Maybe if I’m extra nice he’ll stop hitting me

One thing that simply doesn’t work is to run for election on the we’re in an existential battle to save democracy from the fascist hordes platform, lose, bombard all your supports with twelve zillion texts and emails about how Donald Trump is on the verge of establishing a dictatorship so you had better rush us ten dollars now to pass the No Kings Act (how stupid do they think we are? Don’t answer that), and then, after all that, simply unconditionally surrender to the aforementioned hordes and aspiring dictator, on the basis of the inspiring claim that it’s the savvy thing to do.

Josh Marshall thinks that dog won’t hunt, although characteristically he acknowledges that he could be wrong (I doubt it):

There was a recognition up in the Senate yesterday that letting the bill pass was a bad idea, but that was matched by a pained realization that the caucus wasn’t ready for the fight. They hadn’t laid any of the groundwork. They didn’t have a clear answer of what they’d be fighting for if a shutdown happened. They’d put their bets on Mike Johnson not being able to get a bill through the House without Democratic votes. When he did, they were caught flatfooted. But the “they” here is Chuck Schumer. That’s the leader’s job. He lead them into a corner.

When you’re weak you only think about getting hurt. It not only constrains your actions. It shapes and limits what future possibilities you are able to imagine. It makes it impossible to see or consider the ways that acting and taking risks, making foes react to you rather than constantly reacting to them can change the playing field and create new possibilities. I think that’s what brought Chuck Schumer to this moment. None of us know the future. So disagreements are inevitable. What was unforgivable was Schumer’s trying to hoodwink his supporters.

Yesterday staffers were consoling each other and outside supporters with the argument that history is clear: parties that overreach like this get walloped in midterm elections. It may surprise you to hear that I think they’re right. For weeks I’ve thought that by a narrowly electoral calculus it’s probably the better move for the Democrats to simply get out of the way. That was Jim Carville’s advice a few weeks ago. The problem is that by the time Democrats have any chance at power again the federal government will be unrecognizable, a smoldering heap of faits accompli. In his justification speech this afternoon, Schumer said that “for Donald Trump, a shutdown would be a gift.” To this we have to assume that doing precisely what Trump demands amounts to some kind of ingenious counterstrike. I doubt that’s true.

The other issue is the simple and unlovely one that people who get hit and abused and take it tend to get hit and abused again and again. That’s all the more true with Donald Trump, a man who can only see the world through the prism of the dominating and the dominated. It is a great folly to imagine that such an abject acquiescence won’t drive him to up the ante.

There are a few very sharp people who disagree with my take on this. One of them is Adam Jentleson. He’s no softie. Adam is the dean of filibuster reformers. He says a shutdown is a gift to DOGE. It just gives them more power, more people hurt. I disagree with that, for the reasons I’ve outlined in this and other recent posts. But keep an eye on what Adam says. (Always listen to the smartest people who disagree with you.) He says that “the fight is the midterms and every election from now til then.” That’s right. But again, we need to slow down the destruction as much as we can before those elections start to bear fruit. Because the government Dems might semi-inherit in 2027 will be unrecognizable otherwise. And we’re a dozen or more hours from relinquishing the one real point of leverage all year.

There’s still time to make your voice heard.

AOC is out there laying down the fire — right now she reminds me of Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, grabbing the wheel of the troop transporter from the feckless paralyzed Colonel — and there are plenty of other members of Congress who are willing to join her in launching some opposition party strategy that involves, you know, opposition.

The old men have gotten us into this fix, and politics, like physics, apparently advances one funeral at a time.