Someone caves. Setting yourself up for victory in any negotiation traditionally involves giving your opponent a way to cave. Right now, we aren't at that stage. We're still at the recriminations stage. What does victory look like, though?
In any normal shutdown showdown, what is at stake is policy. For Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans, policy really is what is at stake. They fundamentally disagree about policy. Trump, though, is different. What we must always remember about Trump is that he doesn't know anything about policy, and doesn't care about policy. For all his bluster about the wall, remember his phone call with Nieto.
Donald Trump does not give a flying fuck about the wall. He cares about appearances.
He released an ad accusing the Democrats of being complicit in murders committed by illegal immigrants. Why? Because he's Donald Trump, but more generally, this is about how Trump approaches "bargaining." Since Trump neither knows nor cares about policy-- he doesn't even care about the wall!-- his goals are different. He cares about dominance displays. The ad is about displaying dominance. He doesn't just want Democrats to cave-- he wants it to be as painful and humiliating as possible when they do. Victory, for Trump, is defined as Democrats being humiliated. It cannot be defined as anything else because he doesn't know anything about policy.
Remember: He admitted to Nieto that he doesn't give a shit about the wall. This isn't about policy. This is about dominance displays.
What does this mean? It means Trump can't back down. I covered this back in the summer of 2016 in the "Political science & craziness" series. It means he can't cut a deal either because the whole point is that if Democrats are satisfied, he can't be satisfied. And not in a cool, blues kind of way. If I define my victory by your loss, then we're never going to agree.
This really does put the Democrats at a disadvantage. It is much easier to see how they cave than to see how Trump caves. Then again, one can also see a rift forming between Trump and the Senate GOP because the Senate GOP does not define its victory by Schumer's humiliation. There is a contingent that actually does care about policy, and actually does look at polls without just writing them off as "fake news."
Every shutdown ends with someone caving. I really have a hard time seeing how a DACA deal happens, though, given the dynamics within the GOP. House conservatives will rip Paul Ryan to shreds if he lets a DACA deal get to the floor, and Trump hates DACA. Not because he understands policy-- he's just a racist, and knows it was Obama's policy. As we learned from the Nieto phone call, he doesn't even really care about the wall. All he cares about is humiliating the Democrats. So... how does a deal happen? I don't see it. The only way Democrats "win" this is if Senate Republicans get so spooked that they turn on Trump and the House.
Could that happen? Sure. We have seen dramatic splits between the House and Senate GOP before, including during the 2013 shutdown! It is possible that the polls go so strongly against the GOP that Mitch McConnell cuts a deal with Chuck Schumer, and then threatens to release incriminating evidence against anyone who stops that deal from going through.
Keep in mind: I fuckin' hate Trump, and I have a history of ripping McConnell to shreds, but as you'll notice, I've been kind of blaming the Democrats here. The fact is that Senate Democrats are insisting on non-germane policy concessions for the continued operation of government. I don't see how this is different from what Ted Cruz pulled in 2013. If I'm going to criticize him without being a hypocrite, I have to apply the same rule to Schumer. The only way to do otherwise is to judge them by their policy goals, and I'm not going to do that. I really can make a case that the Democrats are the hostage-takers here, and I'm not naturally sympathetic to Trump. This could end badly for the Democrats.
Every shutdown ends with someone caving, though. I think the Democrats may have painted themselves into a corner. Trump can't cave. He is pathologically incapable of doing anything other than doubling down, no matter how weak his position is, and all he really cares about doing is humiliating Democrats. Suppose Democrats do win the public relations battle. Trump is kind of a public relations disaster... What happens if the party losing the public relations battle doesn't cave because their president thinks the polls are "fake news?"
Well, congressional Republicans could cave for him and override a veto, or the Senate could go nuclear, like Trump wants, but that later possibility requires keeping both Collins and Murkowski on board, since the GOP only has 51 seats in the Senate.
This is nuts.
Maybe it's time to put this one back into circulation...
