US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

Everyone looking forward to doing this again in February and then again Sept 30th, 5 weeks before midterms?

— Jamal Raad (@jamalraad) January 22, 2018

Democrats have managed to accede to Republican demands, demoralize their energized base, give a disengaged president a win, and look like they held a meaningless three day government shutdown — all at once.

— Matt Viser (@mviser) January 22, 2018

there are an astonishing number of hot takes out there on today's developments, considering as AFAICT they haven't happened yet and we don't know what they are

I was gonna say, did I miss a news story?

possible. schumer and mcconnell have reached a deal that gives mcconell 60 votes in return for a promise to vote on immigration:

.@SenSchumer on floor says Democrats will provide GOP the votes to re-open government with understanding that if no DACA deal by Feb. 8, Senate "will immediately proceed to consideration of legislation to deal with DACA"

— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) January 22, 2018

the people not on this list are running for president

Dem YES Vote on Cloture:
Balwin
Bennet
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Coons
Donnelly
Duckworth
Durbin
Hassan
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Jones
Kaine
King
Klobuchar
Manchin
Mccaskill
Murray
Nelson
Peters
Reed
Schatz
Schumer
Shaheen
Smith
Stabenow
Udall
Van hollen
Warner
Whitehouse

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) January 22, 2018

Mr. McConnell reiterated a pledge he offered on Sunday night that he intended for the Senate to take up immigration legislation in February if the issue has not been resolved by then. A major question as senators seek to end the shutdown is what kind of commitment Mr. McConnell is willing to make regarding the consideration of legislation for the young immigrants, a central issue in the current impasse.

On Monday, Mr. McConnell pledged that the Senate’s immigration debate would have “a level playing field at the outset and an amendment process that is fair to all sides.”

“The very first step is ending the government shutdown,” he said

McConnell in brief remarks: We've learned that the American people "didn't understand, and wouldn't understand in the future," a shutdown over illegal immigration.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 22, 2018

lmao taking a pledge from mcconnell in good faith

I'm not, uh, a fan of Joy-Reid in the least but this strikes me as a take worth considering:

If @SenateMajLdr defies his nature and history and keeps his word by putting a reasonable, bipartisan immigration bill on the floor with open amendments, the far right xenophobe Trumpists will lose it. That could dampen turnout for Republicans in November.

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) January 22, 2018

If he stiffs the Democrats, we'll get another government shutdown next month, with no way out. Democrats will then only cut a second deal with McConnell if every one of them becomes clinically insane.

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) January 22, 2018

what's going to change from the last time he promised this?

"If negotiators reach an agreement on these matters by the end of January, I will bring it to the Senate floor for a free-standing vote." -Mitch McConnell, December 20, 2017 https://t.co/WREFNRfZ7e https://t.co/Cc2EaCErKZ

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) January 22, 2018

NBC is reporting that today's deal "will also extend the low-income children's health insurance program, CHIP, for six years and suspend some taxes under the Affordable Care Act." the latter sounds very fishy indeed but the former is a policy win even though if you zoom out it's completely insane that it should be so, given that it is widely popular and should never have been a bargaining chip in the first fucking place.

if a senate vote actually happens then we're back here:

A lot of people are gonna say Dems caved, but the truth is Republicans didn't get much here either.

House and Senate both pass their DACA bills. Senate votes on House bill and shows it can't pass.

At that point, a shutdown fight is over House giving Senate DACA bill a vote.

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) January 22, 2018

Paul Ryan has a very difficult path ahead here.

If there's another shutdown in a few weeks — after both chambers passed their DACA bills — Senate Dems have the argument that it's because Paul Ryan won't give their DACA bill a vote.

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) January 22, 2018

if that's where we end up then we can say that what we got from this shutdown is trump stuck in DC, unable to go to his terrible party where caviar was served on plastic spoons, and found out who is running for the dem nomination in 2020.

the people not on this list are running for president

idk if e.g. Duckworth runs how much hay is anyone going to make over this? "Senator Duckworth, can you defend your January 2018 cloture vote on the continuing resolution that blah blah blah we all forgot already?"

this parliamentary minutiae sure is compelling

wake me when DACA is torpedoed

There are a lot of weird assumptions people are making of motives. The senators voting against this were among the most likely to have voted against it whether they were running for president or not. Similarly, the senators in tough-race Trump country were going to have a tough, tight race no matter what they voted for.

yeah i've found the horse-race how-will-it-help-the-party coverage of this situation even more irritating than usual. ending DACA is shitty, inhumane, and destructive policy - maybe some people want to force it to the table while they have leverage because it's important.

fwiw i don't think the people who voted against (or for) the agreement don't sincerely think they're doing the right thing. and i don't think people are going to remember this specific vote in two years. but voting against this agreement is part of a pattern for a group of people who are positioning themselves to run.

yeah i don't disagree with that. and to the extent that self-interested political careerism can have spinoff benefits, i'd count this as one - people seem to have taken the lesson that shitty votes on things like the iraq war resolution did keep coming up and hamstringing politicians to various degrees later on. so, make fewer shitty votes; there's no percentage in seeming "bipartisan" when the majority party is a racist nightmare think tank.

lmao https://voterguide.dallasnews.com/2018-primary/races/40/#candidates=candidate-82,candidate-83

^ change has to start somewhere. the 23 year old guy is just acting like an average 23 year old, but more publically than most. ergo, lmao.

dickwolf 2020

so is the plan to get bipartisan senate support on a moderate DACA bill, send it to the house (where it won't pass), and then use it to beat republicans around with for the midterms and get a house majority?

i mean, okay, but that still doesn't get DACA protection passed.

Dems suck, that is all

Dems suck, that is all

― frogbs, Monday, January 22, 2018 6:49 PM (fifteen seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

they need the gov't reopened so they can get back to work killing dodd/frank with 1,000 papercuts with their gop friends

I would love to throw eggs at Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray today. Fucking spineless shitheads.

what bothers me is not so much that they caved, but rather that they caved to a known bunch of amoral liars who are absolutely going to use it as evidence that they can pull more power plays like this in the future

Sure, the CR is a three-week thing and it opens up the possibility of another opportunity on Feburary 8th.

But that's 2,562 Dreamers that will lose protections by that time.

What depraved act does ICE have to do to show that they give NO shits about separating families?

— Kristian Steffany 🌹 (@kksteffany) January 22, 2018

democrats aren't perfect. they lost 1041 state and federal posts (congressional and state legislative seats, and governorships) while obama was president. i wonder how many they're going to lose while trump is president

democrats 2018: pobody's nerfect!

I mean on one hand I kind of get it, partisan politics has such a prisoner's dilemma aspect to it, and the GOP has been very loudly saying "we will fuck you over" at every turn. there's not really a whole lot the Dems could do.

that said, the Dems are pretty good at making the worst of a bad situation

anyway on a later note, something strange is going on with Sheriff Big Boy

https://twitter.com/SheriffClarkeTC

If DACA doesn't pass in February, it's either on McConnell for not honoring promise, or on the GOP and Trump. Thus, what they got was, at worst, a Feb shutdown that can't be blamed on Dems.

Politically, it looks fine for the Dems. Morally -- those DACA beneficiaries who will lose status while the Chuck Todds of our lives sigh with relief -- it's another story.

yea I get that but the Dems have absolutely zero reason to trust McConnell on this, given that he's broken this exact promise several times already

meanwhile they come off as spineless and look like they really don't care about the Dreamers after all

we'll see what happens in 3 weeks but I'm not hopeful

like the whole reason DACA is on the table right now is because McConnell broke his promise to vote on it in December. Schumer just setting up to get Charlie Brown'd yet again

It's tricky tho. The GOP isn't wrong in thinking that "Dem shutdown for illegals" is a politically strong hand. No guarantee that continuing the shutdown leads to any better outcome for DACA. At least this way they have a shot -- however slim -- at separating the issue from the CR. And if it still leads to another shutdown in two weeks, it's more obviously on the GOP.

The leverage the Dems have atm is very easy to overestimate. The people handed the reins of government to a crowd of despicable people, but the shitheels hold the power and the Dems have almost zilch to work with. To reach back to an archaic saying, fine words butter no parsnips.

idk "the GOP is trying to kill children" seems like decent leverage to me

Have you followed American politics at all?

.@GOPWhip also made it clear no commitment for House to take up Senate DACA deal, saying any bill had to include funding for the wall and "would not include amnesty"

— Deirdre Walsh (@deirdrewalshcnn) January 22, 2018

lmao already

how did the Dems bungle this so badly

meanwhile

BREAKING: Pennsylvania Supreme Court throws out state's congressional map, ruling that gerrymandering violates constitution.

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 22, 2018

the GOP is trying to kill children

In other words... another Tuesday?

xpost Cool, let's see how long it takes the SC to overturn that one!

WHOA re SC-PA and gerrymandering, I'm not sure people were optimistic about the outcome of that case.

it's a 'commonwealth' steve, but

Important: Because this lawsuit relies solely on Pennsylvania's *state* constitution, there would be little room for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision striking down the map https://t.co/BE1AC9tsrT

— Stephen Wolf (@PoliticsWolf) January 19, 2018

The GOP isn't wrong in thinking that "Dem shutdown for illegals" is a politically strong hand.

It's catnip for Red Hatters, who've been pushing the distorted optics fostered by Comrade Combover of hurting the military to save these people who shouldn't have been here in the first place.

lmao https://voterguide.dallasnews.com/2018-primary/races/40/#candidates=candidate-82,candidate-83

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, January 22, 2018 1:22 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I suspect that the reason Trump and the GOP expect North Korea, Iran et al to capitulate entirely on negotiations is because they're so used to negotiating with Democrats.

— Malcolm Fleschner (@CultureShlock) January 22, 2018

lol xp

*massive bong rip* legalize weed