Democrats capitulate again, dropping demands made after Gestapo murders

In a move that surprised absolutely no one who has been conscious for the past decade and a half, the Democratic Party has once again traded a handful of beans for a cow, then traded the cow for a handful of beans, and announced to the press that this constitutes a victory for the American people.

The deal, which will reopen the Department of Homeland Security after a six-week closure, contains exactly none of the restrictions on federal immigration agents that Democrats had demanded after officers killed two American citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Instead, the party has agreed to fund the department without those provisions, accepting a Republican promise—and one does not need to be a student of history to know the value of that particular currency—to address the matter later through a separate process that can be neatly filibustered at their leisure.

This is what is known in Washington as a win.

Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, appeared before the cameras with the weary dignity of a man who has just been told his luggage has been sent to the wrong continent and has decided to be philosophical about it.

“Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered,” he announced, which was true in the sense that a man standing on a railroad track does not waver while the train approaches. He simply stands there, and then he is elsewhere, and the train continues on its way.

The White House, for its part, signaled that President Trump would sign the bill should it reach his desk. This represents a sharp turnaround from last week, when the president called the same deal “inappropriate.”

One imagines the word had a different meaning then. Perhaps it meant the deal did not give him everything he wanted. Now it means the deal gives him everything he wanted, plus the pleasure of watching the other party explain why they didn’t really want the things they said they wanted anyway.

Democrats offered their own analysis, which was that they had successfully avoided providing additional funds to immigration enforcement.

This is rather like a man who has been robbed of his wallet congratulating himself on not also handing over his watch. The money for those agencies, you see, will come from funds Republicans pushed through last year over Democratic objections.

The fact that the money is being spent regardless, and that the dead citizens in Minneapolis remain dead, and that the restrictions Democrats demanded remain unwritten, is presented not as a defeat but as a matter of legislative nuance.

There is a certain artistry to it, if one admires that sort of thing.

The party that controls the White House and both chambers of Congress has simply waited. It has waited for the other side to exhaust itself on procedural niceties, to issue statements of principled opposition, to hold the line right up until the moment the line became inconvenient.

Then it has taken what it wanted, and the other side has gone to the microphones to explain that what it wanted was never really what it wanted anyway, and besides, there are elections coming, and people will remember who stood firm, by which they mean who stood in place while the train arrived.

One Republican, asked whether he believed the Democratic caucus would maintain its leverage in future negotiations, laughed.

It was not a cruel laugh, exactly. It was the laugh of a man who has watched the same play performed a hundred times and still cannot decide whether it is a tragedy or a farce, and has given up trying.

The spending bill does not include restrictions on federal agents. The two dead citizens are not mentioned.

The deal moves forward, and the lights stay on, and everyone involved assures the public that they have fought the good fight and emerged victorious.

Which is to say: the government will reopen, and nothing else will change, and the next time this happens—and there will be a next time—the scene will play out exactly the same way, with the same players saying the same things, as if the script were not sitting right there on the table, dog-eared and coffee-stained, with the ending already written.

In other news, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is being reduced to a skeleton crew, the CDC has paused testing for rabies and pox viruses, and the president is illegally building a $400 million ballroom with a bomb shelter underneath it.

The war with Iran is costing $200 billion more than the Pentagon was given to spend, but that suggests military officials expect it to continue for at least three months with boots on the ground.

The Trump train wreck continues on its way. The dead citizens in Minneapolis remain dead, much like American democracy itself.

The political performers have never wavered, because they never took a serious stance.