A shutdown looms. Here's why Dems are right to hold their ground

Until now, the debate over government funding has always boiled down to one question: which party is to blame for the shutdown.

This time, however, is there really any question? The congressional Democrats want to negotiate. The president refuses to. Since the government can’t be funded without a deal, the blame’s on him.

The Democrats want to prevent an explosion of health insurance premiums, which is expected in the coming months, by extending pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies. They want Donald Trump to agree in exchange for their vote in keeping the government open. (They also want the Republicans to backtrack on Medicaid cuts.)

But Trump won’t talk. He canceled a previously scheduled meeting, because “no meeting with their congressional leaders could possibly be productive,” he said on his social media site. That’s not something you say when you want the opposition to come to the bargaining table, which raises the question: what does Trump want?

An answer was suggested when the White House issued a threat to slash even more of the government workforce if there’s a shutdown.

Here’sRoll Call: “The budget office plans to advise federal program managers to fire employees whose paychecks are financed by annual appropriations if a partial government shutdown begins Oct. 1, rather than just furloughing them as is the usual practice.”

I don’t think the message could be clearer: either the Democrats do what Trump tells them to do or their precious government gets it.

Any other president in our lifetimes would not have done this.

First, because doing so would undermine their own demands. (Trump wants to keep the government open but also shred it if it closes? Just be honest and shut it down, because that’s what you wanted all along.)

Second, because it looks thuggish, like something a hostage-taker would do for ransom.

Third, and most important, such a move is blatant coercion, giving the opposition more incentive to say no.

The subtext is Trump is not a dealmaker. He’s a bully. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was right to call his bluff. This is “an attempt at intimidation,” Schumer said. Trump has “been firing federal workers since day one — not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”

But the subtext is also that he’s a cheat.

Even if the president agreed to the Democrats’ demand for extended subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (and even if he said, “My bad, here’s all that Medicaid money back, all $1 trillion of it, so please, pretty please, vote to keep the government up and running!”), what’s to prevent him, a day later, from double-crossing the Democrats? In July, he rolled back $9 billion in funding for public TV and radio that the Republicans had already agreed to. He said claw it back, and they did.

The answer is nothing. There is no guarantee.

Which is all the more reason for the Democrats to say no.

The Democrats are under enormous pressure, from inside and outside the party, to act like “the adults in the room” and to pretend, at least, that the president is a reliable bargaining partner. This is, after all, the logic of Washington. Only the Democrats make choices while Trump and the Republicans are free to act as irresponsibly as they wish to.

But this “logic” should be rooted in two hard facts. One is that the president has been at war with the government workforce since taking office. (Schumer said as much.) Open or shut, it makes no difference to him. Two is that he will say whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants, for as long as it takes to get him to wherever he wants to go, whatever that goal might be at any given moment.

Not only does it not matter to him whether the government is open or shut, it doesn’t matter whether his words are true or false. Fraud, deceit and confabulation run in his blood, and if he were just some street crazy, rather than the president of the United States, no one would be blamed for saying no to him. Saying yes would be crazy!

Trump is the president, however. I wish I knew what the Democrats should do, but I don’t. How do you bargain with a man who either forgets what he said the day before, because he’s in the early stages of dementia, or denies he said any such thing, because it’s convenient to? How do you make a deal with a president who doesn’t want a deal? (Not to mention, how do you hold him responsible when the rightwing media complex, and the press corps, enables his forgetting/denials?)

What I do know is much of the current debate among liberals feels like it’s beside the point. Some say Schumer and the Democratic leadership should stick with health insurance. Others say they should demand Trump lift his stupid tariffs. Others still say they should trade their vote to keep the government open on a promise to defend free speech. All of these are trying to appeal to a broad majority in the hopes that a broad majority won’t blame the Democrats if negotiations fail. And all of them overlook the fact that Donald Trump never stands by his word.

As of now, the Democrats are warning of a shutdown if the president does not accept their demands. He doesn’t care, one way or another, so perhaps that’s what the Democrats should demand – that he care. He will prove he doesn’t when the government shuts down, thus bringing us back to the beginning and the question of who to blame.