The Shutdown Was a "Brilliant" Political Move
Didn't you know that?
The longest government shutdown in modern history has ended, with no apparent victories for Democrats, and everyone has an opinion on why it happened and what it means. I’m not the only one who quietly wondered what the point was. Even though it was nice to see Democrats finally standing up for once, they had no real strategy for getting what they wanted.
As an article in Vox says:
But the reality is that Democrats never had a plausible strategy to get what they said they wanted — an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies — out of the shutdown fight. And after 40 days, they may have been winning the politics of the shutdown, but they had made no apparent progress toward getting Trump and Republicans to give into their substantive demands.
Indeed, rather than negotiate, Trump has in recent days started pressuring Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster — removing the tool Democrats used to cause the shutdown, and letting the GOP pass laws with the party’s votes a…