From a federal employee. TPM Reader XX1, initials anonymized and portion of letter which notes government agency removed for obvious reasons …
I’m writing here to concur with your last couple blog posts on the shutdown. You put into prose accurately what I’ve been trying to get across to so many local political allies who overthink irrelevant minutia. They focus on the timing of the fight, on the details of the substance, etc. None of that matters, as has been apparent to me all along. This is, in fact, an arm-wrestling match, purely a battle over power. The Democrats’ goal should be to extract a material concession that resonates to the broad masses as a “public good,” and they are doing that with ACA subsidies. Successfully extracting a concession is a material victory that slightly restores just a little bit of balance of power, and blocks Trump’s effort at totalitarian control.
