I suppose that is what I am saying. Swinging blindly at the attacker to say we fought and then getting shot anyways isn’t going to help the country. The executive branch holds disproportionate power in a shutdown. Trump would gladly wield it and blame Democrats for anything that went wrong.

They hold no cards in this congress. They need to play for the midterms and their best shot is to let Trump dig his grave and win disgruntled centrists that voted red last time

There is no winning side. America lost either way. Democrats had nothing to gain by allowing a shutdown but a hollow moral victory that hurt them politically long term.

He folded because he held a losing hand. It would be foolish to play it. The damage to the country may be the same in either reality, but now Trump can’t blame it on “Schumer’s Shutdown” (I can see the tweets already) and use it against the Democrats in the midterm.

I suppose now we’ll never know for sure, but I just don’t see how with everything we’ve seen so far, that Trump wouldn’t just defund anything he deems “non-essential” all while blaming democrats for everything that results from the shutdown until they eventually have to capitulate anyways.

I just don’t buy that. There’s no way democrats come out on top by willingly giving Trump the kind of unchecked power a shutdown would give him. It was a win win for Trump. He knew it and Schumer knew it.

So we’re boycotting a book on antisemitism because its author *checks notes* prevented a shutdown that would have given Trump even more unchecked power.

With all the insanity from the far right the last several years, I’ve almost forgotten how completely out of touch with reality the far left is. It’s a sad day when Chuck Schumer has to be the voice of reason. Trump would run wild in a shutdown. That’s what he really wanted.

You know the NYTimes is doing something right when both the far left and far right hate them