Leading Democrats vainly hope for a return to the politics of the past \u2013 they must engage with the realities of the present<\/p>\n
Is this the way the Democratic party ends \u2013 not with a bang, but with a whimper? Last week, the party\u2019s Senate caucus seemed poised to do something that they had never done before: block the Trump administration\u2019s proposed continuing resolution, and shut down the government. It would have been a largely symbolic move, one that signaled opposition to the Trump administration\u2019s usurpation of Congress\u2019s spending authority and a willingness to play procedural hardball in order to slow Elon Musk\u2019s radical anti-government agenda. It would have signaled, too, a party willing to take itself seriously as the opposition to a president with authoritarian ambitions.<\/p>\n
Government shutdowns are unpopular, but so, right now, is the Democratic party: several senators from swing states seemed ready to stick their necks out, ready to bet that it would be better to be seen doing something \u2013 anything \u2013 to oppose the Trump agenda than to roll over yet again. And for a few days, at least, it looked like Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, would back them up<\/a>.<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Leading Democrats vainly hope for a return to the politics of the past \u2013 they must engage with the realities of the present Is this the way the Democratic party ends \u2013 not with a bang, but with a whimper? Last week, the party\u2019s Senate caucus seemed poised to do something that they had never … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}