Saunders: Democrats make same error as Republicans in 2013

This time, some Democrats pushed a government shutdown because they couldn’t get a “clean” bill to extend Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which provided legal status for as many as 800,000 undocumented immigrants brought into the country as children.

Here, “clean” means 100 percent one-sided.

Others, like Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., supported a bill they saw as a compromise, but it doesn’t reflect the scales of power. Republicans own the House and the White House. Senate Republicans, with a slim majority, need Democrats to pass a 60-vote hurdle. If they insist on DACA as a condition to keep the government operating, they will have overplayed their hand.

Friday morning, when there was time to pass a bill, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney already was calling it “the Schumer shutdown” in reference to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Across town, the Democratic National Committee sent out a press release with the headline, “Republicans Created the Trump Shutdown.”

The Democrats’ push for a shutdown was fueled by a week of saturation news coverage over Trump’s reported term for Haiti and African nations — “s—-hole countries” — during a Jan. 11 White House meeting with Durbin, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., as the duo pitched their bipartisan compromise.

Schumer and Graham seemed to think they were a breath away from a deal. The DNC issued this talking point: “After saying he would sign a deal, Trump rejected a bipartisan agreement and threatened to shut down the government over his wall,” referring to the president’s desire to build a wall along the southern border.

A lack of compromise

The Durbin-Graham measure had support from senators from both parties, but it also had garnered fierce opposition, especially in the GOP House. Trump has compromised. He campaigned on a pledge to revoke the DACA order — but in February he revealed he did not want to go through with it.

In September, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the administration would rescind the order — which the administration deemed to be an illegal act of executive overreach — but over six months to give Congress until March 5 to broker a deal.

As Trump canceled a planned Friday trip to Mar-a-Lago, Schumer went to the White House for further negotiations. Later, Schumer said the two discussed “all of the major outstanding issues. We made some progress, but we still a have a good number of disagreements.”

Ten Senate Democrats up for re-election this year hail from states Trump won in 2016. As the shutdown dragged on, Republicans were more than happy to hammer them for their membership in a party that put undocumented immigrants before CHIP kids, as well as the underfunded military. Meanwhile, a rump of Democrats and Republicans said they don’t want to pass another continuing resolution because temporary fixes shortchange defense.

Dreamers, a term for DACA recipients, “aren’t bargaining chips” — that’s been the mantra of the Democrats demanding this “clean” DACA bill. That’s the sort of talk you get when a party’s base pushes a party toward the abyss. What they’re really saying is: Compromise is a dirty word.