A week ago today, I wrote my first reaction to Trump floating the possibility of declaring a "national emergency" to end the shutdown and use funds appropriated for other projects to build his "wall." My reaction in that post was, essentially, that it was a real possibility, with a probability that I couldn't estimate because it was too fucking crazy and beyond the scope of what we have seen in politics. A day later, I thought it was the likely outcome. Then, with another day to think about it, it just seemed like I couldn't figure out another way this played out. So, over the course of less than 48 hours, I went from "uh, fuck it, it could happen, but I have know idea how likely it is!," to, "yup, this is happening," and this is for a course of action that, three years ago, would have been so batshit crazy that my response would have been to tell anyone who predicted it to put down the crack pipe. Drugs are bad, m'kay!
Politics in the age of Donald J. Trump. I have a new nickname for him. Shiva, Destroyer of Constitutional Governance.* (I should start keeping track of all of the stuff I have called him.)
How does this happen? Let's deal with some of the bullshit punditry first. This isn't about "the wall." It is about Trump's need to establish dominance. Remember two things. First, he had agreed to fund the government without any wall funding until some conservative media figures goaded him into the shutdown. Second, Democrats offered him wall-funding in exchange for DACA, and Trump turned them down. Why? He hates DACA more than he wants his "wall." Otherwise he would have said yes. In economics, we call this "the axiom of revealed preferences."
What does Trump value intensely? The image of dominance. The point is to show what he thinks is "toughness," which he gets by making Democrats cave. What if he truly wanted wall funding? Offer DACA.
Hell, offer expansion of healthcare spending. Something like that. If Trump really thought the "wall" were that important, and he really knew how to make "a deal," he could get wall funding. Why doesn't that happen? Because all of his "I'm a deal-maker" shit is bullshit. Remember, he views everything in zero-sum terms. I wrote a long series about this back during the 2016 campaign, but this is antithetical to the concept of deal-making. Trump doesn't want to make a deal because he doesn't want to give up anything. That's the point of a shutdown. The point of forcing a shutdown, as Trump did (remember-- he insisted that it was his shutdown) is to try to get the other side to give you something for nothing because you don't want to make a deal. You want to show dominance. And since that dominance is the point for Trump, not the wall, there's no deal to be had, and there never will be. The whole point is to not deal.
Otherwise, Trump would have taken the wall-funding for DACA deal when the Democrats offered it.
That's not where we are, though. Trump won't offer anything because the whole point is to get something for nothing. That means, given the structure of his true preferences, he can't offer anything. This is where things start breaking from the norm. A normal president, or even any normal political figure, has real beliefs about policy. Trump cares first and foremost about establishing dominance for himself. Nothing will ever be more valuable to him than that. He'd burn the country to the ground if he thought it made him look "tough." This is what is driving Trump, and causing a major break from normal political negotiation.
That means Democrats can't agree to any of Trump's terms because Trump will never offer anything. He walked away from the DACA deal. He won't offer anything because the whole point is to get something for nothing, and Pelosi can't give that to him. She cannot, in the sense that she'd get removed as Speaker if she tried. Joe Cannon, John Boehner... and then Nancy Pelosi. And that's even if she wanted to cave, which she doesn't. She is constrained not to cave. What if Trump were to offer a true deal, and weren't a lying shitbag who would back out of it? What if he could be trusted to go through with something on DACA, maybe throw in some healthcare spending, blah, blah, blah? Could a deal be reached? Yeah. Re-open the government first. Give it a month. DACA plus something in exchange for some wall money, and Democrats could deal. Why? That's a deal, rather than extortion. The wall is stupid, and it won't do anything. It's a waste of money, and a broken promise because Mexico was supposed to pay for it, but if the Democrats could get something out of throwing some wasted money at Trump's ego... sure. However, the whole point for Trump is to force Democrats to cave with nothing in exchange. That's why we are in a shutdown. If Trump were willing to deal, and really wanted the wall, he'd have taken the wall funding for DACA deal when it was offered. Donald Trump is always lying, and always full of shit.
And that leaves one way out. The bullshit national emergency declaration. This is a completely ludicrous shutdown created by Trump's need to establish dominance. That's where it breaks from past shutdowns. The 1995-6 shutdowns were about cutting funding to social programs, for example. Gingrich just lost, and it took time for him to admit it. The 2013 shutdown was about Obamacare, forced by Ted Cruz, and it took time for Boehner to get his caucus to admit that the GOP had lost.
This isn't really about policy. It's about Trump's need to establish dominance because conservative media figures called him weak. Pelosi can't cave, and Trump's whole reason for doing this is to try to force them to cave, and not cave himself. This is the weirdest, dumbest shutdown ever, and that's without even talking about the intrinsic stupidity of the wall, or the fact that Mexico was supposed to pay for it.
Once you understand that, you understand that we are already in a situation that breaks from any past shutdowns, and shutdowns are already really weird. Given Trump's position, he has one option, given the structure of his preferences-- the national emergency declaration. It is the only way that the shutdown ends without him either caving or offering Democrats a true deal, and since he considers real deals to be caving, that can't happen. He already destroyed any possibility of that anyway when he walked away from the wall-for-DACA deal. He forced a shutdown with the hope that he could make Pelosi cave, and he can't. That leaves only one realistic option-- the emergency declaration.
Yes, that option is an option that should have been considered so "inconceivable" that it was off the table completely. However, Shiva, Destroyer of Constitutional Governance has so radically altered our political landscape that this kind of thing just... happens. He floats the idea, waits, and eventually, it's just going to happen because nothing else can happen.
Right now, Trump is acting like he doesn't want to do it. There is some bullshit, phony pushback from within the GOP, from corners who still remember what they used to say about Obama, and blah, blah, blah.
ALL of that will disappear when Trump actually goes through with this. Remember the "neverTrumpers?" Remember when Lindsey Graham hated Trump? You know how he is now the most loyal, little Trump fluffer in the Senate? And if "Willard" says anything even remotely critical, the whole party piles on? Yeah, watch what happens. The shutdown might need to drag on a bit longer. The pain may need to grow. Pelosi has no need to cave. The thing is, once Trump goes through with this, and once Fox News and the rest of conservative media back the emergency declaration maneuver, every one of those hypocritical little shits feigning distaste for the emergency declaration will get in line. Just like Lindsey Graham. Spineless cowards, all.
And that's how this happens. We get a president with no true policy preferences, who cares only about establishing dominance, who refuses to engage in actual bargaining, walks away from real deals, gets goaded into a stupid shutdown with no plan to end it, and is surrounded by a party of lying, hypocritical sycophants who will back him no matter what.
He is become death. Destroyer of Constitutional Governance.
*I am ripping off one of my favorite authors-- John Scalzi. In the "Old Man's War" series, one of the central characters had a dog that he had nicknamed, "Shiva, Destroyer of Shoes." As John Fahey wrote in the liner notes of an early album, if you are going to steal, steal from someone obscure. Is this obscure?