The politics of the Musk/Trump/Thune/Johnson shutdown

JMM considers some arguments in favor of the Senate minority bailing out the Republican trifecta, and then explains why he thinks they’re wrong:

First, I think Republicans are going to get wrecked in the midterms. I think that’s highly likely whatever happens. As a narrowly electoral calculus I think there’s a decent argument Democrats should just let everything happen, let Trump and Musk go wild. In this sense, James Carville’s argument that Democrats should just do nothing is right, by a narrowly electoral calculus. But there’s more than just an electoral calculus. Trump and Musk are methodically dismantling the republic day by day. Absent some major change in the trajectory of events the government Democrats might half-inherit in a midterm sweep would be all but unrecognizable, a smoldering heap of faits accompli. Democrats need to take some real risks to at least slow the process of destruction and reshape the trajectory.

The same basic argument applies to the “it’s too soon, things aren’t ripe” argument. There’s a political logic. Trump is likely to be much less popular. Popular programs will be on the line in the fall. The public will have had a lot more time to internalize what Trump’s doing. I just don’t think the opposition has the luxury of time. Same argument as above.

On controlling the pace of a shutdown, that is an advantage for Trump. There will be a lot of game playing. But I don’t think that’s decisive.

Will Democrats get blamed? Maybe. It’s impossible to know how public opinion will evolve. But there are good reasons to doubt they will. First, Republicans almost always get blamed for a shutdown and not Democrats. And that’s for a simple reason: nobody buys the idea that the Democrats want to shut down the government. They’re the party of government. Everybody knows that. It’s basically the Trump Republicans’ whole argument!

Analysts come up with all sort of arcane and baroque arguments why one side gets blamed versus the other. But it almost always comes down to that. It’s the same reason Democrats never get much traction attacking Republicans on defense spending. No one buys the idea that Republicans aren’t super into guns and tanks.

Shutdowns have indeed been the one major case where Murc’s Law doesn’t generally apply, and Elon’s army of incels going on a mass firing spree is unlikely to change that.

This leads us to the related argument that Elon and Trump actually want the shutdown because it will make their path of destruction easier. I agree that it’s not really clear how it could be any worse:

Now let’s get to what seems to be the most alluring argument: that Musk and Trump really want a shutdown or at least will benefit from it and they’re essentially luring Democrats into a trap. It is true that I believe 30 days into a shutdown the executive branch gets more opportunities to lay people off. So in this specific sense slashing does get easier after a few weeks of a shutdown. The more macro argument would be: how does literally shutting the government down combat someone who’s trying to do exactly that? Sure, it energetically speeds the process along in a sense. I’ve even heard it argued that this scenario allows Musk the optimal situation to figure out just the optimal level of cutting, how much is necessary for the most meager level of government function, where’s the sweet spot for some political backlash but not too much.

Does this make sense? It strikes me as so much whistling past the grave.

Musk is slicing through the federal bureaucracy like butter. It’s not at all clear to me how a shutdown makes his job any easier. He may get additional legal avenues after 30 days, but right now he’s carving his own roads through the federal bureaucracy. Nothing is holding him back. Just today, I heard about another major department of government that is about to shutter regional offices in blue states across the country. It seems absurd to imagine that laying low and providing a fully funded license for Musk to keep cutting for the next six months is a more destructive outcome than drawing a line in the sand now. Really, how exactly could he be any less restrained than removing all restraints from him in advance? How is that possible? As I said, it’s like planning your escape from Treblinka and you decide it’s too risky because they’ll kill you if you get caught.

The most important point, though, is this. Republicans have made no concessions to the Democrats. To respond to an offer of “nothing” by capitulating would be really bad, and I just don’t see any political downside that would justify it:

The reality here is that this isn’t Democrats shutting down anything. Republicans intentionally crafted a bill that ignores literally every Democratic demand. They’re forcing Democrats to either say no or make an abject surrender.

To reiterate, the broader problem here is that as long as Elon/Trump assert their power to ignore congressional appropriations, you can’t make a meaningful deal with Republicans even if they were willing to negotiate (which they aren’t.) As long as that’s their position, Democrats have to reject it.