Quote:
Originally Posted by SenorKeeed
Sure, I was just saying that both sides are totally uncoupled from any actual policy arguments at this point. Whether 5 billion for some kind of border barrier is funded or not is simply not consequential as a matter of public policy. It is obviously an extremely dumb thing to shut the government down for 3 weeks over, but then the flip side is that it's also dumb to not spend 5 billion on a wall/fence/whatever so the government can open. The actual public policy of 5 billion for a wall happening or not happening is simply not consequential enough to justify a 3 week shutdown either way.
It is only consequential as a political matter: Trump getting something he can sell as a Big Beautiful Wall or Democrats denying Trump getting that win. And Democrats trying to sell the public policy of not appropriating 5 billion for a wall as actually crucially important in and of itself is pretty much nonsense.
Right but the 5 billion Trump is actually asking for is much closer to the former than it is to the latter
Unfortunately, you are operating on one of the even-numbered levels and getting the wrong answer, when being either a level up or a level down would work just fine. Sure the wall doesn't matter in a practical sense, but the practical consequences of a shutdown don't really matter to Democratic decisionmakers either, as long as the voters blame them on Trump. So, why give Trump a political victory (the wall) in exchange for bailing him out of an ongoing political trainwreck (the shutdown).
Obviously, they aren't going to message it that way, they're going to say they oppose the wall (true!) and think Trump should reopen the government and negotiate in a normal way for his priorities rather than using bullying and hostage-taking to get his way (also true!), because those things sound better to the voters.
EDIT: To put it more concisely, you may be right that both sides are unmoored from policy arguments, but the GOP is also unmoored from the political argument too.