September 30th, 2013
So I have no insights about the politics of a government shutdown tomorrow–maybe it would be bad for Dems, maybe it would be bad for the GOP. If anything, my guess would be that shutting down the government over Obamacare could be hugely destabilizing (politically) and that the results are actually pretty unpredictable. (If this view was correct, though, then both sides would have incentive to avoid a shutdown. The GOP looks to have pretty good positioning for 2014; Dems want to try to preserve Obamacare. The status quo has a lot to offer both parties.)
That said, what I’m really struck by is the nearly unanimous chorus from the left about how awful a shutdown would be for Republicans. If they really think that the GOP will be devastated by a shutdown, then wouldn’t they be welcoming it, instead of lamenting all the awful, no-good extremists which have hijacked the party?
(That is, hijacked it in the wake of the last hijacking in 2012. And the one before that in 2010. Which came after the hijacking in 2008 and . . .)
Update: Galley Friend X offers some smart thoughts:
My guess is the Ds are talking up the horrors so much because they suspect the impact will not be felt very far beyond Fairfax and MoCo. Nevertheless, they know that “shutdown” polls miserably for the GOP. So if they gin up the horror story ahead of time and then the media report “shutdown” it’ll hurt the GOP via political narrative as opposed to by actually having the GOP harm people. This strikes me as a pretty good strategy on one level. On the other, it’s possible that people will wake up and realize the government does a lot of useless shit (as with the sequester) and not mind the actual shut down. I think that gets hard to predict–especially what that does in terms of party negotiations is highly variable. E.g. Durbin is now willing to talk about the medical device tax, which I think is a surprising admission of weakness on the Ds’ part.
I just think the GOP misplayed their hand because of the Obamacare mania. Instead use targeted poison pills in the CRs aimed at 2014 democrats to get clean admissions for the elections on their support of discrete and unpopular policies like the individual mandate, congressional Obamacare perks, carbon regs, med device tax, whatever. But that would help win elections beyond just Iowa….
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Because they only reason it would be bad for Republicans is if people talked about how bad the shutdown would be and how it is the fault of no-good extremists who shut down the government?
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I do not think you should negotiate and give things you do not want to give in exchange for the other side doing what they want to do.
Here the republicans do not want the government shut down. The Republicans do not want a government shut down why should Democrats give anything in exchange for no government shut down?
I suppose most elite educated Media members know that the Republicans do not want a shut down. And in exchange for delaying Obama Care the republicans offer something they want any way.
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The feminine intuition of the id of the New Republic’s sassy foreign-people correspondent, Carmen Sandiego, is that Obama could maybe address it by shelling the Duma. I guess no one in Washington has hobbies any more, or just life activities that don’t involve politics any more. Without quotable lines from new episodes of “Morning Joe” how would they even simulate social encounters
Mose October 1, 2013 at 11:09 am
It seems reasonably clear to me that Obama and Reid think this is a fight they can win (the hard line on negotiating being only the most obvious evidence). Obviously, for public relations reasons they can’t gleefully welcome the shutdown. Lamenting “all the awful, no-good extremists which have hijacked the” GOP is exactly what they want to be doing. They think this is going to be a PR disaster for the GOP and they think the GOP is going to cave in relatively short order. I don’t know if they are correct, but the behavior by the Dem leaders so far seems to be entirely consistent with a theory that the shutdown will be bad for the GOP.