If we learned anything from the 2013 shutdown, it should be that whoever wins the battle of the day over a shutdown may not ultimately prevail at the ballot box come November. Even though voters overwhelmingly blamed Republicans for the 2013 debacle, voters ultimately rewarded them at the ballot box in 2014 because the thing that stuck was likely the bungled roll out of the Affordable Care Act. The point is, today's battle isn't necessarily predictive and, in the era of Trump, all bets are off anyway. So let's quit bickering over the shutdown winners and losers and keep our focus where it needs to be: on the Dreamers and the upcoming Feb. 8 deadline.
Progressive activists are understandably upset at what appears to be Democratic capitulation to a Republican Majority Leader who habitually makes commitments and then grins that toothless grin when he ultimately reneges. But regardless of whatever loose/flimsy language Democrats extracted from Mitch McConnell—it's still on him to make good on a DACA vote by February 8. Sure, he can claim he never promised, but voters don't care about that stuff. They know Republicans are running the government, they're largely against deporting Dreamers (by 80-plus percent in polls), and they will understand that McConnell is on the hook for allowing a vote.
That gives Democrats 16 days to message this deadline and they better not spend it defending how they conducted themselves during the shutdown—it’s over. The fact is that going forward they need to be making better use of the power of the stories of Dreamers. The reason that the vast majority of Americans support keeping Dreamers in the country is a direct result of the fierce advocacy of this group telling their stories over and over across the country. You would have to be heartless to hear Dreamer stories and still think they're not every bit as American as anyone else and deserving of a chance to live in this country and contribute to it.
So when a fringe anti-immigrant senator like Tom Cotton accuses Democrats of shutting down the government over "amnesty" and "illegal immigration," the way to combat that dog-whistle messaging is with actual Dreamer stories. Democrats seemed surprised that fighting for the Dreamers and DACA would be painted by nativists like Cotton as fighting for "illegal immigration." The way to lose that battle all over again is to leave it unanswered between now and Feb. 8.
"Amnesty" and "illegal immigration" are words someone like Cotton throws out to scare people. But those terms ring completely hollow in the face of a story of someone like the Dreamer-turned-mom who asked Paul Ryan last year whether she should be afraid of being deported. Naturally, Ryan lied to her. But the point is, she was brought here at age 11 and now has kids here. She's not what people think of when they think of "illegal immigration." She was a kid who was brought here through no fault of her own and has now made a life in a country she calls home. And what about the Dreamers who are vets or who are currently serving in the military, or those who have gotten college degrees? All those stories need to be told over and over again by Democrats.
Democrats were reportedly also caught off guard by Trump's relative absence from the conversation. Apparently, they figured he would really mix things up and undercut his own party. It was a reasonable hunch but through some miracle Trump’s staff managed to successfully hide him from sight for nearly an entire weekend.
Still, counting on winning by expecting someone else to mess up is no way to plan a strategy. Democrats have to have a proactive message heading into Feb. 8. Why not start with the State of the Union on Jan. 30? Every Democrat should follow the lead of Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell and bring a Dreamer to Trump's big speech. The media presence will be awesome and it's a story reporters will be champing at the bit to tell precisely because of the looming Feb. 8 deadline. Dingell is bringing the American wife of Jorge Garcia, a recently deported Michigan father of two American kids. He had no criminal record.
If Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are ever going to do the right thing here, they're going to have to be facing public pressure caused by Americans saying to themselves over and over again, "Surely we shouldn't be deporting this person."