Total (Political) War

The current shutdown exercise--emphasis on "current"--is a relatively minor skirmish in the larger battle for power which is going to be fought--in the trenches, in the air, on the beaches--for 34 more months, without any break, and at tremendous financial expense.

Setting the Stage, Sticking My Neck Out with Prediction
The ultimate objective is the 2020 election, one which may determine the long-term future of this nation.  I do not believe I exaggerate: If after all this chaos, dysfunction, and madness, the Trumpian Republicans can succeed in retaining power in 2020, I would view our future to be an accelerating downward spiral into insularity, a diminishing role in global affairs, and constant domestic strife, aggravated by massively increasing inequality and an exploding debt.  To keep power, the oligarchy will move toward despotism, and what is left of our rights and freedoms will become a sad joke.  We can see some portents of their ways, and the lengths to which they would go, in the recent examples of the manipulation of the Supreme Court nomination process, in 2016 and 2017, and the efforts to suppress votes which the Republicans are attempting in several states where they have the power to do so,

2020 is the great prize, and although we are looking at it from great distance (in political terms),  there is every reason to think it will be a banner year for the Democrats.  For one thing, in the same way that the Democrats will be defending many Senate seats this year in red states, in 2020 the Republicans will be on the defensive, trying to hold seats in states that tilt Democratic.

I would guess there is better than a 50-50 chance that the US economy will be either in recession or not long out of it by 2020, with the most likely scenario in the meantime being a ramping up of inflation.  That would be due to the growing budget deficits, to suppression of trade leading to higher import costs, and the labor shortage-- incredible in this age of shrinking demand of labor, but created by the public's demand for more jobs and the politicians' willingness to bend policy to support the desire--which is now finally driving up wages.  The Fed is trying to move up low interest rates sufficiently to contain it, but politics are making it hard:  first an unneeded tax cut, and next will be a burst of additional spending on "infrastructure"--likely to end up being a massive pork-barrel spending on low-priority developments to further pay off well-connected Trump sycophants. If inflation starts surpassing acceptable levels, there will be little choice but to jack up rates, and that will lead to the recession I would predict for 12-24 months from now.  I don't think it will be a mild one, either:  the bursting of the bubblicious markets, the return of consumer overindebtedness, and the failure to learn enough lessons from the last recession in reducing the risk in our financial structure suggest to me that this will be one that leads to stagnation, a sharply weakened dollar and a sharp increase in unemployment.

Then there is the destruction of the Republican brand which the GOP and its alleged leader, the accidental President, are just doing to themselves.   Even with all the basic measures of the US economy going great right now, the public is disenchanted with this one-party government, with the performance of the President, and with the direction the country is going.

Thank goodness for that!  If it were otherwise, if this past year somehow conned a majority of Americans into thinking they were being governed well, then there would be reason for despair.  Instead, we are encouraged, we are furious, and we will not be bought off by something like the phony appeal of the recent tax bill. 

2018: A Historical Analogy
This year's midterm elections are an important and necessary phase in this war, though its result is unlikely to be a decisive one. The Republicans would need a substantial reversal in the current trends to be able to maintain the degree of dominance they have today in both the Federal and state governments, while the Democrats' absolute best outcome would be to reduce their deficit in governorships and state legislatures while gaining narrow majorities in the House and, more unlikely, in the Senate.  It is inconceivable that we will come out of 2018 with the Republican side not in control of the Federal judicial and executive branches. Almost certainly, this year's result will be a closer contest for governmental power, with no reprieve at all from the continuous war of words, and immediate transition to the early stages of the 2020 general election.  Still, the contests this year will be critical in setting the terms of the legislative battles to be held in the 2019-2020 Congress, and of  contests in basically all the swing states, like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Minnesota and Florida:  all of them have contested battles both for the governors' office (and control of state legislatures) and for a Senate seat (and for some, two Senate seats).

If I were looking for a historical reference to which to compare this stage of the war, I would say that 2018 could be the equivalent of the Battle of Stalingrad for the opponents of the Drumpfenreich;  the event that turns the tide, the one that gives its opponents a view of a possible victory, though the path ahead be long and bloody. Stalingrad was a long, cruel campaign of attrition and destruction, and the Democrats will have to endure, cold-bloodedly, months of hardship, tremendous cost, and frequent setbacks, just as the Soviets did. 

The 2018 campaign will have three fronts--the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the state elections (the great majority of states have their governors' races in the midterm).  There are different conditions in each battle.  With the states, the Republicans have a huge lead which will certainly be reduced; in the House a great deal of uncertainty is present, but the Republicans are on the run; and in the Senate the Republicans have an edge, in terms of the relatively small number of seats they need to defend, while the Democrats have to defend both many seats and many in which their party is the weaker one in the state.  More on this later.

The Current SNAFU
I expect the current shutdown to be resolved quickly--maybe today.  It is about getting agreement on the short-term legislative agenda in Congress:  how long to temporarily fund the government this time, when the immigration debate will be held and under what rules.  It is true that both parties' stubbornness created this dysfunction and thus share the blame; it is also true that both sides are effectively taking hostages:  the Democrats are using the shutdown to force a debate on immigration, and specifically on the status of the DACA recipients (children of undocumented immigrants who have long maintained residence here, but who have been exempted from deportation--at least, until Trump's executive order will take effect in March).  The Republicans' hostages are the DACA "Dreamers" themselves--they are using the Democrats' commitment to preserving, or improving, the Dreamers' status in order to get more immigration restrictions, and Trump is using it to get funding for his Stupid Wall with Mexico--something the Democrats would never otherwise consent to doing.

The Senate Democrats are on dangerous ground:  forcing this shutdown--and it is true that they did do that, by withholding their votes Friday night from allowing a continuing resolution to come to the floor for a final vote--should not backfire on them in a big way.  On the other hand, though, the actual debate on DACA will be painful for them, as the Republicans will try to load up as much misery as they can onto a relatively straightforward question of allowing them to stay--something the Republican leadership and the President have said they are willing to do.  A large portion of the Republican Congressional contingent is against that, though, and they will force their leadership to add more border restrictions, funding to start the Stupid Wall--and then they will still vote against it.  If this bill gets loaded down excessively with poison pills, or worse, if it does not pass--and the relevant history of the past two decades is that, as an immigration bill gets broader, its support gets weaker--then the Democrats will be in a bad spot.  They cannot afford to let go the small bit of leverage they have, with must-pass government funding, until they get what they want, and that might mean a longer, more brutal shutdown later.

The fact is that the Republicans have the trump cards (sorry!) in this deal, and the Democrats are in a somewhat desperate position, having made commitments that they do not have the power to fulfill.  The turtle/weasel cross heading the Senate, the talking sphincter in the White House, and the epitome of white male privilege in the House Speaker's chair are going to seek revenge on the Democrats for making the Republicans' governance look ineffectual.  The fact is, though, the Republicans own their inability, and this first year of Drumpfite chaos only confirms what was apparent during the Bushite Misrule (2001-09):  the GOP is no longer fit to govern, and becomes less so each year.