Lawrence O’Donnell and his guests explained why Democrats won on the shutdown by separating the issue of the shutdown from the issue of DACA.

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O’Donnell said, “But there was a big dynamic change when Mitch Mcconnell announced that he was going to move the date, which was a concession by Mcconnell to move the date up a week from the 16th to the 8th. Lindsey Graham immediately announced that that would be okay with him and he would vote for this. And what that meant was that Chuck Schumer was facing the possibility, in fact, the absolute fact that all of the Republicans who supported the Schumer side of this were going to immediately defect to the Republican side. And then, David, you would have nothing but a Democratic partisan vote alone to take full responsibility for shutting down the government.”

David Leonhardt of The New York Times added, “That’s right. Matt Glassman, a political scientist had a nice line. He said DACA unites the Democrats. That’s the Dreamers. Unites the Democrats and divides the Republicans. A shutdown unites the Republicans and divides the Democrats. So if you are out there and you were horrified by the possibility that these young dreamers were going to be deported, what you should be rooting for is that the Dreamers effort is kept separate. If it’s connected, I don’t think it’s going to get solved.”

Linking the Dreamers to the shutdown would have eventually backfired on Democrats

Since the Senate was negotiating with itself, there was zero chance that there would be some kind of comprehensive legislative deal on DACA. If the negotiations had involved the House, Senate, and White House, the opportunity might have been there for something major. The House was shut down. Trump was MIA, and so the Senate was doing the job by themselves.

Anyone who understands political science and legislative process knows that Democrats got a lot. Senate Democrats started from a zero position. Republicans held all of the power. They could have ended the shutdown at any time, but they didn’t because they knew the shutdown had to end in a bipartisan way. In other words, they were going to have to give to get the government open, and what the Republicans gave was a backtrack on both the length of the CR and their stance of no movement on immigration issues.

For the next three weeks, Democrats get what they wanted. They will finally force the Republicans to vote on DACA and immigration. It is a big win for a party that controls absolutely nothing in Washington, and the best way for Democrats to keep the momentum going is to make sure that the shutdown and DACA don’t cross paths again.

The factions of the left who make their living by ginning up anger were always going to scream cave because they would view anything less than Trump signing a bill to keep the Dreamers in the US as a failure, but that was never going to happen.

As O’Donnell and his panel explained, Chuck Schumer did the right thing and laid out the best path to success for the Dreamers.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association