Bill Scher: Cut The Senate Democrats Some Slack

"Any shutdown must end eventually. But in the aftermath, Trump and his bureaucratic goon Elon Musk could tell vast numbers of employees that they needn’t return to work, accelerating their plans to hollow out the federal government and embed MAGA loyalists in what remains of the civil service. In fact, WIRED reports, based on anonymous Republican sources, “that Musk has wanted a government shutdown … in part because it would potentially make it easier to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, essentially achieving a permanent shutdown.” During shutdowns, employees deemed “nonessential” stay home. Musk, who has said anyone nonessential shouldn’t be in government, could use a shutdown to take advantage of any nonessential classifications.  

The resist-everything-everywhere-all-at-once argument theoretically compels Democrats to filibuster so that their fingerprints aren’t on any legislation that abets the Trump-Musk plan. But a shutdown can abet it, too. Moreover, a shutdown would trigger a blame-game dynamic in which Republicans can shift blame from Musk’s rampage to Democrats for the increased dysfunction. No matter what Democrats do, they risk public ire.  

The basis of my shut-it-down argument last month was that with a reasonable and narrowly tailored demand, Democrats could escape blame, which may still be true. But I must concede Republicans have made the Democrats’ job harder by achieving near-unity around a measure that—if not quite a “clean” bill with no changes to existing spending levels—doesn’t codify radical DOGE-style cuts.  

If House Republicans were unable to pass their bill, or if House and Senate Republicans weren’t in sync, or if there was a shockingly unpopular provision in the bill, the GOP would have a much harder time casting blame on Democrats for any shutdown. Now, Republicans can accurately say: We have a bill that would keep the government open, and if it fails, it’s because of a Democratic filibuster.  

The challenge for Democrats trying to respond to the House Republican bill with a unified message was exemplified Wednesday with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s brief floor statement: 

Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort. But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their Continuing Resolution without any input, any input, from Congressional Democrats. Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR. Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11th CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass. We should vote on that. I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday. 

Filibustering a bill to keep the government open solely on the argument Democrats didn’t get any input is a very thin reed. It’s about process, not substance, which is no way to rally the public. I can only assume Schumer didn’t get more specific because he didn’t have party-wide consensus on drawing firm lines on including or removing particular provisions. And he didn’t have party-wide consensus because the “right” thing for Democrats to do is not clear-cut.  

And the right thing for Democrats is not clear-cut because no matter what they do, Trump and Musk will continue to wage war on the civil service.  

Pressuring Democrats to adopt your preferred counsel is a potentially productive course of action. It can pierce insular groupthink and give them confidence that the public will embrace a bold strategy. But that’s very different than torching Democrats if they adopt a different course in a challenging situation. That only helps Republicans deflect blame for their destructive acts... 

Source:The Washington Monthly with a look at U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (Democrat, New York)

From The Washington Monthly

As my colleague Rik Schneider wrote last Tuesday: 

"Just for the record: I'm not in favor of forced government shutdowns, whether they're done by Republicans (which is normally the case) or by Democrats, which was led by Senate Minority Chuck Schumer in 2018. The politics is bad, but worst, if disrupts the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of government workers who need their jobs, as well as local businesses who rely on those workers to stay in business. 

But, this is Tuesday and any potential government shutdown wouldn't be until 11:59PM Friday night. And asking Democrats to vote for a continuing resolution that probably cuts Medicaid anyway, is bad politics for them, its bad politics for vulnerable House Republicans, perhaps even Senate Republicans as well. One 1 House Democrat out of 215: Representative Jared Golden (Democrat, Maine) voted for it. So House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries gets this as well. 

So now the bill goes to the Senate where Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will have a big decision to make: 

block the bill, where Majority Leader John Thune would need 60 votes to get to final passage on it. 

allow the bill to come up and tell your members to vote for cloture, but lock in all your members to vote against it and then use those Senate Republican votes against vulnerable Senate Republicans in 2026 when they have to run for reelection, where President Trump will probably be pretty unpopular by then (unless he drastically changes course) 

Or, work with the Senate Majority Leader to get a compromise that both sides in the Senate could support, that would pass the House overwhelmingly... 

From The New Democrat

As I wrote on Wednesday: 

"So it looks like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and company have selected option a, which is to try to block this bill in hopes that Senate Majority Leader John Thune would sit down with Leader Schumer and they would work out a compromise. That's a really risky play. A lot of political incentive for the Majority Leader to say: 

"No. We're in charge, we won the elections, we have The White House and Congress. Go ahead and shut the government down and take the blame for it". 

Which would be my response even as a Democrat, (from a political standpoint) if the Democrats controlled The White House and Congress right now and someone was drunk, high, stupid, and crazy enough (trust me: plenty of people with all those characteristics at once in Washington) to elect me Senate Majority Leader. 

If John Thune doesn't compromise here, this would be the best case scenario: 

Senate Democrats relent and buck their leader and maybe 10 of them vote for cloture, just to avid the government shutdown on Friday...

From The New Democrat

As my colleague Erik Schneider wrote on Friday: 

"So the Senate Minority Leader on Wednesday acting like he would try to prevent the Senate from even voting on the House continuing resolution on Wednesday, to last night doing a political surrender and doing a political getting the hell out of Dodge before he was captured... Cilliza explained why he did that. But I have some reasons as well: 

Wednesday was about political spin looking tough to his left-wing flank not just in caucus, senators like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but on the other side of Congress, with left-wing Democrats in the House: Alexandria O. Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, just to name a few. If you are familiar with the House Socialist Caucus, I mean Progressive Caucus (natural mistake) you have a pretty good idea who I'm talking about... The Squad as well. But as Chris Cilliza said...

From The New Democrat

And as Rik Wrote on Friday: 

"And for people who are thinking I'm just looking at the politics here and just playing politics... damn right I'm looking at the politics here. All the negative news this week has been for Donald Trump and MAGA. So why would Democrats want to jump in with the sharks and see how far they can swim? Let's keep the negative attention on the MAGA Party. This is Donald Trump's show right now. Democrats have essentially no power of their own to stop him. Let them run their own show off the air and replace them in 2027. 

Shutting down the government is not just bad politics, but it's bad policy. And for people who are saying it won't last that long, not many people will be hurt, etc... those people don't work for government and don't have voters to answer to. And some of those folks like the Never-Trumper's are not even Democrats. So be careful who you listen to.' 

From The New Democrat

These 2 points from Bill Scher I think are the key here: 

"Any shutdown must end eventually. But in the aftermath, Trump and his bureaucratic goon Elon Musk could tell vast numbers of employees that they needn’t return to work, accelerating their plans to hollow out the federal government and embed MAGA loyalists in what remains of the civil service. In fact, WIRED reports, based on anonymous Republican sources, “that Musk has wanted a government shutdown … in part because it would potentially make it easier to eliminate the jobs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, essentially achieving a permanent shutdown.” During shutdowns, employees deemed “nonessential” stay home. Musk, who has said anyone nonessential shouldn’t be in government, could use a shutdown to take advantage of any nonessential classifications.  

The resist-everything-everywhere-all-at-once argument theoretically compels Democrats to filibuster so that their fingerprints aren’t on any legislation that abets the Trump-Musk plan. But a shutdown can abet it, too. Moreover, a shutdown would trigger a blame-game dynamic in which Republicans can shift blame from Musk’s rampage to Democrats for the increased dysfunction. No matter what Democrats do, they risk public ire... 

If Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made a mistake last week on this, it was indicating on Wednesday that he would try to block the bill until there was some bipartisan funding agreement that could be reached between Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans. But as I said about last Wednesday: 

"So it looks like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and company have selected option a, which is to try to block this bill in hopes that Senate Majority Leader John Thune would sit down with Leader Schumer and they would work out a compromise. That's a really risky play. A lot of political incentive for the Majority Leader to say: 

"No. We're in charge, we won the elections, we have The White House and Congress. Go ahead and shut the government down and take the blame for it". 

Which would be my response even as a Democrat, (from a political standpoint) if the Democrats controlled The White House and Congress right now and someone was drunk, high, stupid, and crazy enough (trust me: plenty of people with all those characteristics at once in Washington) to elect me Senate Majority Leader...

If you think I'm wrong about that based on what happened last week, I'm inviting you to show me how.

When it comes to blue and green hair Hippies in the Democratic Party (also known as the Democratic Left) Chuck Schumer was in a lose-lose, damned if he does, damned if he doesn't situation. If they actually went through on blocking the funding bill and we're in a government shutdown on Monday on St. Patrick's Day (of all days) the mainstream media is talking about Chuck Schumer's government shutdown and nothing else. On the same day when that CNN poll comes out that shows only 29% of American voters support the Democratic Party. And as Bill Scher said: 

"The resist-everything-everywhere-all-at-once argument theoretically compels Democrats to filibuster so that their fingerprints aren’t on any legislation that abets the Trump-Musk plan. But a shutdown can abet it, too. Moreover, a shutdown would trigger a blame-game dynamic in which Republicans can shift blame from Musk’s rampage to Democrats for the increased dysfunction. No matter what Democrats do, they risk public ire." 

You really think a Democratic led, especially a Senate Democratic led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, government shutdown, is the way you bring swing voters and Independents to the Democratic Party? I would love to see any green or blue hair Hippie try to make that case to me... after I give them a sobriety test first. (I know I'm being insulting) 

MSNBC and company can talk all they want about how angry Americans and Democrats are at the Senate Democrats, at least their leadership right now. But it's just the left-wing of party and Democrats in Congress (House & Senate) who never have to worry about a tough reelection battle, unless they are primaried by a left-wing Democrat, who represent a lot of left-wing Democrats in their district or state... who care about this. No one else outside of the beltway is even paying attention to it. 

To paraphrase Bill Scher: there are times when you simply get beat. The adults deal with that and perhaps take lessons from that. The kids kick dirt not just on the people who beat them, but their own teammates and blame them for their loss. Congressional Republicans simply had the votes to pass their own government funding bill and did exactly that. Had Schumer and company tried to obstruct that, the government would've shutdown and we're talking about the Schumer shutdown this week, instead of Donald Trump's new unpopular authoritarian plans... like ignoring Federal court orders and thinking he can unilaterally wipe out presidential pardons from past president's. 

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