I don’t know if the numbers are accurate, but as best as I can ascertain, the Washington Generals (often operating under aliases) played The Harlem Globetrotters over 16,000 times. They won approximately three times. The last time they won, in 1971, it was because the Globetrotters lost track of the time and the score and couldn’t make up a 12-point deficit. Fans were displeased. Children cried. It never happened again.
The Generals were obviously not supposed to win, but they needed to create a competitive game to keep things interesting. That meant that they scored a lot. They had really talented players. But the game was rigged, and with a tiny handful of surprising exceptions spanning decades, the Generals literally could not win.
This wasn’t a problem for the people who paid them. They were paid to lose.
This is somewhat of an analogy for where Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries find themselves right now.
To be clear, the funders of the Democratic Party do not pay its leaders to lose. What I mean is that the game is rigged in a way now that the Democrats cannot win, but Schumer and Jeffries are expected to pretend otherwise. Oh sure, there is an infinitesimal chance that the Dems can win, but probably only when their opponents make a perfect storm of blunders. More often, the Dems will make a good play and score a couple points. Things will look competitive for a moment and fan interest will rise. But it’s a sham.
It’s also tragic. But what really grinds my gears is that there are people out here–genuine fans of the Democrats–who are expecting them to win.
The games didn’t used to be rigged like this. They were rigged in other ways, certainly, ensuring that the poor stayed poor and the rich got richer. But the contests between the Republicans and the Democrats were real competitions, and they were serious. There were actual consequences following on the outcomes and those consequences mattered. On the federal level, at least, that is no longer true.
We can see it both on the electoral level and the policy level.
The Republicans are going to gerrymander the House of Representatives so extensively that the Democrats have only an infinitesimal chance of winning back control in 2026. Their chances of winning back control of the U.S. Senate are no better. This is true even if the Democrats run the best campaigns in history. The game is rigged.
On the policy level, we can see this playing out right now over the government shutdown. Democratic partisans are demanding the Schumer and Jeffries refuse to pay for government operations. This is a demand they can obviously grant. But for how long? I can imagine the Washington Generals walking off the court until the promoters agree to give them a real chance to beat the Globetrotters. But eventually they’ll realize that without games they have no jobs and without jobs they have no paychecks.
On the other hand, if they agree to reopen the government at some point, they presumably want to have achieved something. Is there any hope that they will achieve something?
There are three things they might conceivably achieve, but here are the problems.
First, they might extract some small face-saving concession. But this won’t get at the real problem. The upcoming elections are rigged, the administration is lawlessly refusing to spend the money Congress has appropriated, and it’s violating all manner of federal statutes and international treaties. Do the Democrats want to fund a Pentagon that is murdering people on the high seas and kidnapping people and sending them off on secret flights to foreign countries without any due process? Do the Democrats want to fund a Justice Department that is nakedly pursuing unfair and partial justice against the administration’s critics? Do they want to fund Robert F. Kennedy’s rogue Department of Health & Human Services? Do they want to fund the Federal Trade Commission when their own appointed members have been illegally fired?
Second, they might get some movement on their main demands, which are poll-driven and centered on health care access and costs. This would be beneficial for the people if it were to happen, but they are not likely to succeed because they have no leverage. The Republicans are willing to keep the government largely shuttered, and the administration is already operating as if they don’t need Congress. This is a game of chicken that the Democrats are just not going to win.
Which leaves the third thing. Perhaps the Democrats can win the blame game. They will argue that the government is shut down because the Republicans insist on doing very unpopular things in the health care field. The people will generally agree that the Democrats are on the right side of this issue. Some public pressure will be applied to the Republicans to make concessions. The Democratic base will be energized by the fight. Whatever happens, and however the government eventually reopens, perhaps the GOP will take a political hit that will last all the way to November 2026 and result in midterm defeats.
This is the most realistic hope. But, there are three obstacles, and two of them are formidable. The first is that the party out of power has always historically been blamed for government shutdowns. This isn’t necessarily that big of a deal, though, as the damage tends not to last. It’s also offset to a large degree because shutdowns keep the base happy, while capitulation demoralizes them.
But the same factor works in the opposite direction, too. Just as the downside effects of shutdowns fade quickly, so do the potential political benefits.
And this relates to the third obstacle. The Democratic leadership’s demands don’t match the Democratic base’s expectations. Sure, the left wants Medicaid funding restored and better subsidies for Obamacare health care plans. But want they really want is for the party to stop funding murder and lawlessness. In any scenario where the Democrats go along with reopening the government, any concessions won will be immediately discounted and forgotten because they haven’t solved the problem. At the absolute minimum, the Democrats would have to ensure that the administration stop refusing to spend money the way Congress has directed, and that is not a concession they can extract.
What I am saying is that the Democrats will infuriate their own base if they don’t shut down the government and they will infuriate their base once they agree to reopen it, irrespective of any realistic concessions they might gain. And, the gains they can realistically gain are extremely limited by the fact that the Republicans quite justifiably believe they’ve already locked in a win in next year’s midterm elections.
The total picture is as bleak as it gets. The Democrats will eventually fund the government, and they’ll do it on wholly unsatisfactory terms. This is true by political measures and, even more importantly, by moral ones. They will become a kind of Vichy government, ostensibly working for the American people but actually serving as financiers of a fascist occupying regime. Their opposition risks becoming purely performative, serving only to create a fig leaf of normalcy and representative government.
What should Jeffries and Schumer do?
There is nothing they can do. They and we are fucked.
But since they’re fucked, they should fight. An infinitesimal chance is still a chance. Perfect storms do happen.
The difference here is that, unlike the Washington Generals, they should genuinely try to win. It’s just that we, as fans in the seats, should not boo them when they don’t.
My criticism isn’t that they are in a no-win situation. My criticism is that they’re chosen a poll-driven message based on health care as their shield from criticism. It makes it look like they’re only doing a shutdown to satisfy the base but want to limit the damage from the rest of the electorate. The problem is that their demands are so paltry and insignificant that they won’t even get credit from the base if they win, which they won’t.
If you need a shield, it should be the shield you die on, and that should be a shield of morality rather than mere policy differences and spending priorities. This immoral government cannot be morally funded. And that’s a problem the people must face before a political party can hope to solve it.
