Congressional Democrats are marching in lockstep into the fourth week of a government shutdown, even as lawmakers brace for what could be the most painful point yet — a cutoff in federal food aid for more than 40 million people.
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are signaling that there will be no change in strategy: Democrats won’t provide the votes to reopen the government unless their demands over health care are met. And they’re increasingly hammering President Donald Trump for his failure to sit down to negotiate with Democrats, while instead embarking on his second foreign trip so far during the shutdown.
“This is all Trump,” a visibly frustrated Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont told CNN. “Trump’s not engaged. Republicans won’t negotiate,” Welch said, arguing that Trump’s trip to Asia this week as “an indication of how he could care less.”
Okay neither side is great but one side is holding out to provide healthcare to Americans. You can see how they’re not the same.
Yeah, I get that — and I actually agree one side talks a lot more about helping people. But here’s the thing: you can be outwardly altruistic and still be a cunt.
Both parties survive on the same donor ecosystem. The difference isn’t who they take money from — it’s the story they tell about it afterward. One wraps it in compassion, the other in capitalism, but the cash spends the same.
Take healthcare — the Affordable Care Act was written with heavy input from insurance and pharma lobbyists to make sure private industry stayed in control. So yeah, it expanded coverage, but it also locked in the same profit system. That’s not a revolution; that’s a maintenance plan.
So when people say “they’re not the same,” I think of the system as a bird — one wing blue, one wing red. They flap in different directions, but they’re attached to the same body, and that bird just keeps flying higher and higher on corporate air currents.
I’m not saying there’s no difference in ideals or rhetoric, but if both wings answer to the same flight plan — the same donors, the same industries — then arguing which wing is nobler misses the point. The problem isn’t the feathers; it’s the bird.