A Requiem for the Reign of Pain

So, is it over, or will it start again in three weeks? Never-Trumper Allahpundit: Shutdown Fallout: Did Trump Cave?

Yep. Most anti-Trumpers on social media are gloating about Trump giving up but I don’t want to beat on him for doing the sensible thing, however belatedly, before something terrible happened. I don’t understand why he didn’t just agree to re-open the government permanently, though, and declare a national emergency today instead of punting the decision for another three weeks. There’s zero chance that the new negotiations will include any wall money and there’s almost zero chance that Trump will let another shutdown begin in February after the pain of this one. The emergency decree is his only option except outright surrender. Postponing it will only cause another round of, ahem, “massive blowback” next month.

Ace: So Here's the Actual Situation

1. Trump and Republicans are losing support, not gaining it.

This means that the current tactic is not moving the Overton Window in the right direction. It's moving it in the left direction. Nancy Pelosi is winning the shutdown as it's currently occurring. Why would she back down or negotiate when her best play is to just keep on doing what she's doing?

This is like a football team running the ball every play and getting stuffed for a half yard loss every play. And then one coach says "Maybe we could mix things up with a pass or trick play" and other coaches say, "That's for The Gayz. Let's keep running to show we're not afraid to run."

Okay, we could do that. But what are we hoping to accomplish there, beyond demonstrating our capacity for masochism and willingness to eat political failure in order to crap policy failure?

What is the actual upside of "keep on doing what we're doing?" Someone please explain this to me. We're losing. Keeping doing what we're doing means more losing. . . .

I feel like there's some underpants gnome logic going on here:

1, do the same thing which is not working
2, ???
3, profit politically, win the wall

I need to know what "2" is there.

#2 should be to continue to publicize and emphasize the damage that uncontrolled illegal immigration is doing to the country. Every crime by an illegal, every person displaced from a job, every dollar from the treasury spent to support them. And we need to make the right constituents pay the price. Bus all the captured illegal alien families to Nancy Pelosi's district for release. Hey, they gotta go somewhere. It's a long slow battle, and the Democrats and the media will resist every step of the way.

Tom Maguire at Just One Minute: Trump Moves To Deferred Victory Status. The Right Scoop.“I hate to see the president do this…” – Mark Levin on Trump’s SOTU decision. I'm shocked.

Via Wombat's In The Mailbox: 01.25.19, Shot In The Dark writes an Open Letter To All The Media Working The “Displaced Federal Worker” Angle

To: Most Of You In Big Media
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Perspective

All,

I remember back in 2003, during the post-9/11 recession, when my field was in its “last hired, first fired” phase, and I – a single parent with two kids – got laid off from a contracting job after my old startup closed.

How it took me three months to get an interview. Five to earn *any* money. And 10.5 months to actually get a job – which led to 6-12 months catching up back bills, and years rebuilding credit. How we scrimped, stretched unemployment checks and a tax refund and about five weeks of contract work to cover six months.

And you know what I remember the most? How the media constantly did stories talking about all the trouble we unemployed and underemployed private sector workers were having, and how dire our situations were – even after *two missed paychecks*, and nobody saying “when you finally land a job (whenever that is), we’re going to give you all the “back pay” you would have had coming”.

That helped so much.

UPDATE: Wait – that never happened. Nobody gave a crap. To the media, private sector unemployment when there’s a GOP president is a feature, not a bug. . . .

Daniel Horowitz at the CR: Trump should revisit 3 executive powers to break the border impasse. "Threaten executive action, End DACA, Shut down all border migration, Threaten a military buildup, Make Democrats take tough votes." Sounds like a reasonable approach to Ace's #2 above as well.

AllahPundit: Wait, Pelosi’s Still Not Letting Trump Deliver The State Of The Union On Tuesday? 

She probably figures that as long as there’s no *final* agreement between the two sides on border security she can’t afford to risk giving him a free shot at her and her party for a full hour on national television. If they had agreed today to a long-term compromise maybe she would have chanced it on Tuesday, figuring that Trump would have kept the jabs at Dems to a minimum and focused instead on celebrating what they had agreed to. But they’re still negotiating, albeit with the government re-opened now for a few weeks. Why hand him an opportunity to gain leverage in that negotiation?

The price of weakness.