Quick Take: Why this 'Government Shutdown' Is Different
Democrats and their legacy media allies will misread it - I hope the Republicans don't
In the Trump era, everything is different.
Over the past 50 years, Democrats had control of the House, Senate and White House numerous times, and yet during those five decades, never once advanced a bill to enshrine Roe as public law. It’s arguable whether they could have - finding a one-size-fits-all compromise among 535 members of Congress from 50 diverse states is no mean feat.
But why would they have? With the corporate media complex firmly on “their side” Democrats knew they had an issue to run on and reliably harvest female votes ad infinitum. In 2020, I believe the formula paid off again for them. And possibly even in the 2022 midterms.
But 2024 has proved different in more ways than just on this one issue. Yes, Democrats indeed did run on abortion, and their legacy media mouthpieces dutifully played their role in demonizing Republicans. But remarkably it didn’t work this time. Despite legacy media’s best efforts, abortion, as a political issue, was way down in the list of “most important” issues facing voters.
We can lazily blame Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ abject awfulness for the 2024 election results, but even a casual reading of the election post-mortem highlights a much bigger problem for Democrats: corporate media is now “the fringe” media. Note: that’s not MY take - it’s uber-progressive Van Jones’ take. I just happen to agree with him. Legacy media is dead media - almost nobody follows it or cares what they think. As Jones points out, all of cable news programming combined viewership in a given night is dwarfed by Joe Rogan’s eponymous podcast viewers. And it’s not just the number of eyeballs - which tells its own story - but that those eyeballs are driven by trust. Legacy media now has higher levels of distrust than trust.
What does this have to do with yet another looming government “shutdown”?
Simply put, as with the abortion issue, Democrats have relied on the legacy media to blame Republicans for every government shutdown since Newt Gingrich started these confrontations in the 1990s. Anytime there was a budgetary impasse, Democrats knew the legacy media would be on “their side” and explain to the American people that it was the Republicans’ fault. As a result, Republicans learned a very bad lesson: cave and fold, avoiding any potential for a government shutdown, lest “the media” blame them for it.
This is why over the past 20 years the Republicans have not stood firm on any budgetary impasse - they let the Democrats run the table, every time. Budgets always go to the last minute, force a “shutdown” crisis, and then members of both parties cram as much pork and poison into the bill as possible, because it must be approved or Armageddon will happen.
But this time is different. People don’t care to whom the legacy media assigns blame for a “crisis of their own making”. We voted for a return to Normal - Normal budgets and Normal debate and Normal voting - not hurried up, frenzied insanity where our representatives vote Aye or “walk the plank”. We voted for Normal last month and we really don’t care what the legacy media says about it - we don’t trust them.
I believe Speaker Johnson is stuck on the old playbook and I believe Donald Trump is explaining to him - right now - why that playbook is no longer operant. Because the Dems (House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer) are steadfast: put forth the “omnibus” CR or no deal. The government will shut down and Republicans will get the blame.
But that is legacy media thinking - and their trust is gone. So don’t play that game. If Democrats want to play intransigent and throw a tantrum over unpopular items like a forty percent congressional pay raise, let them own it. The American people get their views from elsewhere now. The rules have changed.
Trump recognizes this and sees the opportunity. He’s come out against the omnibus and knows he has the American people on his side. If this “shuts the government down” so be it. Better that than passing this nightmare legislation into his first 100 days. And the Democrats will own it.
The era of Republican cave and fold on budgets, like the abortion issue, is over. I just hope the Republican congressional leadership gets it.
The media is fading into obscurity. As I pointed out on X, Musk's platform allowed "we, the people" to speak in a way that no news organization can. And we did.
Couldn’t agree more. But add in Musk and his influence. He and Vivek had as much to do with tanking this latest grotesque frankenstein spending bill as Trump and Vance. Rogan might be new media but Musk is now the uber influencer. He literally has an army of millions upon millions of followers/activists who can micro target politicians and put the heat on them to vote a certain way. It is truly becoming in the words of many 60s radicals ‘power to the people’. The left has the radical progressive blob behind the curtain, now the right has the Musk millions turning up the heat. And Musks millions don’t care what the msm says, don’t care what democrats say, don’t care what the elites say, don’t care what the professors say, don’t care what cbs, nbc, cnn, msnbc, abc say. We’re done compromising. We’re done giving in. Like the author says, democrats want to shut down the gov’t, go ahead. Fight for your pay raises and pork. The American people are done with the play acting and fake outrage. Fix the problems of the country or get the f&$# out of the way.