The Real Crisis is the shut down itself.
I didn’t hate the Rebuttal Speech from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, although they did seem a little too wooden for my taste (although Trump was even more so).
But I wish they had started their speech like this: “Fellow Americans, we are in the midst of a crisis: the federal government, and 800,000 of its workers, and their families, are being held hostage. They are being held held hostage by a president who thinks the way to deal with a fake crisis is to create a real crisis for the American people. As careful stewards of the government enterprise, we will not succumb to such callous and even vindictive behavior.”
As long as Democrats allow this to be a debate about “the Wall”; or to the extent that this is a debate about the “Wall”; Trump will have the ability to lie, obfuscate, and confuse people about whether we do or do not need this wall.
Democrats should not go there, first. First, they should talk about the crisis of closed government. They should focus squarely on the things the government does, and the workers who make it happen.
Instead of say the Wall is immoral, Congressional Democrats should say that closing the government and impoverishing workers is immoral. Yes, they are saying that, but not to the extent that it’s effective, IMO.
Instead of making this a debate about a wall, Democrats should frame this as a debate of whether it is moral to hold the government and workers hostage to achieve political success; whether it is moral to address one so-called crisis by making another one.
Congressman Adam Schiff put it right recently: if the Democrats don’t push back on Trump now, then he will do this again and again and again. This is the language all Democrats should use.
The mistake that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer made was that they began with a talk by Pelosi about the merits of the border security “debate”; rather than Schumer’s talk about the problems with the shutdown. And also, that the shutdown was not described as a crisis in and of itself.
Of course, many Americans don’t feel the pain of the shutdown, yet; but the lapsed payroll that is coming in a few days will be the start of real pain. And we need to talk about it.
My wording advice to Congressional Democrats: don’t call it “the Shutdown.” Call it the “Shutdown Crisis.” And define the “Shutdown Crisis” as the crisis for workers, and people who depend on the government one way or another, who suffer seriously when government is made to fail. That’s the framing I would like to see.
And if you’re going to talk about the Wall at all: let Steve Schmidt do it.