It’s almost impossible to understand what is going on in the shutdown debate because there are so many moving pieces and it has been so over complicated by throwing in DACA and SCHIP. So let’s break it down.
On the Republican side, you have multiple different groups.
1.) You have the crazy people and criminally uninformed like the President and Matt Gaetz.
2.) You have the certified sociopaths like the House Freedom Caucus and Ted Cruz.
3.) You have the racists like Steve King.
4.) You have the people who just like to hurt people like Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell.
5.) You have the people who like to pretend to govern and love an easy rub and tug from a foolish media, but if given the opportunity will join the previous four groups, like McCain, Graham, Collins, Flake, Sasse.
6.) You have the people who will just do whatever they think is best for them, but in the process do what actually hurts them the most, like Marco Rubio.
On the Democratic side, you have:
1.) the good governance/bipartisanship fetishists like Manchin, Heitkamp, etc.
2.) House Minority Leadership who is just trying to keep this shit together
3.) and the group I most relate to which is the “Fuck you Trump and Republicans I am going to hold you down and pummel you as hard and as often as I can I don’t trust a fucking thing you do and I am so over your fucking bullshit” like our beloved Great Aunt Maxine of the Immaculate Eyeroll.
Out of those groups, you have to somehow cobble together a spending bill. This should be no problem, but the Republicans want to pass a spending bill that is so awful that it will get no Democratic support, so they have to do it alone, but it is also not awful enough for the House Freedom Caucus and folks like Cotton and Cruz, and this is further complicated by the fact that no matter what they put together, Orange Julius Caesar is too fucking stupid to understand it and rnadomly spews nonsense on twitter, disrupting whatever progress the sociopaths are currently working on. It’s basically a bad heist movie where they should be able to get away with a clean steal, but are too busy tripping over each other’s dicks and it ends up like the end of Reservoir Dogs.
Further complicating matters are two issues that, if brought up by themselves, would pass with overwhelming support. Clean DACA and SCHIP bills would both pass tomorrow if introduced. But the Republicans won’t do that, because they know how awful their priorites are, so they have taken Dreamers and sick kids hostage because they think they can peel off some Democratic support. The problem is, part of the Republican heist team doesn’t care if the hostages live. So while they’ve got a gun to the head of kids and the dreamers and are backing out of the bank saying “don’t fuck with me or I’ll shoot,” the Steve King crowd and the House Freedom Caucus are trying to figure out a way to shoot the Dreamers and sick kids while still getting out of the building with the loot.
So that’s why we are where we are.