Contributor: Self-defeating Democrats are terrible politics

Senate Democrats on Thursday voted Extends federal government shutdown for 10th time. They also voted against funding the military, thus requiring some Pentagon funding Innovative accounting To ensure that service members are paid on time.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) defend His final caucus vote, in the opinion, “is not always acceptable for Democrats to do defense legislation without other bills that have many things that are important to the American people in terms of health care, in terms of housing, in terms of safety.” But for most Americans, such heartache falls on deaf ears. Most common-sense Americans understand that there is no reason that paying for America’s warfighters should be held hostage to debates about domestic policy.

As did Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), one of three Senate Democrats who joined Republicans in supporting the defense appropriations bill on Thursday. put on Earlier this week: “You know, if you’re going to win an election, it’s going to come down to seven or eight states now. … And a lot of things, the extremism that people pushed back in the 24th, and so we kind of came across.”

This is good advice. But Fetterman is likely to pay for such a rare (relative) voice within the party next injury Senate primaries.

Why exactly? are Democrats, who control neither the House of Congress nor the presidency, continue to fight a long-running shutdown? This is a more complicated question than it should be. But fundamental disagreements over ending Obamacare subsidies and the scope of Medicaid coverage — including in some cases Covering people without legal status in the United States.

In short, then, air traffic control operations are potentially dangerous shortageAmerica’s beautiful national parks understaffed And service members can go without pay — all because Democrats think more taxpayer dollars should go to subsidizing health care.

This is an incredibly weak negotiating position. Minority parties completely out of power usually don’t get what they want during high-profile Beltway budget shutdowns or shutdown battles, and there’s little reason to expect Republicans to cave. As it closes, moreover, the polls are more to blame on which side Move gradually Towards the Democrats Too much blame side

It’s far from clear what Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) expect to do as they head into Week 3. They will not prevail – and the longer this goes on, the worse political shape they will find themselves in.

Democrats seem unable to stop the trip all over themselves.

On the issue of illegal immigration, the American people are strongly opposed to their agenda. A Harvard/Harris Poll Earlier this month it was revealed that 56% of registered voters supported deportation all illegal aliens, and 78% support deporting criminal illegal aliens. Regarding taxpayer subsidies for transgender health care, another flashpoint in the culture war, Another recent poll It showed that 66 percent of Americans are against it. There is a vote on the participation of trans women in women’s sports Even the star.

Illegal immigration and gender radicalization are probably the two most popular issues for Democrats right now. Yet those are precisely the two issues at the forefront of the current Beltway gridlock — or at least the debate over taxpayer funding.

The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu famously taught that a war is won by determining the territory before it is fought. President Trump, with decades of branding and marketing prowess, already has a remarkable knack for framing issues this way — the art of the 80-20 issue, as This column is called. And Democrats seem all too eager to make his job easier by picking sides whose losses are already a result.

what gives

A rational political party interested in self-preservation and electoral success would certainly take a different approach. Such a party will disappear after 2008 A fascination with identity politics and whicism And a return to the Clinton-era message of economic growth and a cultural center.

That the Democratic leadership is so woefully unable to do so, even after Trump’s landslide victory in all of the major swing states last November, indicates that the party is not currently guided by rational calculations. Democrats today are led not by rational experience, but by delusional ideology.

The biggest reason Trump prevailed in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries and has garnered so much popular support since then is that he has done little for an open ideology. He saw the American people as they were, and he tried to serve them.

Democrats would be wise to follow suit.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Fate of the West.”” This article was produced in collaboration with The Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer