Alea iacta est
While the Democrats and the Republicans blame each other for the shutdown, the Democrats are defending what is essentially the spoiler and seemingly undemocratic position of refusing to fund the budget. We shouldn't, as in Aristotle's example, concentrate on isolated points while ignoring that history is the arc of an arrow.
The blame can be equally shared and didn't start with the budget. Apart from the obvious immediate players, some of our heroes share some complicity.
Ruth Ginsburg hung on too long. So, too, Biden. Hubris has had its cost. As a result, we ended up with a Supreme Court that is collaborationist. When Sonia Sotomajor and Elena Kagan were nominated, the big debate and vitriol was that they were "activist" liberal judges. Ginsberg's death was followed by the failure to nominate Obama's choice. What followed was obvious to anyone who follows the machinations of government; a Supreme Court with new members that have shown their mettle in the Republican culture wars.
Biden hung on too long. It is their talent that conservatives are able to constantly turn things around. After that horrible debate - their whisper campaign of his incapacity confirmed - he now became the object of their bathos. He was portrayed as the hapless victim of a feckless party who ultimately abandoned him and used an unfair and antidemocratic procedure to nominate Harris.
I blame Harris for abandoning the ship. She had an integral part of an administration that for four years had successfully undone the Trump administration's damage. It was a record that was not just defensible, it was laudable. Yet, she sold counter-intuitive goods. Her message was essentially defeatist. She distanced herself from Biden while at the same time selling what could only be seen as a generic version of the same. It was an intellectual double bind not lost on an electorate that needed more medicine, not a placebo.
The perfect storm was the Republicans. You suck. You allowed no one to pass your purity litmus test. No one was shitty enough for you? Not Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz, Mario Rubio or any of the other horsemen?
And now, having done that twice, you are cowered. You buy into his style of governance that completely abandons the idea of making things work. You not only condone his anarchic rules of engagement, you abet him.
And that's how we got to this impasse. But "My way or the highway" only works when you have the numbers. The vote requires 60 votes. (You could have changed the rules but you won't.) You knew you could not count on some of your own members. Knowing that, you FUCK YOU, LUMP IT OR LEAVE IT passed a budget that will completely destroy the lives of the most fragile members of our country. Decimating health care for millions of people, millions of poor people, while at the same time passing tax benefits for uber rich is the Rubicon. The position of the Democrats is not the spoiler position, it is a principled rearguard action.
