It May Make Sense For The Democrats To Counter T****'s Offer

I want to make this as clear at the outset as I can.  I loathe D***** T****.  I loathe him personally and presidentially.  What he has done to his family and business associates is tragic; what he has done to the highest office in our land and its institutional standing around the globe is nothing short of an utter disaster.

And, in every aspect of his life over the past two years of his misbegotten Administration, he has violated so many legal standards that his impeachment and subsequent prosecution as a private citizen should have been a foregone conclusion months ago.  As Bill Maher observed recently, if T**** isn't impeached, where is the bar set for impeachment of an American President?  If Bill Clinton can be impeached for the constitutional equivalent of jaywalking (and I make no excuses for his misdeeds), while Trump can threaten with apparent impunity to circumvent constitutional processes in order to get the border wall most of us oppose, is partisanship the only place at which to set it.

For all of the foregoing reasons, I find the idea of doing business with T**** to be as loathsome as the man himself.  I find the thought of reaching any sort of "compromise" with him to be wholly repellent.  And that does not even begin to touch on the fact that reaching a "deal" with T**** does not prevent him from subsequently redefining that "deal" on his own terms.  As Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer put it months ago, negotiating with T**** is like negotiating with Jell-O.

In spite of all of this, and only because I think that T**** may have accidentally created a loophole for doing so the other day, I think that it may at long last be as possible as it is absolutely necessary to reach a deal with the devil regarding the crisis at our border with Mexico.

Not the crisis that he imagines, the one in which hordes of "bad hombres" in Mad Max-style vehicles are racing across the desert filled with smugglers, pimps, and terrorists.

I'm talking about the crisis he has single-handedly created.

I'm talking about the families that have been incarcerated in border camps under inhuman conditions that have led to the death of innocent children.

I'm talking about the other families that have been attacked or otherwise forced to return to the countries they have been forced to abandon out of fear for their lives

I'm talking about the vast majority of undocumented aliens within our borders, the vast majority of whom came in under entirely lawful circumstances, but who have been trapped here by their inability to navigate an immigration system starved not just for enforcement resources, but for the basic administrative resources needed to process and approve visa applications.

And, perhaps worst of all in some respects, I'm talking about the new wave of investigations designer to "determine" whether naturalized citizens, many of them pillars of their community, should truly have been naturalized--a kangaroo-court process in which even the smallest infraction can destroy lives that were built based on a good-faith belief in what we used to call the American Dream.

Then, of course, there's the crisis on top of that crisis--the now-three-week old partial shutdown of the federal government that has deprived 800,000-plus employees, contractors, and their families of any sense of economic security, and that threatens the still-fragile ten-year Obama economic recovery, already threatened by the Republicans' debt-busting tax bill from last year.

Let's call the shutdown exactly what it and all the ones before it are:  blackmail.  They should not even be legal.  They violate every principle upon which this nation was founded.  They are a form of political warfare engaged in by politicians who do not even recognize their political opponents as sharing a nation with them.

They are criminal in every sense of the word.  And every law enforcement professional will tell you that to cave in to blackmail is simply to invite more of it, without end.  I agree with that advice wholeheartedly.

So, why might I be willing to make an exception here.  Is it solely because of the severity of the combined border-shutdown crisis?

No.

It's also because T****, whose tyranny is as inept as it is cruel, may have really put his foot in it the other day.

He made a speech from the White House in which he announced that, in an "effort" to end the shutdown, he would send a bill to Congress which provides for temporary extensions of already temporary protections for certain classes of endangered immigrants, in return for the funding he has requested to begin construction of a permanent wall across our border with Mexico.

The temporary nature of the extensions make them utterly worthless to the populations they would allegedly protect.  But that's not important in this case.  What is important is the fact that T**** took this opportunity to redefine the word "wall" in this context as follows:

This is not a 2,000 mile concrete structure from sea to sea. These are steel barriers in high priority locations.

Emphasis added.  And I added it because that is precisely the nature of the Democrats' objection in the first place.  And T**** has, for all practical purposes, made it go away.

And so, there it is, Chuck, Nancy, and friends.  You fought the battle against the sea-to-sea physical wall and won.  You're no longer being blackmailed anymore.  You can effectively declare victory.

And not only can you declare it, you can define it as well.  So, how should you do that?\

By rejecting T****'s so-called concessions, and proposing an alternative that is more than fair.  Instead of the fig leaf of making temporary protections slightly less temporary, why not do something as, shall we say, permanent as the now-redefined "wall"?

Why not take the 2013 comprehensive immigration bill that passed the Senate by a more-than-two-thirds vote, and never got a vote in the House of Representatives, and make that the concession for getting the "wall"?  After all, the only reason it never got a vote in the House is not because it wouldn't have passed.  It would definitely have done so, and with a majority as bipartisan as the one in the Senate.  The only reason that vote never took places is that the then-Speaker of the House, John Boehner, didn't want to lose a vote of no-confidence within his own badly divided caucus.  Thus, thousands of jobs, and lives, were effectively destroyed because John Boehner wanted to keep his job.

But, now we have the perfect opportunity to rectify what went wrong in 2013, and give T**** what he wants to give to his most die-hard supporters.  True, the devil would literally be in the details.  The non-sea-to-sea nature of the "wall" would somehow have to be set in legislative stone.  And provisions would have to be added to address the harms that have been done to immigrant populations during the past two years.  But there's no reason that either of these steps can't be taken, especially if the larger goal is to gain a long-term resolution of the immigration issue in our nation.

The question, in the end, is whether that is something the Republicans truly want.  On the strength of the last two years, there's not a lot of reason to think that it is.  On a policy forefront, they're the party of tax cuts, deregulation, and right-wing judges.  Everything else is just a series of wedge issues to maintain their power, not a series of problems that affect all of us and need to be solved.

Indeed, Mitch McCONnell, who has resisted efforts to end the shutdown until the Democrats and T**** come to an agreement, now is eager to rush T****'s new proposal to a Senate vote even though the Democrats haven't agreed to it.  That, to McCONnell, is the point.  Let the Democrats stop it with a filibuster, and then point the finger of shutdown blame on them.  Real compromises have to hurt both sides a little; the current Senate majority leader only wants them to hurt the other side.

So, yes, the congressional Democrats have an opening.  But they have a Senate roadblock looming in its face.  What do they do?

In truth, they have no choice.  They need to protect their constituencies, and they need to protect themselves politically.  They have to take the opening that T**** has given them, and make the most of it.  They have to fight like hell against the political "wall" that McCONnell has built up over the past decade, to do what they can to break it down, end the shutdown, put federal workers back to work, and ensure the continuation of America's heritage as a nation of immigrants.

What they can't do, and, thankfully, don't seem willing to do, is to make a bad deal for the sake of making a deal.  As a former federal and state employee, I know what that means to those who are currently out of work and facing an uncertain financial future.  I lived at times from paycheck to paycheck during those years, and I lack no ability to feel the pain that these employees, contractors, and families are feeling.  One outcome of all of this, once and for all, must be to take shutdowns off the table once and for all, to end the nightmare of partisan blackmail.  A law must be enacted to require automatic short-term continuing resolutions that at least ensure paychecks to those who have every right to expect them.  Sadly, I think the enactment of that law will require a saner President, as well as a Congress more willing to pass laws for reasons other than self-interest.

But, in spite of the pain of those who depend upon federal employment for a living, and in spite of the even greater pain that immigrants and their families are also experiencing, the Democrats have no choice but to stand firm. My advice to them, with regard to T****'s latest offer:  proceed with caution.  See if he is serious about something less than a sea-to-sea wall.  See if he is willing to accept the enactment of what was a clearly popular solution to America's immigration needs.  See if he is willing, in the process, to help clean up the disgrace he's created at the Rio Grande.

If he is willing, then do business with him.

If he is not, and the T****-created crisis has to go on, then it must go on.

With a determination to aid the victims when it is finally over.

And with an equally strong determination to punish the perpetrators at the polls in 2020.