats engage in the charade of passing spending measures that have zero chance of being enacted to demonstrate that they at least are willing to do something. When they get tired of that ploy, they go to the Senate to demand McConnell put unpassable bills to a floor vote.
So yes, they are willing to do something — stunts.
Another stunt: Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s letter effectively telling Trump not to bother delivering a State of the Union address in the Capitol on Jan. 29 because of security concerns for a “national special security event” during a government shutdown. It helps if you forget she invited Trump after the shutdown began.
Pelosi’s claim that she always has been a supporter of “securing our border” defies credulity. Pelosi also has called a border wall “an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation.”
What will it take?
What will it take to end the shutdown?
“Roll Call” taped a town hall given by Rep. Anthony Brown, D-Md., as he addressed a room that included furloughed federal workers understandably fearful about how they can survive without paychecks.
“What exactly do you want folks to do out here?” a young woman asked him. “Should we be pressuring Sen. McConnell? What do we need to be doing to get things resolved?”
She meant well, but when federal workers direct their ire at Republicans and not Democrats, they become unwitting enablers.
Fun fact: McConnell doesn’t care if federal workers in Maryland send him emails. He cares about the values of his constituents in Kentucky, where 62.5 percent of voters supported Trump. Likewise Pelosi listens to her San Francisco homies, not the “Make America Great Again” voter.
Voters who want to see an end to the shutdown have one recourse: They can turn the heat up on their own party. When progressives lean on Pelosi and conservatives lean on Trump and GOP lawmakers, the shutdown will end.
Debra J. Saunders is a Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist. dsaunders@reviewjournal.com; Twitter.com/DebraJSaunders
