We’ve had a request for the dancing banana …
Interesting stuff in this analysis of the Cave by Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, and Seung Min Kim at the Washington Post:
For weeks, Trump has sought an exit ramp from the shutdown that would still secure wall funding, and for weeks his advisers failed to identify a viable one.
Trump repeatedly predicted to advisers that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would cave and surmised that she had a problem with the more liberal members of her caucus. But she held firm, and her members stayed united.
“Why are they always so loyal?” Trump asked in one staff meeting, complaining that Democrats so often stick together while Republicans sometimes break apart, according to attendees.
After decades of “Democrats in Disarray” headlines, and Republicans being rock solid while the Dems crumble, that one made me laugh. But it also tells me that Trump has no grasp whatsoever of what’s going on all around him. The left wing of the Democratic Party will happily follow Nancy Pelosi as long as she’s leading them where they want to go. I’m seeing a lot of comments about how Pelosi is vindicated, but I also think she got a message.
Trump and his advisers misunderstood the will of Democrats to oppose wall funding. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, emerged as the most powerful White House adviser during the shutdown and told colleagues that Trump’s plan for $5.7 billion in wall funding would get Democratic votes in the Senate on Thursday, astonishing Capitol Hill leaders and other White House aides.
And this tells me Kushner is a moron. The Republican bill did get one Democratic vote, from Joe Manchin of West Virginia. But that’s it. Perhaps Kushner failed to notice that three Dem senators who might have voted with Republicans in the past — Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Donnelly and Claire McCaskill — aren’t there any more.
Kushner, who Trump jokingly says is to the “left,” pitched a broader immigration deal and had faith that he could negotiate a grand bargain in the coming weeks, according to people familiar with his discussions. He pitched a big deal to Latino groups this week and also with members of the Koch network, the people said.
This was news to me, so I looked it up. Apparently on Thursday Kushner met with some Latino activist groups and proposed permanent protections from deportation and a path to citizenship for Dreamers and some others. But this is the sort of agreement people have tried to work out with Trump several times in the past, and every time, at the last minute, Trump listened to his hard liners and scuttled the deal. Nobody is lining up to kick Lucy’s football any more. Back to WaPo:
All the while, Trump vowed he would never capitulate to Democrats. At the Wednesday meeting, “he said there would be no caving,” Krikorian said. “Everybody who spoke up applauded him for not caving, but warned him that any further movement toward the Democrats’ direction would be a problem.”
Trump himself set up the dynamic that wouldn’t allow the Democrats to compromise without being slammed by their own base. Their only viable position now is “no.”
Administration officials began immediately on this next phase; Mulvaney and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen met privately with a handful of Republican senators at Camp David on Friday evening to start discussing what a border security agreement might look like, according to multiple people familiar with the gathering.
Ultimately, aides said, Trump was willing to table debate over wall funding because he is convinced he can win support from some Democratic lawmakers over the next three weeks.
Yeah, good luck with that, Spanky.
Aaron Blake at WaPo speculates that Senate Republicans might move to take another shutdown out of Trump’s hands, which is certainly within their power and, seems to me, would be better for them in the long run. If Trump tries another shutdown in three weeks, there is absolutely no reason to believe anything would turn out differently from the first one.
It is difficult to imagine congressional Republicans, who just lived through this disaster, having any appetite for a second round. As a senior Republican told Politico’s John Bresnahan: “I hope the president remembers this when the Freedom Caucus types tell him what to do next time.”
The polls have all confirmed that a majority of Americans blamed Trump and Republicans for the shutdown. A second shutdown over the same issue — dragging the country once again into the same mess we’ve already been through — would look even more unhinged.
So Democrats will be heading into these conference negotiations with real leverage. One clue as to how they might proceed can be found in a slew of border-security measures they were in the process of drawing up, which they were going to release, but then did not have to once Trump gave in.
According to people familiar with the Democratic plans, they were preparing to roll out a package that included added drug-scanning technology at ports of entry and other infrastructure upgrades at those ports; and more than $500 million for beefed-up medical care for asylum-seeking families and children, as well as more family-friendly processing facilities. In other bills, Democrats have also passed expenditures of around $500 million for more immigration judges, and around $500 million in economic aid to Central American countries.
That all sounds good, and a rational Congress wouldn’t have any problem passing an impressive-sounding border security package with no wall. But we’ll have to wait to see what Republicans really will do. How afraid are they of Trump and his base? I’m afraid we’re still depending on Mitch McConnell to do the right thing, and we know how that’s turned out in the past.
" And this tells me Kushner is a moron "
Right, when is Trump going to realize that his son-in-law is going to get him in hot water every time. Kushner also thought firing Comey cause he was mean to Hillary would get Democrats on Trumps side? Firing Comey got Trump a special prosecutor and most likely some articles of impeachment. Once again his continued devotion to Kushner just shows what a lousy chief executive he really is! Doll Hands Donnie, Caveman, Nancy Boy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUN6RPMIoeo
Eh, I think Pelosi kept her caucus in line and her eye on the prize. The blue dogs aren’t what they were her first speakership, but there were a few wafflers. Tulsi Gabbard auditioned for the new Joe Lieberman role on State of the Union last weekend, for example, while a more conservative Democrat called for giving Trump his wall. She ignored both as did the rest of the caucus. My feeling is the caucus has grown more like Pelosi, not less, so she doesn’t have to placate like she used to.
KC — the fact that Pelosi recently has been pushing the Paygo rule tells me she needs to adjust to the caucus as much as the reverse.
After a torpedo hits a ship, the question is 'How bad is the damage'? Whether you fired the torpedo or whether you are on the receiving end, the question is the same. Trump has been insulated from his own stupidity by a complicit Congress. That's gone. Democrats now prowl the political seas with power and hostility. Pelosi unloaded on Trump with two volleys.
She canned Trump's SOTU in her House chamber – and made it stick. This hostility was the result of Trump's hostage-taking which was becoming more and more unpopular as it encroached on the lives of ordinary people. Pelosi demonstrated Trump is not king.
The second volly was a refusal to negotiate on Trump's demands while the Trump shutdown continued! The Democrats laid the blame on Trump and kept it there. Trump caved. Voice from the engine room – "Captain, we're taking on water!"
Trump has always operated on the illusion of power, pretending he's got skills he doesn't have. Not in business, not in Real Estate, not in leadership, not in integrity. Trump's base wants Trump to shake things up, but they expect Trump to win. That's not happening and there's no US House majority protecting Trump from the truth becoming evident.
The belief that Trump could deliver from the base and including moderate voters kept him afloat. Conservative pundits are abandoning ship. The question is whether Trump can survive a primary challenge next year. I do NOT think we need to select aDemocrat "who can beat Trump."He's beaten. Who can heal the damage he's done?
Doug: " I do NOT think we need to select a Democrat "who can beat Trump."He's beaten "
Not so fast, I believe we heard the same chorus after the Access Hollywood tapes. FAUX noise and the wing-nut media machine are not going to abandon Trump, they can't, they have a business to run and that business is fleecing low-info rubes. They need Trump as much as he needs them. Trump is down but not out, if we nominate some loon we could easily lose again!
Agree with uncledad – Trump has suffered a hit, and there will be more to come this year, but never underestimate 1) the power of the right to push somebody over the top in an election, and 2) the Democrats propensity to fail when victory is within reach.
For Trump to realize Jared was a moron, Trump would need to be not a moron…
Voice from the engine room – "Captain, we're taking on water!"
LMAO
Don't think about this too long, or your mind might snap: But what's left of our government has been running on "institutional memory" ever since tRUMP and his gang of deplorables, vandals, and barbarians, busted into DC.
Many important departments have no leaders! NONE!
But that same thing is not just terrifying, it just might be what's saving us!
Why?
All of the lifers in those departments have taken over, so that the government can still work for the rest of us.
Without some dimwitted dipshit grifter appointed to be "leading" a department or agency, the workers get the work done!
Who can repair the damage? That is more important every day, Doug!
Robert Reich makes the point that it was the air traffic controllers at LaGuardia who effectively ended the shutdown. They stayed home in enough numbers to close the airport. Within hours, Trump capitulated.
I’m encouraged by the small stirrings of labor these days – the teachers out in the red states, the big strike we just finished in LA, and this unorganized act in LaGuardia.
I hope people are connecting the dots. There is an enormous power in the people of this country that’s almost untapped. Countries overseas are amazed at how supine the public is here.
@ moonbat Jan 27, 2019 @12:34 pm
Any real indication that the air traffic controllers were take a labour action or just calling in sick because they were so exhausted and stressed that they did not think it was safe to work?
I have been dreading hearing about some horrific air crash due to exhausted, stressed out air traffic controllers and unmaintained equipment.
I wondered why Trump didn't move in military Air Traffic Controllers like Reagan did to break the strike. I'm only guessing but nobody in the West Wing considered that the ATC people would organize, though I'm sure they were watching for attrition. Reagan had months to anticipate that he could/would need the people trained to replace the strikers. Nobody in the Air Force was requested to prepare a plan. My guess is that the military said they would follow orders but they would not pretend to guarantee results. (We'll try not to kill anyone but if there's a screw-up it's on you, mr. bone spurs.) So the FAA people were pulling a slowdown leading to a complete breakdown and the military was promising at best a slowdown, maybe leading to a catastrophe. Trump had to cave in a day or suffer the paralysis of airline traffic ending.
@jrkrideau – my sense of it is that it just happened – individuals calling in sick because they had enough. I don't think it was any "labor action" in the classic sense of the phrase.
Moonbat – the crisis hit three major airports on the same shift. Coordinated? Obviously. By who? A lot of players were losing money including the airlines.