Democrats have a new and surprising weapon on Capitol Hill: Power

>“I think most of our caucus wants to work with them,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) in a recent interview, referring to the GOP. “But it requires working in a compromise way.”

>But cooperation with their GOP counterparts — and possibly even with Trump — is a risky move for congressional Democrats, who are being pressured by the more liberal wing of their party to obstruct the GOP and Trump at all costs. Part of that energy is playing out in the Senate over the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, as Democrats have vowed to block his confirmation, potentially leading to an explosive fight next week to change Senate rules.

>Hill Democrats are betting voters will view any attempt to compromise on spending as further evidence that the fractured GOP is unable to govern. If the talks fail and a shutdown approaches, voters might then blame Republicans for failing to keep the government open despite their control of the House, Senate and White House, several Democratic aides reasoned.

>There is a sense among many Democrats that bipartisanship isn’t necessarily toxic, even in an environment in which ardent liberals continue to protest at town hall meetings. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrats think voters see Democrats taking steps to defend existing policies — such as battling the American Health Care Act or blocking funding for a border wall — and understand the big picture.

>“It’s an interesting time,” Pelosi said “Let’s understand and let the public understand what the debate is.”
...

>Without Democratic help, Republicans are unlikely to unite behind a temporary spending plan to keep the government open past April 28. That does not even address the larger battle expected to take place over the fiscal 2018 budget in which Trump has proposed a $54billion increase in defense spending to be compensated for by cuts to 18 domestic agencies and programs.

>Democrats have already flexed their muscle by refusing to support the funding of Trump’s border wall as part of the temporary measure. They also rejected a proposal by the Trump administration to include in that measure a $30billion spike in defense spending and $18billion in cuts to domestic programs.

>“I think it’s clear that putting border money into this without a plan for how it’s spent is unacceptable,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

>But that doesn’t mean Democrats won’t support some minor compromise on defense spending and border security. Some Democrats have privately floated the idea that they might be willing to tap an off-budget war fund to help pay for some increases in defense and border spending, an idea neither Pelosi nor Schumer would rule out.

>“We would not be opposed to any border security measures that are not the wall — increasing technology,” Pelosi said at a Thursday news conference. “There are better things that we can be doing.”

>Schumer was similarly supportive.

>“If they asked for $200million for more electronic surveillance and drones on the border, I don’t think that would cause many hackles in our caucus,” he said.

>Republican leaders appeared in recent days to be open to that kind of compromise. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said leaving defense spending increases and money for the border wall out of the short-term spending negotiations wouldn’t be a dealbreaking problem.

>“It doesn’t mean that you can’t come back to that smaller package and see if there’s not some future way to do it,” Blunt said.
...

>But any appetite for compromise could end next week, when the two sides are expected to clash over Gorsuch’s nomination.

>Democrats are planning to exploit Republicans’ narrow 52-48 advantage in the Senate to slow a vote on Gorsuch. Schumer said he will force Republicans to get 60 votes on a procedural motion before the Senate can vote on the nomination.

>Fallout from the very public battle over Gorsuch could play a critical role in whether spending talks stay on track. Democrats privately fear Trump will grow angry over the spectacle and demand funding for the wall, aides said.

>There is also a chance GOP members and Trump will cool off during a two-week Easter recess just before a final spending deal is expected. Members of the Appropriations Committee hope to spend that time negotiating roughly 200 remaining issues, including Republican attempts to roll back some Obama-era financial regulations.

>Clashes over similarly tacked-on provisions, typically known as “riders,” have for years prevented Congress from completing the regular appropriations process. Democrats have uniformly rejected Republican attempts to attach to spending bills riders that attack Planned Parenthood, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulation legislation.

>“We want legislation that meets the needs of the American people and does not have the poisonous riders in it,” Pelosi said Thursday. “We have to see the substance of what is in the bill.”

>Those fights have been somewhat muted this year as Republicans have used other means to begin chipping away at regulations implemented under President Obama. Congress has already taken steps to roll back Obama’s Clean Power Plan and regulation of streams, two issues Republicans previously tried to address through riders.
...

>“A good handful of the measures ... have been addressed,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “It doesn’t mean that there are not still issues that present themselves in the subcommittee budget, but I think it’s going to be a little bit easier.”

>Republicans have also hinted that they will not attempt a fight on Planned Parenthood. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) told reporters last week he did not think a spending bill was the right place for the abortion fight and suggested conservatives take up the fight under special budget rules known as “reconciliation.”

>“We think reconciliation is the tool, because that gets it into law,” Ryan said. “Reconciliation is the way to go.”

>It is unclear whether Republicans who oppose abortion rights will be satisfied with that path. A group of 77 antiabortion organizations wrote to lawmakers Friday demanding that they continue to try to end federal support for Planned Parenthood. But they, too, focused on using reconciliation.

>Democrats bet Republicans will be willing to ignore demands from their most conservative members, many of whom routinely vote against spending bills over objections to all government spending. They also are convinced Republicans are quickly growing tired of being bullied by Trump.

>Schumer said Trump’s idea of compromise is to propose something and give Congress no chance for input. That approach may work for now, but Democrats hope Republicans will eventually grow tired of Trump’s dictating their path and instead turn to Democrats to begin legislating.

>“Our Republican colleagues are going along with that right now,” Schumer said. “But that’s not how many of them feel. I think many of them want to work in a bipartisan way.”

Please stop shutting down the government

>>127854
Please continue, we don't need it.

Also I fail to see why this needs to be spread out across 5 posts when there's no paywall.

>>127854
Either party's congressmen would do it in a second if they thought they could successfully blame the other party for it. The republicans still control the agenda even if they can't rubber stamp it through.

>>127857
>>127857
>Also I fail to see why this needs to be spread out across 5 posts when there's no paywall.
Stfu

If you want yo visit the link you are one click away

>>127857
Shutting down the government is the last thing you want. Its effectively giving gov employees a couple weeks of paid vacation for work that never has to be made up. You can look it up if you want but in the case of every shut down, employees have been back paid for it.

>>127857
>we don't need it.

Who cleans the Lincoln Memorial if it is graffitied, as it was last year? Who patrols the National Mall to ensure such things don't happen when millions of visitors pass through every month?

This is one of the elements of federal gov't that is immediately halted with a shutdown. Pick and choose boyo.

>>127899
>Who cleans the Lincoln Memorial if it is graffitied
Easily done with volunteers..

>>127925
You gonna volunteer?

>>127899

Aren't a lot of the Parks Services places also one of the few things that actually break even for every tax dollar spent? (Much like how the IRS is one of the only agencies to actually make money, so cutting IRS funding actually decreases federal revenue by massive strokes.) So it makes even less sense to shut that shit down, especially since it has secondary economic effects via tourism.

Shutting down the government in general is a great way to deal economic damage to the US via secondary effects, which is generally why people avoid doing it. Even the most anti-government conservatives would rather keep it operational and do small cuts here and there than suddenly shut it all down.

Don't they remember how the country blamed them the last time they shut the government down? This isn't partisan, they are all to blame.

>>127899
>Pick and choose boyo.
I choose the shut down. That way when they start burning their "break even budget" on barriers and guards to keep people out of the memorials because "government's closed :(", again, the absurdity can be pointed out.

the millennials who's first election cycle this was sure get excited over typical minority party grandstanding

>>128079
Old people know the pendulum is simply starting to swing in the opposite direction like it always does.

>>128089
>starting
it already swung, that was trump and the republican majority in congress
i GUARANTEE you it will swing in a more leftist/liberal direction in the immediate following election. i guarantee it. i have seen it before in my lifetime and it has happened many times before in our history.

>>128110
The pendulum reached the apex when Trump got elected. It started swinging the other way about a week after the election. Trump has record low approval ratings for a reason.

>threatening the president, that hates government and wants to get rid of it entirely, with not funding the government

A bold plan. Let's see if it pans out.

>>127854
You need a third party, so compromise becomes the norm instead of the last resort.

>>128126
>muh big tent politics
won't let us.

>>128141

>We need to abolish the R and D label on voter cards and machines.

The party guys standing outside give you a D or R sample ballot. Plan defeated.

Killing parties as a concept doesn't work, they'll work around you to keep existing. What you need to do is get it so parties can actually rise and fall naturally so you aren't stuck with the same two diametrically opposed parties at all times. How to do that is a difficult question, and probably requires a revamp of how elections work in order to make them more competitive outside of two big powerhouses, thus making parties less of a necessity and allowing for more independent candidates.

>>127938
NPS makes more than its budget but isn't allowed to keep it really. If they were, we wouldn't have a huge maintanence backlog

>>128367
>NPS makes more than its budget but isn't allowed to keep it really.
This is a common theme. It's the same story with The Post Office, the USGS (selling geological data to oil companies), NOAA (selling weather satellite data), etc...Ironically these are all things the free market can't or won't do because it's supposedly not profitable.

>>128071
>barriers and guards to keep people out of the memorials ... the absurdity

Maintenance staff for the National Mall are cut with a shutdown, but local and Capitol police are not. So they have police keep people out because hundreds of thousands of people coming through ends up leaving a lot of garbage that needs to be cleaned up every night and no one to do that (and no one allowed to do that per legal rules of shutdown -- part of the "stick" to prod Congress to actually do its job).

>>128386
What they *should* do is if a shutdown is to occur, the Sargent-at-Arms gathers the full Senate, does an emergency lockdown of the Capitol due to a "National Security threat", and then the S-a-A job is immediately sequestered with the shutdown.

>>128394
It's all fun and games until one of the 80 year olds falls and breaks his precious little hip on the Senate floor in the chaos after they lock the doors.

oh noooo they might shut down 17% of the government

>>127854
The fucking faggots are getting a paid vacation...

Wow... Power. Wild.

When the first thing you claim to have in a long time is "power", ur not gonna have a good time.

democrats are too limpwristed to make republicans do anything.

our elections themselves are at stake from foreign meddling, and we've done nothing, not even come up with policy prescriptions yet, but the democrats are quiet as churchmice.

the democratic base is largely, not completely, but largely to blame too for the weaksauce response to republicans shitting all over them.
at least republicans seem to know how to fall in line behind a candidate, and vote for policies rather than personality.
democrats would rather be right than win.

>>127854
if the legislative branch is actively destructive to healthcare, and epa, facilitates corporatism, and wants to restrict certain peoples' rights, I'd rather not have more legislation.

>>130883
>We've had foreign meddling in our elections
Would this meme please die, no one hacked our elections.
>Restrict certain people's rights
I wish this meme would die as well. You can't call anything you think you're entitled to, a right, if it's not mentioned explicitly by the constitution, or amended to do so.

>>130922
You can stay in denial and pretend it didn't happen all you want but don't be surprised when other people laugh at you for it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections

>>130929
>Wikipedia
>All references are news articles working off of anonymous sources
>Ignores the investigation coming up cold over and over again
Oh wait, a russian ip was found among the multitudes of people who got into mike "p@ssword" podestas server. Surely its russias fault

>>130943
>Discounting wikipedia because it proves you wrong
>Criticizing the anonymous sources but ignoring the dozens of not anonymous sources.
>he thinks it all hinges on a singular Russian IP being found
Did you even read the article?

>>130945
Wikipedia is moderated by libs. Also, the CIA can swap IP addresses easily.

Here's the more likely scenario: DNC staffer Seth Rich leaks info to Julian Assange, who leaks it to the public. DNC lays a massive egg and gets caught with its pants down. DNC gets sweeped in the elevations on all fronts.

DNC can either own up to their mistakes and failed identity politics strategy, or double down. Well they own the mainstream media, so they double down and start hammering a bs story to distract from the fact that they've been running a corrupt operation.

Still no Russia evidence. Still hearing the stories day in admin day out from the alphabet crew.

>>130945
Not him, but im not discounting the facts stated in the Wikipedia article, rather the conclusions drawn from the facts
The not anonymous sources cite anonymous sources
At the end of the day why does this issue even matter. All nations are invested in other nations' elections. The DNC just chose to push this particular narrative because they knew it would resonate with their drones who have been convinced that Russia is a country of supervilllains and they wanted to tie trump in with them. They're already making moves for the next election

>>130945
>>proves
>>>>>
>>he thinks it all hinges on a singular Russian IP being found
It hinges on a number of Russian IPs being found with IPs from ~50 other countries, 15% of the hosts being Tor exit nodes, but the majority being from the USA. Also allegedly someone using a widely available Ukrainian piece of malware apparently indicates Russia. There's not much more evidence than that.

While there's no doubt Russia could, and would have done it, that's a far cry from /proving/ that they did.

https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/

This is a political ass-pull if I ever saw one. The obama administration has never hesitated to use other countries as scapegoats before, and they're not even unique in this respect.

>>130953
>>130954
>>130955

> Following the release of emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta by WikiLeaks, the US Intelligence Community concluded that Russia was behind the leaks

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-government-officially-accuses-russia-of-hacking-campaign-to-influence-elections/2016/10/07/4e0b9654-8cbf-11e6-875e-2c1bfe943b66_story.html?utm_term=.4db304aba629

>An assessment by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) expressed "high confidence" that Russia favored presidential candidate Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign to harm Clinton's electoral chances and "undermine public faith in the US democratic process."
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/06/us/politics/document-russia-hacking-report-intelligence-agencies.html

>On October 7, 2016, the ODNI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) jointly stated that Russian intelligence services had hacked the DNC and Podesta email accounts, and provided their contents to WikiLeaks. In January 2017, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that Russia also meddled in the elections by disseminating fake news promoted on social media. Clapper later said that during his tenure there was no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statement-department-homeland-security-and-office-director-national

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/07/us-russia-dnc-hack-interfering-presidential-election

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/04/politics/assange-wikileaks-hannity-intv/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/top-us-cyber-officials-russia-poses-a-major-threat-to-the-countrys-infrastructure-and-networks/2017/01/05/36a60b42-d34c-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?utm_term=.1cdd35d0c380

>>130961
Whatever man most of us are happy that the DNC got leaked and you should be too
What does proving that Russia did the leaks even do for you?

>>130971
This last election was an illegitimate sham and every second that goes by where Trump and some congressional republicans pretend to enjoy a majority of goodwill and support from the populace is a further insult to the truth.

And then his people have the gall to wonder why his approval numbers are the worst of all time for a new president in his position.

>>130972
Can you explain how it was an illegitimate sham? The voting booths weren't hacked by them. I'm not a fan of Trump either, but there are better ways to criticize him than proving he has Russian connections. Your efforts look like a waste of time to me

>>130973
The real question should be why aren't you and other Trump fanatics angry about the Russians rigging the election for Trump.

The only valid answer imo is that you're a blind Trump supporter, which is fine, but don't go on to pretend like there are valid reasons or anything other than blind faith, cheerleading for your side, and good ol' fashioned opposition to Hillary Clinton. All that said, opposition to Hillary is enough without all the extra baggage considering what a horrible candidate she was. Trump should have beaten her by 20 or 30 points if he was any more credible than she though.

>>130974
I don't equate the leaks as "rigging the election for Trump". The leaks are simply a source of information by which one could make their own judgments
I'm not a Trump supporter, I just think this Russian connections meme is stupid

>>130972
Gee, who would have thought that people casting legitimate votes based on real facts on how shitty the DNC is behind the scene is illegitimate. And the DNC has worse approval numbers than trump

>>130961
>NyTimes
>WashPost
>CNN

I'm seeing a pattern

>>130974
"Rigging the election" = revealing how scummy the DNC is, I guess

>>130979
It wasn't just leaks. There was mountains of disinformation and misinformation too. It's one of the reasons more than half of /pol/ thought Hillary wanted to start WW3, just for one thing.

>>130993
If you don't like mainstream news then you're on the wrong board.

>>130995
No, rigging the election = rigging the election

>>130987
>people casting legitimate votes
3000000 more legitimate votes were cast for Hillary.

>>131002
If by "mountains of disinformation" you're referring to the Russian fake news farms, I blame the intelligence of the reader, not the source
In regards to that second conjecture from /pol/, I can see why they'd think that, but I believe rather that WW3 has already been underway for a while now when you factor in all the proxy wars and drone operations that the democrats have been disguising

>>131006
>I blame the intelligence of the reader, not the source
Of course you do, you're probably a Trump supporter who wants to feel like he did the right thing. Why would you ever admit to falling for Russian propaganda?

>>131009
For the third time, I'm not a Trump supporter. Shit it's like I need to put this in my forum signature. You're so eager to characterize everybody who doesn't agree with you as an irrational trumptard cultist

>>131009
>Why would you ever admit to falling for Russian propaganda?
To be fair, the "source" that poster was talking about was invariably Trump himself, who repeated the Russian propaganda ad nauseum about things like 30000 emails that supposedly couldn't be found when in reality she turned over 35000 emails to the FBI. If you asked 100 random Americans about Hillary's emails one 1 in that group of 100 would know and be able to tell you what really happened, which we are only just now becoming aware of.

>>131012
It takes an irrational trumptard to play devils advocate and pretend like these things didn't happen, Anon. I doubt your sincerity but I'm sure the feeling is mutual.

>>130943

I remember watching that closely during the election. NYTimes would post something from an anonymous source, then Huffpost would post something from NYTimes. Checking the Wikipedia sources and it is those same articles.

"Intelligence community" is a complex term and I believe media has preyed on people's ignorance of computers and government in an attempt to make it look like Russia helped Trump win the election. In reality, Wikileaks helped Trump win the election and yet Wikileaks was always swept under the rug.

>>131030
The flaw in your little scenario is that nobody cares what Huffpost does.

That's like saying FoxNews would post something from an anonymous source, then Breitbart would post something from FoxNews. Everyone knows this didn't just magically start during the election. It's a business model.

>>130922
>Would this meme please die, no one hacked our elections.
How is robbing one party of a right to privacy not hacking our election.
How is it fair that one business has a right to privacy that's respected while another has to compete for the same customers with all their data and communications made public to their competition.

>You can't call anything you think you're entitled to, a right, if it's not mentioned explicitly by the constitution, or amended to do so.

Right to abortion is a right until it is repealed.
Either way, it should be a right.

Well we all know the Russians hacked the DNC and we'll likely see the same in future elections.

So that really has to be among the top priorities for Dems to address with their influence.

>>131041
Politics isn't fair and neither is life

>>131041 see >>130955 which even if you ignore that, there was no hacking into voter booths.

>Right to an abortion is a right until it is repealed.
It's not in any legislature or amendments at the national level, which is why you have situations where people restrict it and make it anything but legal. If it was outlined as in legislature, then you wouldn't have that issue. The Supreme Court doesn't repeal things, it would have to overturn a ruling, which it could potentially overturn Roe v. Wade.

>Either way it should be a right.
Some people think it shouldn't, which is why it's not official legislature. Some argue personhood begins at conception, while others argue it begins after birth.

>>127925
late stage capitalism.

>>131059
People need to realize that this is war. Either you win or lose, kill or be eaten by the victor. Cheating, there's no such thing in a LIFE and DEATH situation.

>>127847
really ... these fucksticks are getting two weeks off for easter break ... and then they are going to be at odds and have to have a govt shut down ... because of funds ... they need to remember who they work for ... not the other way around ... we need to take our country back ...

>>131083
Abortion wasn't a right until it was medically possible. Liberals keep making up "rights" that mankind hadn't even considered until recent technological developments. Abortion, birth control, gay marriage, etc. Just keep going down that path and we'll see if theres a downside to completely ignoring concientious traditionalist thought and Judeo-Christian values that western society was founded on.

>>127847
>>It turns out that Republicans need the minority party to help them avoid a government shutdown at the end of April
EVERYBODY LIKES AUSTERITY UNTIL IT'S THEIR OWN SHIT GETTING ALL AUSTERE

>>131105

Our country doesn't work like that.
At the core of our institutions is a bit of social contract that we agree to appreciate each others' best interest.
If politics is war, then i guess we're done having a country.
I know we're letting the Russians get what they want, but honestly if these guys despise democrats and liberals to let the Russians have their way with our democracy, then it's high time we parted ways.

If some Trump supporters have their way, the alternative is we go back to the middle ages with some national catastrophe like the civil war before getting our shit together.

I'll be happy to have Massachusetts join New York, California, Oregon, Washington. We can have single-payer healthcare, I'll be happy to pay more in taxes to subsidize transition to nuclear and solar and we can sanction excon mobil, we'll let high skilled labor migrate regardless of where they're born, we'll encourage automation and enact UBI

The rest of the country can have an ethno-libertarian state with no social programs or epa or regulations for bankers. They can leave economic policy up for popular referendum so the retards who think it's common sense that trade deficit is a sign of economic weakness can decide what to tariff. They can have fastest growth in coal mining and take all the assembly and call center jobs from china and india. Then can get eradicate their government and declare donald trump CEO of the country. Let's let them live out their dreams of an ultra-conservative utopia on their own populations, from a safe distance.

>>131140

I don't think those traditional values should be as much about the letter of biblical law as much as the spirit of it. People change, society changes, the world changes, the universe changes, with time. The practical details of our values need to change too.

I don't buy any explanation that outcomes in our society are predictable by some set of simple, convenient rules like in bannon's favorite "The Fourth Turning". There might be some truth behind those, but in general I think any time we go for overly simple ideas and by extension overly simple solutions, we're ultimately setting ourselves up for failure from the inevitable exception or paradigm shift.

We need to weigh our priorities, and find ways to preserve the traditions we value, but within the context of a worldview that is engineered specifically for the unique realities we face today and tomorrow in mind.

>>131204
Honestly the US would probably be better off splitting into 5 major regions. New England, Greater California, Texas-Alabama, Midwest, and the Southeast Shores. Each of those areas already has wide differences between each other. If people from both sides have the nerve to constantly trashtalk their countrymen then I don't want to associate with them anymore. The whole reason the democrats went tits up is because they trashed people from their own party for supporting a candidate like Bernie, or going third party. This country's addiction to dramatic rhetoric and politicking will be it's downfall.

Dismantling would then force China and Russia to butt heads, which I am perfectly okay with because that basically forces 2 bad guys to fight each other.

>>131361
Scratch Greater California, I think it'd be better off named Greater Washington.

>>131362
It should be Greater Radioactive Hole in the Ground tbh

>>130973
>>130995
Do you really believe that Donald Trump's email is all roses and super awesome cheery stuff?

Would you like it if it turned out the DNC was spamming 20-30% of all twitter posts the weeks before the election? Because that's what Russia was doing. Elections are not fought or won with voting machines, they are fought with information.

>>131204
>>131361
>>131362
>>131487
quick reminder that Russia is actively supporting websites/movements for California succession and are hoping people are dumb enough to divide a massive country into pieces, breaking us up into tiny regional powers.

You cunts are fucking stupid, we have a largely unified culture and you fuck want to piss it away over petty politics.You really dont fucking get how much of an advantage it is to rule the world like we do. How many french TV shows do you watch? British ones? Well they watch ours subtitles and all, they buy our shit. They watch our politics, they give us good trade deals by default, they fucking need our business. You idiots have crossed from democrat and republican to being anti-America.

>>131504
have a news link, friend
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/why-russia-loves-the-idea-of-california-seceding-214632

>>127847
I hate how they are supposed to be a party for the people, and yet they see stopping the government as their right to leverage more power, the people be damned.

This is going to affect anyone with a government job and force our government into a standstill. How can they possibly think that this will win them back the votes of the people?

>>131628
Both parties suck a fat one. They might as well be the same party. They just both really hate Trump.

Why do you think they pay people to comment on boards, or that every single mainstream news org. backed Hillary and continue to attempt to delegitimize the Trump administration? They lost power for the first time in decades.

Trump may not be the most ideal, but if it pisses the parties off I support him. They'll shove Russia into his face and goad him into a war until they get their way though. Fucked up times.

>>131628
>yet they see stopping the government as their right to leverage more power, the people be damned.
The GOP threatened it as soon as they got the majority during Obama's term, and then did it without hesitation, until they realized that they actually needed the government, and that they even needed the stuff they sequestered. (They were also the ones who last shut it down during Clinton, for record duration at huge damage to the country -- at least that time they took all the blame).

>How can they possibly think that this will win them back the votes of the people?
They saw the GOP do it. Or rather, the GOP did it without losing votes.

The big question is, does anybody believe the Dems will actually do it, and do enough GOP Congressmen care to want to stop it (because a significant number gained popularity by selling their shutdown as a good thing)?


My money is the best budget/debt ceiling delay the Dems could make is one which cuts off all federal subsidies to state governments. They just might be able to get enough gullible small-gov't GOPs on board, and the states that will suffer the worst are the red states.

>>127847
>funding for environmental programs
They should let Trump gut these.
Better Americans learn first hand that some regulations are necessary.
Nature will bounce back when people realise they actually like clean air and water,

>>131728
>actually like clean air and water,
These things don't come back, Anon. They are still trying to manage Superfund sites from the 1950s and 60s left over from dilapidated ruins of factories from the 1800s. Especially in New England, there are places that are always going to be polluted. We already learned the lesson you're talking about. I guess those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

Around 1970 or so the government seems to have woken up to this and recognized that the free market is never going to profitably take care of the messes they make. Now that attitude seems hippy-ish and antiquated and lost in the current GOP's deregulatory fervor.

>>131362
Call us back when Washington is anywhere near as relevant.

>>131504
>>131594
The good news is, even in one of the most reactionary climates in living memory and in one of the states with the staunchest anti-trump sentiment they still only got 32% of Californians on board with the idea of secession.