Chuck, the assassin and the crazy aunt

Chuck, the assassin and the crazy aunt
by David Benjamin

“I expect the majority leader to fulfill his commitment to the Senate, to me and to the bipartisan group and abide by this agreement. If he does not, of course — and I expect he will — he will have breached the trust of not only the Democratic senators, but members of his own party as well.”
— Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer

MADISON, Wis. — Allegedly, Lillian Hellman once defined feminism as “the art of winning small battles in order to lose big ones.” If she were still around, she might aptly apply that definition now to liberalism — or even to a latter-day politics that stifles its best prospects by demanding purity from its practitioners.

Last weekend’s standoff in Congress typified the whole mess. There were plenty of purists to go around, led by the GOP’s nihilist “Freedom Caucus.” On the other hand, lots of Democratic idealists were ready to close the government on behalf of 690,000 undocumented young people brought illegally to the U.S. by their parents. The cynic in the mix, who called the idealists’ bluff, was Senate kingpin Mitch McConnell. The pragmatist who’s saving Democrats from themselves is minority leader Chuck Schumer.

The crazy aunt in the attic is, as always, Donald Trump.

What Sen. Schumer knew, as soon as a midnight vote closed the government, was that Republicans had already won the battle to “frame” the crisis. Schumer’s nemesis, McConnell, deftly defined the shutdown as a payless payday for a million heroes in uniform, all for the sake of a scruffy bunch of brownish-colored “illegal aliens.” The Democrats’ linguistic counterpoint to this slur is an acronym: “DACA.”

Pitting “DACA kids,” or even “dreamers” against the lurking specter of “illegal aliens” isn’t a fair semantic fight. Republicans have been winning the war of words ever since “death tax,” “welfare queen” and “superpredator” entered the vernacular.

Before the DACA shootout Friday, the GOP Propaganda Ministry — composed of talk radio and Fox News — had already made “illegal aliens,” “chain migration,” “anchor babies,” “sanctuary cities” and, of course, “build the wall,” into household terms.

All Schumer to counter the GOP’s verbal blitzkrieg was popular opinion. Polls show 86 percent of Americans favoring the dreamers. But the polls also mention that just as many people want the government to stay open. Schumer took a look at his hand and figured that, when the blame game was over, the winners would be the rich, white guys dealing from the bottom of the deck: Rush and Hannity, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the big kid who hogs all the Cheez Whiz.

You could almost see the wheels turning inside Chuck’s head. First thing he did was to give cover to several red-state Democrats, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester, Joe Manchin. Each proposed a “unanimous consent” measure to exempt from the shutdown military payrolls and other Mom-and-apple-pie constituencies. This parliamentary gimmick forced McConnell to personally kill these compassionate amendments. This laid blame on the Republicans, but since it happened in the wee hours of Saturday, few people know about it. Still, it’s there forever in The Congressional Record.

Schumer outflanked McConnell again with Monday’s deal postponing the shutdown ’til 8 February. Chuck delayed the dream, but made McConnell promise to re-visit DACA before the deadline. In the midst of his “betrayal,” Schumer quietly saved — for six years and 9 million kids — the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Not bad.

Even better was Schumer’s public relations coup. He choked off the blame game — and made sure all those GIs got paid — before most Americans woke up and found out that there had been a shutdown.

Of course, Schumer got blamed personally, anyway — by his friends. An army of purists hit the streets, denounced the dastardly Democrats and camped out at Chuck’s house, howling over his DACA double-cross. They fear that McConnell will renege on his part of the deal.
 
Of course, they’re right. McConnell will renege. Schumer is counting on it. Chuck knows Mitch.

He knows that McConnell is, by far, the most cynical conniver in Congress. Mitch has shown, repeatedly, that he’ll commit any outrage and trample any norm to advantage his party and advance his political agenda. Beneath that baritone drawl and Yertle the Turtle facade, there’s a granite gryphon with a heart of dry ice. If he had a living grandmother, she would hesitate to stand beside him as the bus rolls up — lest, to get her purse and the Social Security check inside — he would throw her under it.

McConnell is a soulless assassin. As House Speaker Paul Ryan channels his inner Ayn Rand and tags along. Mitch will queer the DACA deal. In the end, as Donald trumpets an imminent orgy of deportations “like the world has never seen,” McConnell will smirk his little Yertle smirk and say don’t look at me, it’s Schumer’s fault.

And Schumer will smile back, because — here’s where my cock-eyed idealism kicks in — the vast majority among us (about 86 percent) will see through the sophistry of the GOP nativists. With some hesitation and a lot of backlash, we will recall our immigrant heritage. We’ll object to the notion of 690,000 fully assimilated, English-speaking Americans kids being rounded up in hamlets and suburbs, yanked from their barracks and ships at sea, pulled out of college and high school and fired from their jobs to be herded into concentration camps and hustled across the border. We’ll be appalled at the prospect of troops in boots, helmets and body armor, holding shields, carrying guns and swinging nightsticks… as the whole world watches.

Most folks will notice that this sort of thing isn’t very American (see Liberty, Statue of).

If McConnell blinks, this is the moment. He’ll foresee the ugly optics, mute his party’s racists, humor the crazy aunt and conceive a way to reinstate a face-saving facsimile of DACA. He’ll make Schumer an offer.

But here’s where it might just all go haywire for Mitch. If so, it will be fun to watch.

Entrenched right now in the White House are two implacable bishops of the Church of Hate, John Kelly and Steve Miller. Whispering constantly into that big fat gullible ear, they’re closer to Trump than McConnell ever will be. If Kelly and Miller prevail — and they probably will — Trump will raise his mighty rod, part the Rio Grande and create 690,000 martyrs. He will produce a televised extravaganza of 690,000 clean, bright, young political prisoners stewing in detention or exiled to Chihuahua, crying out together into a thousand microphones— in perfect English — for justice.

If all this comes to pass, coining the Democratic battle cry for the November election will be a no-brainer. The propagandists on the right will be envious and the purists on the left will be pacified. Best of all, it will fit neatly on buttons, bumper stickers, t-shirts, sombreros, birthday cakes…

“Bring Our Children Home!”