It's not the Dems who must feel real pain if this shutdown is ever to end

One of the main assumptions in the story about the government shutdown, which began at midnight, is that the Democrats see a “rare opportunity to use their leverage to achieve policy goals.”

That quote is from the Associated Press. Here’s some more: “Senate Democrats say they won’t vote for [the Republican funding resolution] unless Republicans include an extension of expiring health care benefits, among other demands. President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans say they won’t negotiate, arguing that it’s a stripped-down, ‘clean’ bill that should be noncontroversial.”

I wonder about that, though.

I mean, I know the Democrats have to demand something concrete in exchange for their vote, but the opportunity seems bigger than just getting the GOP to renew Obamacare subsidies that were expanded during the covid pandemic. The opportunity seems bigger than policy.

It seems like a chance to expose the Republicans’ lies.

Then ask why. Why do they lie so much?

Then answer: because Republican voters can’t know the truth.

The truth is that Trump and his party do not care one way or another if, in the coming months, health insurance premiums for those who are enrolled in Obamacare exchanges double, triple or quadruple.

They do not care if everyone else enrolled through their employers sees their insurance premiums spike, or sees the cost of their health care spike, as a result of healthy people leaving Obamacare exchanges.

What they do care about is stealing from Medicaid — to the tune of $1 trillion over a decade — to cut the taxes of very obscenely rich people who will never notice that their taxes have been cut. Oh, and they care about seeing their social inferiors suffer. That’s a whole lot of fun.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with not caring. It is part of the makeup of a native-born authoritarian cartel that’s invested above all else in maintaining a social hierarchy with rich white men on top.

Though rule-by-the-rich is very popular among the rich, it’s not so popular among workaday folks, even conservative Americans who otherwise see advantage in being aligned with their social betters.

Though the Trump cartel is working hard to change it, America is still a democracy. The GOP still needs its base until it has completed its consolidation of power. For now, it can’t afford to alienate its supporters with the truth – that the Republicans are scamming them.

Who will suffer most from cuts to Medicaid? Republican voters in GOP-controlled states. Who will suffer most from Obamacare spikes? Ditto. Because, in both programs, there are more Republican voters than anyone else combined, the Republicans must pretend to care.

But mostly, they lie.

At first, the lies were of the “waste, fraud and abuse” variety.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) said he might think about renewing the Obamacare subsidies, but “there is a lot of, whatever you want to call it, fraud,” he told Axios. “And I think everybody acknowledges that, so how do you reform it and still get bipartisan support?"

Also per Axios, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said they’re thinking about requiring “ACA enrollees to have ‘skin in the game’ by making them pay a minimum premium and barring zero-premium plans that are ACA-compliant but that critics contend fuel fraud.”

Yes, they contend it’s fraud. It isn’t, though. Those are just the rules. If you don’t like the rules, get enough support to change them. But that’s the thing. Americans like the rules, as they are. So Republicans lie.

“Waste, fraud and abuse” was always a code for “Obamacare is for Black people,” so no Republican feared opposing it. But apparently the dogwhistle wasn’t getting through to the base. So the Republicans dropped the coded language to say outright that the Democrats want one and a half trillion dollars to give “illegal aliens” free health care.

Here’s Vice President JD Vance:

Democrats are “saying to the American people that [they] wanna give massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars to illegal aliens for their health care, while Americans are struggling to pay their health care bills. That was their initial foray into this negotiation. We thought it was absurd. We told them it was. Now they come in here saying that if you don’t give us everything that we want, we’re gonna shut down the government.”

Every word Vance said, including “and” and “the,” is a lie.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) went straight at him for that lie:

“The federal government by law … does not fund health insurance for undocumented immigrants in Medicaid, period. Nor the ACA, nor Medicare. Undocumented immigrants do not get federal health insurance premiums. Period. Period. They’re lying.”

Let’s be real. There is no reality in which Republican voters suddenly wake up to the truth of Schumer’s words and as a result, admit to themselves that the Trump cartel has been lying to them all along. That’s because lying, no matter how disgusting, is not the worst part of the predicament America finds itself in. The desire to believe lies is.

So the goal wouldn’t be convincing Republican voters they’ve been lied to. The goal would be convincing they’ve been scammed. To do that, however, requires much more than merely calling Republicans out as liars. It requires pain — pain felt by Republican voters themselves.

That’s what Republican voters will feel if Trump and the Republicans get what they want from the Democrats: a “clean CR” that includes nothing to stop the shock that’s coming, when health insurance premiums skyrocket while the safety net unravels. Pain is the only teacher in politics. That’s the Democrats’ real opportunity.

Not policy.

Pain.