Only 25% Support Shutdown for the Wall
by Deacon Blues
The Trump-instigated government shutdown is likely to last well into January, and by then both the GOP and Trump will have borne a large degree of blame for it. According to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll out today:
--47% already blame Trump for the shutdown
--33% blame Democrats (the consistent Trump base in the electorate)
But most importantly, only 25% of those polled say funding the wall is worth shutting down the government. This means that even a portion of the Trump base doesn't support the shutdown, and they feel this way early in the shutdown. Imagine what these numbers will look like in January, and how much further slippage of support there'll be among his base for the shutdown.
Perhaps that explains the emotional instability Trump is demonstrating over the last several days on the shutdown. Today's Prozac moment comes with Trump's juvenile assertion that most of the furloughed workers are Democrats, and therefore enemies of the people. Trump is confirming that the shutdown engineered by he and Stephen Miller is nothing but an exercise to harm political opponents in the service of screwing brown people to please his base.
The correct response to this next week when Nancy Pelosi takes over the House is to send the Senate a bill to reopen the government for the remainder of the fiscal year without the wall funding, and make Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans either reject it, or amend it and send it back with the wall funding. This however assumes two things:
1. Mitch is willing to expose his 2020 incumbents to such a vote keeping the government closed for the wall;
2. Mitch can find the votes to send back such a bill to the House.
At some point, Pelosi can tell Trump that if he wants his wall that much, it has to be part of an overall immigration reform package of the type he walked away from previously. Failing that, she can say we're not holding the country hostage to hatred and Trump's dereliction of duty.
