Democrats can’t save democracy by shutting down the government |
Chuck Schumer’s Democrats have less of a democratic mandate than Newt Gingrich’s did in 1996 or John Boehner’s in 2013. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s government is increasingly authoritarian.
The president is launching pretextual investigations against his enemies, while providing pardons and military honors to the most violent of his friends. He is extorting news organizations for friendlier coverage and blackmailing law firms for pro bono services. He is unilaterally nullifying congressionally ordered spending and firing federally protected civil servants. He is asserting federal control of municipal police forces, so as to empower cops to “do whatever the hell they want.” And he is deporting longtime US residents without due process.
None of this is a mistake or an aberration. Since entering politics, Trump has told us — over and over — that he has contempt for democracy and the rule of law. Now, he’s assembled an administration dedicated to translating his autocratic impulses into policy.
Democrats want their leaders to do something about this. But the party can’t do much. It controls neither chamber of Congress and boasts only three allies on the Supreme Court. Its sole claim to federal power lies in its capacity to filibuster bills in the Senate: Under current rules, most legislation requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster; Republicans have only 53.
Democrats can therefore threaten to block Congress from passing a new budget, unless the GOP offers certain concessions. Failure to reach such a compromise would result in a government shutdown. The current budget expires on September 30, so imminent action is needed to avert a suspension of myriad public services.
Some liberals want Democrats to block such action, in the name of democracy. In the New York Times, Ezra Klein argues that his party should shut down the government, so as to force Republicans to enact curbs on Trump’s power.
Unfortunately, there is no reason to think this would work. The GOP is not going to defy its dear leader for the sake of reopening national parks.
There might still be a case for Democrats to shut down the government. But the point of such hardball tactics would be to improve the party’s odds of victory in next year’s congressional elections, not to secure new legal restrictions on Trump’s power. The latter are, for now, unwinnable.
This story was first featured in The Rebuild.
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Shutting down the government won’t make Republicans less authoritarian
In his Times column, Klein, a Vox co-founder, calls on Democrats to choke off government funding unless or until Republicans acquiesce to restrictions on Trump’s authoritarianism and corruption. In making this case, he distilled and amplified a pervasive line of thought among highly engaged progressives.
Klein is not certain what Democrats should specifically demand. But he offers a few suggestions: that ICE agents cease wearing masks when conducting deportations; that the Trump family desist from investing in foreign countries; that every agency employ an independent inspector general; and that career prosecutors in the Justice Department enjoy job protections, among other things.
His argument for this general strategy boils down to four claims:
A shutdown is “an attentional event” — one that can “turn the diffuse crisis of Trump’s corrupting of the government into an acute crisis that the media, that the public, will actually pay attention to.” Refusing to fund the government could therefore spotlight the president’s authoritarianism and rally the public against it. America needs its civil society to resist the president’s coercion. Every law firm, university, and media company that acquiesces to blackmail makes it harder for other legal, academic, and journalistic institutions to resist similar extortion. By refusing to cooperate with Trump’s government, the Democratic Party would........