No, no, no…the messaging is all wrong. If the Dems fight every battle and lose they look like losers. They needed to say LOUDLY the republicans won’t fight for the miners and we democrats don’t have enough votes - we need more democrat senators or the republicans will continue to do this to the workers on more issues!
The democrats need to be like the republicans and blame, blame, blame…and then pick the right fights like Obamacare, Medicare, Social Security, a few cabinet picks, Supreme Court…NOT EVERYTHING!
What principle? The principle of throwing Federal workers who actually support Democrats under the bus to protect a bunch of West Virginia miners from the Republicans they elected?
Hopefully before they fall asleep at the wheel and turn into a 40-ton mass of kinetic energy.
And they might have to keep staying awake for longer shifts and less rest until they are 69 years old.
Brings to mind one of the least pleasant experiences of my high school years: Red Asphalt.
AS memorable adolescent experiences go, viewing one of the California Highway Patrol’s “Red Asphalt” films ranks right up there with your first kiss or having your parents come home early to find a kegger in full swing. For generations, the lights have dimmed, the screen has flickered, and like young Alex in Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange,” the state’s youngest drivers have been compelled to watch this strange and enduring rite of passage.
“Red Asphalt” — the title says it all — is the flip side of California’s carefree car culture. Intended to scare the bejabbers out of fresh-faced and obliviously immortal teen drivers, the original film and its four remakes are horror shows of vehicular ultraviolence mostly filmed by camera-ready cops called to accident scenes along the state’s roads. The gruesome road-splatter films have become sociological touchstones for many drivers, and even may be among the most-viewed movie titles ever to come out of California.
Had most Democrats supported Manchin, Brown, et al. to stall the budget bill past the deadline, then
McConnell would have looked especially weak to his own coal-country constituents;
a government shutdown before the holidays over promised pension and health benefits would have had people paying attention for sure, even the “alt” media;
working people, beyond those just with coal-related jobs in a few coal states, could have been heartened that there are Democrats who know their plight and are willing to fight for them;
the threat that Democrats will relentlessly fight without quarter for those up-coming “far bigger, far more worthy” issues in both Congressional houses would become far more credible to the GOP;
a government shutdown this weekend would have brought House representatives back to work, thus extending the days that this Congress would be in session. Those extra working days would legally preserve more of President Obama’s executive orders from being overturned by Trump’s executive order alone. Congress would have to deal with them, giving Democrats more issues to fight for.
"When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose."
A fight to fund retired workers’/widows’ legal and promised pensions and health-care seems a battle worth fighting for, all things carefully considered. This battle for the rights of c. 20,000 coal mining familys are the same issues that the larger battles to come for the ACA, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. If Democrats are not willing or able to fight and win a small battle, why should we believe that they will or can fight and win larger battles in the future?
Do you think these same federal workers will feel confident that Democrats won’t likewise abandon them when the Trump Administration goes after their civil service protections?
Fighting to win this smaller battle for the pension/health-care rights of some 20,000 coal miners and their familys will have been much easyer than fighting to win the war to preserve civil service protections and benefits for hundreds of thousands of federal employees. The GOP could have made this coal miner dispute disappear by spending a few million dollars; winning the civil service war will reward GOPers with many billions of dollars to cut from the federal budget. For which victory do you believe the GOP would fight harder and longer?
The fact that defending civil service protections will be a hard fight is all the more reason to save the big guns and what political capital Democrats have for those sorts of battles to protect actual Democratic voters as opposed to expending it to protect Republican voters from the consequences of their own actions.
a)Yes, the federal government covered security costs for Dubya’s duuuuuuuuuuuude ranch, and other Presidential residences. So expect the Secret Service to foot the bill for their security measures at Trump Tower during the Trump Presidency.
b)the NYPD security is not for the President, but for the President-elect and his transition team, and the Democratic Mayor of NYC basically said ‘if the Federal Government isn’t going to tell the President-Elect that his transition team should get their asses to Washington and use the facilities provided for them there, then the Federal Government can help defray the costs of keeping his ass safe here, because it’s costing the city a fair bit more than $35 million to provide the level of security the Secret Service requires us to provide’.
