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Move on to what? I think the Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has some interesting and perhaps useful things to say about this. One thing he makes clear though is that yelling about it just makes you look weak. Just trying to move public opinion is not enough.

Here's a longish quote from him: "The big thing to understand in terms of the Democratic opposition is that they’re out of power. This really comes down to the Courts and congressional leadership, which is all Republican. This gets to a broader reality. Whatever battles Democrats do with the Trump administration has to be asymmetric. Pretending that anything else is possible is crazy and invites failure and demoralization. That is certainly part of the design here: do all sorts of things all at once that no one can easily stop and let it become a precedent. The best response? This goes back to dominance politics. Find what you can actually do that’s not begging or meaningless and then do it. The clearest lever out there is that the White House needs a debt limit increase sometime this Spring, probably pretty soon. There’s been chatter that Republican leaders are going to try to put together a spending deal with Democratic help that would include a debt limit increase or suspension. That has to be taken off the table. No debt limit increase unless the President renounces illegal and constitutional actions. That’s the clearest place where opposition Democrats can take the initiative and force the President and GOP leadership to come to them. Anything that doesn’t force that is basically meaningless.

You’ve probably heard me say before that no one should ever play chicken with the full faith and credit of the United States. Well, these are extraordinary circumstances. But really you don’t even need to make that argument. The Republicans are in the majority. They can do this themselves if they want. The Democrats aren’t in the majority and holding anything hostage. The Republicans are the majority. It’s the majorities job, literally, to do this stuff. They can’t because they can’t get their own caucus in order. So they’re coming to the Democrats for help. It’s a perfectly reasonable condition. That’s not the only thing they should demand. There are a bunch of additional things Democrats can do that are deeper in the budget process weeds. But it’s the minimum. No cooperation without an agreement to operate only within the law and the constitution. Yelling and begging not only won’t help. It signals powerlessness, which demoralizes supporters and all opposition. There are a slew of angry partisans out there demanding Democrats “do something” when the die was mostly cast in the November elections. The Democrats are out of power. There’s very little they can do accept be the opposition and oppose. But there are these few things, things that aren’t symbolic but rather force the President to come to them. If they don’t do those things they send the signal that there is essentially no functional opposition. There’s power on the table and this is the first and central piece of it as of this moment."

Jan 28
at
7:02 PM

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