As I write this, the continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open for the next seven weeks while various appropriations are worked out, is now in a stall, day three of the shutdown. Commenting on the money matters of the federal government is something I never do as even the peripheral details are beyond my interest or knowledge of legislative procedure and this post, in spite of the implications in the title, is no exception. Instead, this post is about the political dimension, but more specifically, what could be an inflection point that would change governing for the foreseeable future.
To summarize what’s transpired so far, the Republicans have done the work and passed clean appropriation and CR bills. Now its stuck in the Senate at the behest of Minority ‘Leader’ Chuck Schumer. Chuck caught hell from his own leftward base the last time he went along to get along. Furthermore, he’s scared stiff of being primaried by AOC. Count the levels of future potential humiliation: 1) a Senate Minority Leader loses his race. 2) He loses it in the primary 3) He loses it to a mid-level congresswoman 4) The same congresswoman is intellectually challenged and conducts her affairs of office purely by stunts, social media glamming, and by loudly mouthing automatically discredited rhetoric to her equally or more stupid base. Ergo, Chuck must shut down the entire government in an attempt to save his ego and thwart AOC and the entire socialist/communist wing of their party. Chuck is not a leader. At best, Chuck is a manager who is now in over his head and for all the wrong reasons. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of other Senators that are either true believers or followers in holding the entire government hostage to force what they’re never actually earn, but Chuck sits in the seatthat were he a true leader, others would follow.
This presents a golden opportunity for the Democrats. On this vote, about 8 more votes are needed, a few of those having already crossed the aisle to vote in the affirmative with the Republicans. Chuck is being held at metaphorical gunpoint to make sure he doesn’t ‘cave’ this time. Doesn’t exactly sound like a leader to me. What if eight or ten Senators decided to follow the example of Fetterman and not just meekly crossed the aisle to move the process along, but what if they decided that they should also be proud of it and lead their party out of the leftist swamp they’ve steered into, of which the CR is just a tactical manuever? What if they told Chuck Schumer, you aren’t leading, you can’t lead, so we will?
You’re a handful of Lieutenants that know that if your ship keeps going a certain direction, the whole thing is going down. (Ignoring the venal implications of your captain’s predicament), you know the captain won’t change course and the crowd is screaming for him to stay on the collision course. The only thing required of you and your knowing peers to avert disaster is to stick together and declare a change of direction. Of course, there is a risk of being accused of mutiny, but you will act within the law and take that risk knowing there is ultimately nothing to lose compared to the certainty of greater calamity.
About eight Senators could stand up today and say, our party, this Senate, and the country will not be blackmailed by AOC and her gang of radicals and us eight Senators will now, going forward, act together as a caucus of crucial swing votes to assure that the radical drift of our party stops here and now. Such a caucus would put the radical slide of the entire Democrat party into socialism and communism into a screeching halt. If that bloc along with others that might come out of the shadows and join them, all held steady, it wouldn’t matter what Chuck Schumer could and couldn’t do. Don’t expect him to grow a spine or principles, but either he or any other far leftist that should come into power upon the vote of others would be powerless without their votes for the foreseeable future. Eight Democrats could rewrite history this weekend.
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