The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats Lost Control. Now, You Pay With the Government Shutdown.

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Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk. Business. Government shutdowns occur when the out party has lost power in the House and the Senate. The Democratic Party is in a doom loop. All of these main issues, they're on the losing side. So they don't have the leadership and they don't have the votes. Why are they doing this? Why are the Democrats shutting down the government?

Starting point is 00:00:50 How's it going to end? What's going to happen? Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. The government has now been shut down for the longest time in our 249th history of the Republic, except on one earlier occasion. So who's responsible? How's it going to end? What's going to happen?

Starting point is 00:01:25 Ostensibly, government shutdowns occur when the out party has lost power in the House and the Senate, or at least they can't push through an agenda. So they feel that the only leverage they have, usually when they've lost the presidency and control of the Congress, is to not approve. And basically by that is not approve of any bills, that is going on filibusters. What's a word for it? In this case, the Republicans do not have 60 votes in the Senate to override their refusal. to vote on the budget, so to speak. Why are they doing this? Why are the Democrats shutting down the government when we have a history of these shutdowns? And if you go back and

Starting point is 00:02:17 look at them, usually one thing happens. That is, initially, the party that's in the minority and has shut down the government says, well, they won't speak to us, or they don't want to negotiate or we have, they're spending too much money, and this is the only recourse we have. And that is a believable message, a persuasive message for a few days, but then certain things kick in, such as I didn't get my Social Security check, I didn't get my paycheck, the air traffic control system is slowing my flights down, and the system slowly starts to grind down. And at that magic point, people say, well, wait a minute, we had an election, you guys, whether Republicans or Democrats, lost. And now you're kind of poor losers and you're saying you're losing in chess

Starting point is 00:03:14 so you want to overthrow the board and say, I'm going to shut it all down. And then public opinion starts to go against the people who shut down. I think we're at that point now where the Democrats are seeing a diminishing return on their investment of shutting the government down. Why did they do this? The historian Thucydides said for most disagreements, there is the pretext, the prophasis, and then there's the real cause, the ITIA. They say that they're shutting the government down because when they pass the Obamacare program, the Affordable Care Act, which remember was supposed to reduce everybody's health care. And, you know, there's only about 25 million people now who are in need of these subsidies on Obamacare.

Starting point is 00:04:10 Most people still get their private insurance or they're on Medicare or they're on Medicaid. But when this program did not prove to be affordable, as everybody predicted it wouldn't, when you bring a lot of people into the system that can't pay for it, and you require all of the, put these rules and regulations on the medical profession, something has to give, and that gift was cost. So then the Democrats came back and said, well, we need subsidies. And the Republicans said, well, you said it was going to be cheaper. Why would you need government multibillion, hundreds of billion dollars subsidies?

Starting point is 00:04:49 And so they said, well, we'll put a time limit on it. Well, that time limit expired or will expire. And they knew that. And they signed on to get us this far into the year by agreeing not to shut down. So now they say the official reason is the Republicans are not going to extend a subsidy for the affordable health care. The Republicans said it should be called the non-affordable health care. We told you it wouldn't work. Why do this?

Starting point is 00:05:18 Let's rewrite the whole thing. So that's the pretext. But there's two other reasons. One, in the general chaos of things, they think it hurts the end party, in particular Donald Trump. In other words, they look at Trump and they say he's reduced crime. There is no such thing as illegal immigration anymore. He's addressing illegal aliens that are criminals, 500,000. He's pursuing them.

Starting point is 00:05:43 He's deported many, many thousands of criminals. There's been seven or eight ceasefires abroad. He may bring peace to the Middle East. He's restored the military's shortfall in recrument. There's 50,000. So we don't really have an answer to him. But if we create chaos, if we fill the streets full of protesters, if we get violent, if we make everybody upset and not calm,

Starting point is 00:06:14 and we think we're going to go into the public, the voter will go into a fetal position, say, make it all go away. In other words, shut down the government, cause general term. or maybe even lead us to a recession, and they will blame Trump. Trump did it, Trump did it, Trump did it. That's one reason. The other real reason that they're not telling us is that the Democratic Party is in a doom loop. In other words, on all of these main issues, defund the police, open borders, illegal immigration, the trans sports issue, what we saw abroad, pro-Palestinian, pro-hamma,

Starting point is 00:06:53 versus Israel. They're on the losing side. And they do not have a charismatic Bill Clinton or Barack Obama to carry them through in a nationwide referendum on these unpopular votes. So they don't have the leadership and they don't have the votes. And so they're looking for something to do, as I said, to cause chaos. But more importantly, they have a reason why they don't have charismatic leaders. and they have a reason why they're unpopular, and that is the party has passed the establishment by. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, all of them are ossified, calcified dinosaurs. And a young group of Mondanis are running on issues that while they may be popular in a particular jurisdiction or an East Coast liberal city, they have no residence nationwide.

Starting point is 00:07:46 And they will be running for office in the midterms. They're going to be challenging incumbents like Chuck Schumer, and they can win in this neo-socialist, DEI, far-left Green New Deal constituency. But the old guard is saying they will lose in a general election, just like McGovern did, and they will take us down for 20 years. So now what we have to do is we have to give in a little bit because they're saying we're old fuddy-duddies is it letting Trump go to the races. He's successful.

Starting point is 00:08:21 Can't they stop him? We'll stop him. So now we're going to shut down the government so they can tell to the base, we're just as radical as you are. Who's the loser in the final analysis, the American people? Because the Democratic Party who shut the government down is basically saying, we're Samson and we've got a hand around each pillar, and we're going to pull down the whole thing on top of you.

Starting point is 00:08:45 It's Victor Davis Hansen for The Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to The Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansen.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.

The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: Democrats Lost Control. Now, You Pay With the Government Shutdown.

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