As the partial government shutdown heads into its third week, hip hop legend turned political scientist Snoop Dog offered his analysis on Instagram.
Specifically, his message was to the furloughed government workers out of work:
“All you people from the federal government that’re not getting paid right now, ain’t no fucking way in the world y’all can vote for Donald Trump when he come back up again. If y’all do vote for him, y’all some stupid motherfuckers. I’m saying that to y’all early.”
Maybe that isn’t bad advice. But, and no disrespect to Snoop here, no one in Washington, D.C., is listening. The shutdown won’t end until incentives change for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the president.
Pelosi is hell-bent against the wall and has said as much. “The fact is, a wall is an immorality,” she told reporters last week. More importantly, the shutdown stemming from the debate over that wall is also temporary sanctuary. Speaker for a second time, Pelosi has a problem brewing inside her 235-member House majority: impatience for impeachment.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib represents Detroit and is more Snoop Dogg’s speed. She wants to kneecap the president. The Democrat summed up the mood of the party’s new guard nicely when she promised supporters over the weekend that Democrats were “gonna go in and impeach the motherfucker.”
While Pelosi loves that enthusiasm, Pelosi does not want to get mired down in the impeachment quagmire. She knows, like Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the Wisconsin Republican who has managed more impeachment proceedings than anyone in history, that it is an all-consuming process. Pelosi doesn’t want to go off half-cocked, she doesn’t want to go down in history as the author of an ill-fated impeachment attempt. If they are going to take a shot, the speaker has made clear, they aren’t going to blow it.
The shutdown gives Pelosi political cover, room to negotiate, and, most importantly, time by occupying the new guard of her overeager majority with a low-risk, high-drama showdown.
Over in the Senate, McConnell doesn’t directly benefit from the shutdown. But he doesn’t have a reason to get involved either. His goal is to protect his majority from the fallout. He does this by quietly following the lead of the White House, by promising only to end the shutdown with a bill that President Trump will support.
Basically he is riding out the shutdown storm. If McConnell has a guiding light, it’s not starting fights he can’t win. Certainly Snoop can appreciate that.
Then there is Trump. He is the most-mentioned politician in rap music because, in large part, he operates like a gangster. His brand is that of a strongman, an image cultivated by his ability to command respect and loyalty. He can bend and break on any other issue but the promised wall that made him president. His supporters will eat him if he backs down.
At this point the wall may actually be immaterial. The one thing Trump can’t do is disrespect the voters who sent him to Washington. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t get a single steel slat in the dust along the southern border so long as voters walk to the polls in 2020 saying that “he still fights.”
So Pelosi gets cover. McConnell avoids a fight he never wanted. Trump plays the part of brawler for his base. Everyone else on Capitol Hill, essential and nonessential alike, might as well sit back and sip their gin and juice until those three come to an agreement because, for the moment, each is getting what they want.
