For sound political reasons. You may not like those reasons, but they aren't being "obtuse" in the sense they do not understand what they are doing because they lack the wits to comprehend. Minimizing your opponent with those kinds of terms risks you underestimating them.
The "base" that voted in most of the Senate voted in Trump. At the federal level, they pretty much count as a single voting bloc, and that's very powerful in the electoral landscape. And for that base, the wall is very nearly a single-issue vote factor (among a few other issues that base holds similarly dear). You may not like it for various practical reasons, but they currently vote slightly more consistently than Democrats in slightly more precincts where it counts. This might tilt soon to Democrats for demographic reasons, but for the purposes of analyzing this record-breaking shutdown, we must take this base's effect seriously.
Both the Republican senators and Trump need to at a minimum show that base that they were overridden by the Democrats on the wall issue, or they will definitively lose in 2020. Unfortunately, the Democrats do not hold a super-majority to force both houses to pass a bill, retrieve a veto from Trump, then override the veto. So the Democrats are stuck in a deadlock legislatively.
Where the Republicans are vulnerable is public sentiment. If the Democrats stir up public sentiment against Senate Republicans by somehow showing all Democrat politicians are throwing in their financial lot with affected Federal workers and simultaneously casting the GOP Senate Republicans as "Richie Rich" Marie Antoinette's, then that can weaken Senate Republican resolve to block Democrat-sponsored funding bills enough to punt the ball into the executive branch with some ass-covering statements to their base that they were somehow legislatively outmaneuvered by the dasterdly Democrats.
The problem with this kind of approach is realistically, even many Democrat senators are relatively wealthy [1], and quite a few Republican senators are not Scrooge McDuck diving into gold coin piles. It's political theatrics through caricatures, and Trump has a proven, astonishing ability to out-theatrics his opponents and make it stick (that's the part that continues to surprise me), and that's a wildcard.
But if the Democrats somehow neutralize the Federal workers' pain, and convincingly show they can outlast the Republicans (probably by showing they'll take it all the way to 2020 if necessary), then they defang the GOP's obstructive strategy. It would take a hell of a big war chest, however. Which is why I don't see it ever happening.
Would love to hear others' ideas on how Democrats can force Trump's hand on this shutdown issue, as this is certainly an interesting political problem that will be studied in the future by students of politics.
[1] https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/apr...
But again, this is something where the Republicans have lied to their base, stoked a fake immigration crisis using nativism, and is now forced to lie in a bed they made.
So this is what they get for stoking populist, nativist fear.
I'd love to be proved wrong, but I think the Democrats have backed themselves into a no-win situation. If they give in on the wall, it's an outright Republican victory. If they don't give in on the wall and the shutdown continues, it's a victory for the "small government" part of the Republican base, who will point to the shutdown as proof that the federal government can be safely reduced in size.
And I agree with you that it's unlikely the Democrats will be able to appeal to the economic situation of the affected workers to override a veto. The Democratic leadership has been terrible at forging a consistent message other than "we don't like Trump". They've let themselves be branded as the "social issues party" and let the Republicans brand themselves as the "economy party"; which means they're at a severe disadvantage when it comes to economic issues.
Sure, there may be a racist component to the immigration debate, but most peoples' concerns are primarily economic: "they're" going to take "our" jobs[1]. I also can't think of anything the Democrats could give up as a bargaining chip. Concessions on the ACA would alienate their own base. They'd look disingenuous agreeing to additional tax cuts after making such a big deal of the previous cuts. I'm not sure with what else they could negotiate.
[1] Here the racism is more tribalism than outright "I'm superior because of my race"
If air traffic controllers start to quit for example, and air travel starts to shut down, then as a stopgap if it isn't a wide enough impact, Trump can order the armed forces to help direct air traffic. If it is a big enough impact, then the GOP can allow for a targeted bill just for the air traffic controllers. The DNC then finds itself in an unenviable position. Block the targeted funding bill just for the ATC's, and the mayhem squarely lands on them. Allow it to pass, and they start losing political points in this dominance game. It's not good optics for the DNC either way.
For some issues like food safety, we're not going to run into PRC-level, pre-FDA era food supply chain adulteration overnight, many fiscal quarters and years is more likely. It took decades in the PRC before the adulteration got to the levels we see today, and they still don't experience political unrest from it. The longer this shutdown runs, the more ammunition the DNC is handing GOP "small government" advocates' rhetoric (as over-caricatured as that rhetoric will be, and as wrong in its over-simplification it is, it will play well to the GOP base). The GOP wet dream is the shutdown drags on indefinitely, and they get to "starve the beast" by reverse-budgeting: find out what part of civilizational collapse becomes unacceptable due to lack of operations, fund only those parts, and devil take the hindmost. That's like a nightmare scenario for the DNC.
It can get worse, too. ATC example above: Trump orders a vestigial FAA to tell everyone using airspace they now can only access airspace if their special usage-tax is fully paid up, and budget all critical FAA functions via pure utility revenue collections. Or designates a private company to administer the airspace management, who collects revenue, and is granted by executive power the ability to regulate access to airspace, and disband the FAA. The salivating within GOP think tanks is almost audible.
The DNC appears to my casual observation to be playing right into the GOP's hands. I'm far, far from some kind of politics wonk/hacker, though. So I'd sure like to be shown a way out of the DNC's dilemma by political hackers who follow this stuff much more than I do.
I think if the DNC can put together a two-plus year budget plan in exchange for caving on the wall, then they take this corner they've been painted into out of the GOP's hands. By no means should the DNC accept temporary budget bills for just a month or so: that just loads more bullets into the chamber to shoot the DNC with more shutdowns.
By refusing to compromise ($5.7B is about a quarter of the estimated $25B entire wall project), the DNC backed the GOP into a corner with their base, where the GOP politicians got nothing to lose by pushing back. By raising the stakes into "for all the marbles", the DNC told these GOP politicians they have nothing to lose by demanding the entire $25B instead. If the DNC is going to play that kind of hardball, I sure would love to be a fly on the wall to hear what their strategy is.
One of the bills passed this week: https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/21?s...
[1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/04/house-passes-bill-to-end-gov...
This is flatly untrue. The House passed an appropriations bill [0] on the first day they were in session (Jan 3), and it has been waiting for a vote in the Senate since then.
No, he's asking for it for a wall, not for border security; wall's are't security, they're security theater. Actual security requires people, not walls. Most illegals fly in on Visa's and just over stay, they don't sneak in through the desert. Walls are easily by ladders, ropes, and shovels, only an idiot like Trump would want to spend billions on a wall.
This week I read up on Reagan's firing of 11000 flight controllers because the union that formerly supported him demanded better working conditions. It took a decade for air traffic control to regain the old levels.