Barring some unnecessary Republican crash-out — always a high possibility! — this partial federal government “shutdown” was destined to end with Democrat leaders finally leveling with their own angry voters to say, Yeah, we got nothing, and I don’t have any good answers for you right now.
And that’s more or less what’s happening now that another five Senate Democrats have broken ranks with the party Sunday to start the reopening process, which is set to include funding for food stamps and “key” government agencies, plus backpay for furloughed federal workers. That’s it.
Unless you count the handshake agreement that the Republican-led Senate will also allow a vote to extend health insurance subsidies for noncitizens and working-aged people who currently get a discounted rate on their personal plans, courtesy of the American taxpayer. That’s the thing Democrats were demanding in exchange for their votes to end the shutdown. (Mind you, it’s just a promise that there will be a vote, not a guarantee that it will pass.)
Democrat activists are predictably mad about it. They were perfectly fine seeing thousands of people stuck in airports and without their food stamp benefits indefinitely, so long as it meant they could say they were “fighting” President Trump. They live for unrest and conflict if they can’t otherwise spend their time crushing the middle class and the nuclear family. But Democrat leaders have constituents outside of people who tweet and the panelists on CNN and MSNBC who live comfortably regardless of impaired government. Their states and districts are full of federal employees (Democrat voters) and food stamp recipients (Democrat voters).
And that was always what made the Democrats’ choice to pick yet another losing fight absurd. Health insurance is nice to have and it’s important, but in order of priorities, it’s behind paying rent and buying groceries. Especially when those health insurance discounts weren’t for everybody or even most. They were for people who aren’t already covered through their employer and noncitizens who can’t afford insurance and therefore shouldn’t have been allowed into the country in the first place. That’s, we’re told, about 20 million individuals, or 5 percent of the total population.
Democrats shutting down the government to give their hysterical base a brief high was going to cost them. From the beginning, they should have known (and perhaps they did) they would have to eventually relent because their position was both weak and irrational. Better to not engage in the stunt at all rather than have to answer for why they even bothered if they were going to ultimately reverse — and with nothing to show for it after a month of needless drama.
“It wasn’t working,” Sen. Angus King of Maine said Sunday night. (King is an independent, but he caucuses with Democrats.)
But that’s the state of the Democrat Party. Even after some modest electoral victories just last week, it’s still a ridiculous, anti-American organization.