Well, I'm sorry Anteater, but I see things from a very different perspective. Specifically:
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Originally Posted by Anteater
1. Government shutdowns are a two way street.
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What does that even mean? If you're suggesting there is shared responsibility for a shutdown, why are you praising Trump for pushing the Dems to the limit?
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... and it stopped being Trump's responsibility at a very clear point near the end. Trump owned it to the point where the Democrats rejected his proposal (which would have been a good concession on DACA as well).
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^ All along Trump could've ended the shutdown by honouring his pre-Ann-Coulter word on the bi-partisan agreement, so no, it didn't stop being his responsibility. His proposal was a disingenious mish-mash of old ideas that had already been rejected and certainly didn't contain "a good concession on DACA". Surely it has been Trump who has put the fate of DACA recipients at risk? Basically, Trump took away their security, then in the proposal you mention, he offered to give it back to them temporarily if he was given $5.7 bn. That's pretty much the same technique that is used in protection racketering.
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... Trump realized that the Democrats were willing to keep the government shut down even when the cost of doing so was painful to everyone else.
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^ Everyone knew from Day One that a shutdown would be painful. In fact Trump was one of a few Montgomery-Burns-type voices insisting right to the last that Fed workers could get loans and "work along", whatever that much repeated, but never explained expression means. Please don't suggest that he had a change of heart the day the Dems rejected his proposal - that doesn't really tally with the timeline of events.
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2. Politics aren't that different from certain aspects of my own work. Look at marketing and advertising: the only way businesses achieve their goals are by shifting tactics and experimenting. You try something for a month and say "I'm willing to spend X to see if this approach will get me my target ROI".
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^ Or to adapt your words to match Trump's approach, "I'm willing to let 800, 000 Fed workers suffer to see if it will get me what I want."
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If it doesn't work, you shift gears. That's why people pay companies like mine thousands and thousands of dollars, because everything is a work in progress when you are attempting to achieve a specific goal and it's a full time job to develop methodologies that work.
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^ I think this piece of corporate jargon also needs to be adapted if it is to match the conduct of Trump and McConnell during the shut down. I didn't notice either of them working full-time to develop methodologies that work. McConnell was so missing in action that a Where'sMitch? hashtag was created to try to flush him out into the open.
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Now they don't get any concessions on DACA and he'll likely take radical steps to get what he wants instead. And the courts will uphold it in the end to boot.
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^ This is for the future, so I can't contradict you but I don't share your certainty about how it's going to play out.