There is very little doubt that the Democrats fumbled the ball at the goal line with their shutdown antics last week. They had no message, no strategy, and no exit. At the very least have a message—and not one that will be picked apart by CNN and MSNBC over the weekend. The rallying cry was that this is all the GOP’s fault because they control Congress and the White House. Yeah, except it takes 60 votes in the Senate to do anything. There was an agreement that recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will be addressed. The Children’s Health Insurance Program was funded for six years, and FISA is going to be renewed. Everything was agreed to between Democrats and Republicans. A DACA fix was set, CHIP funded, and FISA renewed. But the Democrats decided to take the country hostage over illegal aliens. That’s not a winning strategy. The bill that reopened the government was pretty much the exact same bill Senate Democrats, albeit save for the red state Democrats, voted against—with one fewer week of funding. The stipulation is that the Senate hash out a deal before the funding runs out on February 8 in which the body would still take up the issue if no agreement is reached by the time we’re dealing with shutdown theatrics again.
On Thursday, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) shot inside the ship, saying his party was pretty much a total disaster, and that yes—the shutdown hurt his party. Ryan was answering a question from The Daily Beast’s Sam Stein, who wondered if this shutdown hurt his party regarding a negotiating standpoint.
“I think it definitely hurt us, there’s no question about it. I think we went in as a party without a real plan, without a real strategy on how we’re going to get out or what the end game was, so we lost before it even started,” he said.
Ryan added the Democrats were not prepared on what they wanted, and what the Democrats in the Senate running for re-election this year, especially ones from red states, could handle. Now, that the Trump White House has extended amnesty to 1.8 million illegals with a pathway to citizenship on a 10-12 year timeframe, which won’t sit well with progressives, the question is do Democrats want a deal. Trump just conceded citizenship and increased the amnesty pool by one million people. I think Trump could be outmaneuvering the Left again because if Democrats reject this proposal, you can hit them with being intransigent, unwilling to protect our borders, unwilling to grant protections to 1.8 million illegal aliens, and unwilling to come to the table. It’s musical chairs, and they’re left without the chair. And if Democratic messaging is anything like the shutdown mess (it was god-awful), the 2018 midterms could get interesting.
For a minute it felt like they were standing for us. Like Democrats were finally listening to our pain and doing something about it. Standing up for us. Man, this hurts so much. It's been 17 years! 17 years of inaction, deportations, waiting, hope, disappointment. I am so tired.— Erika Andiola - #NoDreamNoDeal (@ErikaAndiola) January 22, 2018
