Wednesday, January 17, 2018

Democrats and the DACA showdown

Joe Scarborough and Cenk Uygar agree on something. That if the Democrats aren't willing to have the Republicans shut down the government over their stand against deporting the Dreamers, they will lose enormous credibility as the party of opposition to Trump and Trumpism.

Joe's Message To Democrats On DACA: #NoDreamersNoDeal Morning Joe/MSNBC 01/16/2018:



Even Republicans Can't Believe How Weak Democrats Are The Young Turks 01/16/2018:



Rachael Bade et al in House Republicans coalesce behind plan to avert shutdown Politico 01/16/2018 talk about the Republicans maneuvering over the shutdown.

There's no guarantee of how it would play out. But the Republicans have long since established themselves as the government-shutdown party. As
Dyle Cheney and Elana Schor write in Shutdown would backfire on GOP, Republicans say Politico 01/17/2018:
“The perception of most Republicans is that a shutdown does not accrue to Republican benefit. It’s a relatively tough sale,” Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) said in an interview. “It makes it that much harder for Democrats to acquiesce on a deal because they feel like they have the upper hand.”

The last time federal agencies shuttered, in 2013, Democrats controlled the Senate and White House. But with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and fellow conservatives pushing for a shutdown in order to whack funding for Obamacare — a popular cause among the Republican base, but not beyond — the GOP could not escape blame in the public eye.

During the 17-day shutdown of 2013, “the Republican Party’s favorable rating dropped 10 points in a matter of days, and it took a year to fully recover,” said Whit Ayres, a veteran GOP pollster. “It would take an act of extraordinary political agility to avoid a similar fate today.”

Andrea Drusch makes what sounds an awful lot like a Republican tactical argument for the Dems to capitulate in Can Democrats force a litmus test on DACA? 01/16/2018. The pitch comes down to, well, gee, Democratic Senate candidates have to act like Republicans in order to get elected as Democrats.

That was the conventional pundit wisdom not long ago about Doug Jones in the Alabama Senate race.

Drusch's description of the Democrats as the "party of minorities" also sounds very much like Republican framing.

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