|
The lame duck dictatorship
Trump is fighting his "war within" on multiple fronts and losing them all.
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
PN is supported by paid subscribers. Become one ⬇️
Democrats of all ideological persuasions correctly rebuked the decision of eight senators to accept a deal to end the shutdown without meaningful GOP concessions.
But the unforced error by that small cohort shouldn’t blind Democrats to the dramatic shift in political fortunes against the Republican Party that’s occurred or to the need to remain focused on doing everything possible to enhance the growing political crackup of the GOP as Donald Trump enters the lame duck period of his dictatorship.
 |
|
The rationale for the shutdown “deal” was rooted in received wisdom that government shutdowns inevitably work to the political determinant of their proponents.
It’s true that Republican legislators in 1995-96 and 2013, and then President Donald Trump in 2018-19, created huge messes for Republicans by using shutdowns to coerce Democrats into abandoning their core commitments, including by trying to force an end to the implementation of the ACA and to fund the building of a Berlin Wall-like structure on the southern border.
But the 2025 shutdown was based on an entirely different political calculation, honed by Democratic leadership in the House and Senate to focus on a point of major GOP vulnerability: The MAGA scheme to undermine the ACA, legislation supported by a supermajority of Americans and a program on which many Republicans rely for health coverage.
Democrats made a single shutdown demand: the continuation of the enhanced ACA tax credits, an action Trump’s own pollsters predicted Republicans would pay a huge political price for opposing. That’s why Republicans were on the losing end of the political battle over the past couple months.
From the outset, a majority of Americans bucked the historical norm by not blaming Democrats for causing the shutdown. Instead, they (rightly) found Trump and his captive Republican Party culpable for opposing the Democrats’ reasonable (and popular) healthcare demands.
More, weeks into the shutdown, Democrats on November 4 won race after race up and down the ballot and across the country. The next morning, Trump, in a rare recognition of reality, conceded that public rage at the shutdown was one of the keys to Republicans’ loss.
Despite the unforced error that prematurely ended the shutdown, it’s increasingly clear that Trump and his captive political party are in the midst of a political reversal — one that Democrats must now do everything possible to accelerate.
Every major “policy” of Trump’s Republican Party is unpopular, and the regime’s leader is a lame duck dictator who is poised to draw his party deeper into a political abyss.