White Flag Democrats

Schumer and Jeffries Are About To Blow The Shutdown Fight

UPDATE: I’ve moved this outside the paywall due to media and public interest.

Dear Democrats:

I regret to inform you that your leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are walking straight into the White House trap. And since they will, Donald Trump will cut off their heads, defecate down their necks, and dance in their entrails.

They don’t want a government shutdown and are thus willing to negotiate in good faith with a man for whom lies are currency, a man who has broken his promises in business, marriage, politics, and life more than he’s kept them.

The consultants, pollsters, and focus-group whisperers have told Democratic leadership they need to fight for the Obamacare/ACA insurance benefit because it polls well. I’m sure it does. It happens to be the right thing to do, but not the right thing to do right now.

Why? Because pain is the only teacher in politics, and they’re giving Trump a lifeline to escape the cost of the pain he’s caused Americans.

Even if you avert a shutdown, Democrats will accrue exactly zero political credit for it.

As I’ve written before: you are not dealing with good-faith actors. You are not dealing with men of honor. You are not dealing with a White House that plays by any rules.

This administration has already shown it will illegally rescind or block congressionally authorized and appropriated funding whenever it dislikes the outcome or the aesthetics.

Every person in history who has tried to make a deal with Donald Trump has pulled back a stump at the last handshake. He is a serial liar, surrounded by ideologues who understand power better than you do…and how to wield it, QED the last nine months.

And yet, here we are. Jeffries and Schumer fell into the same stupid, endless trap Democrats always find when facing Republicans of the MAGA era.

The only strategy on this obscenity of a continuing resolution is to say no.

Not just no, but hell no. If you fund this, you are funding the continuation of Trump’s Project 2025 at scale. They’ve already reached nearly half their targets. Keep these agencies open, and you empower their sprint to the finish line.

If you fund the aid package for farmers, you are now partners in his disastrous tariff policy. If you fund the ACA, you are giving mostly MAGA voters a subsidy they told us quite clearly they were voting against. If you fund the ongoing presence of troops in our streets and masked ICE goons beating and arresting American citizens, that’s now on you.

After more than a decade of Trump, any Democrat who still believes they can get an “honorable commitment” from him is delusional. There is no compromise, no deal, no promise that won’t be betrayed. The very thing you think is your great victory will be gutted, mocked, and held up to humiliate you.

But Democrats still believe they can poll-test their way out of disaster. They cling to the fantasy that the public will reward them for “doing the right thing.” In some just world, perhaps.

But the world you live in now is not just, not fair, not honorable. The same people who accuse you every day of murdering Charlie Kirk do not see you as partners in governance.

They see you as enemies to be destroyed.

Your fear that you’ll take a political hit for a shutdown is misplaced. The public knows Republicans control every lever of power in Washington: the White House, both chambers of Congress, and the courts, particularly the Supreme Court.

Nate Silver was right: if you wanted real leverage, you’d demand an end to the tariffs.

That’s something you could kill and then get credit for by, oh, I don’t know…saving the economy.

But no…the focus-group brigade whispered the same poison they always do: that health care and prescription drugs will win elections, that abortion is the only issue that matters, that gun control will swing suburban moms. For the love of all the gods, when will you listen?

They are always wrong. How many races now have you lost because pollsters told you what your base wanted to hear, not what you needed to do to win?

Culture wars are where Democrats go to die.

You lost working class voters by dedicating yourself to bespoke luxury issues disconnected from those same voters by miles. They told you they wanted you to focus on their economic needs and you gave them lectures on climate change (and all the rest) instead. You never understood when they told you climate or guns or abortion might be legitimate issues, but your focus on those issues to the exclusion of making their lives better now was a political divorce decree.

You will not win them back by declaring you gave the President a stern lecture on health care.

The fact that Jeffries and Schumer will emerge from their meeting and call it “productive” is not leadership. It is madness.

If Democrats had courage, they’d demand not just an end to tariffs, but also the release of the Epstein files, Trump’s divestment from his lavishly corrupt and monetized presidency, and mandatory cooperation in a sweeping corruption probe of the most criminal enterprise ever to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But they won’t.

So here I am, screaming into the void, wondering how many more times they’ll touch the hot stove.

Trump is a master of distraction, deception, and corruption.

That’s not opinion; it’s fact.

Any Democrat who thinks he’ll honor a deal is a fool. This administration is composed of evil men doing evil things. If Schumer and Jeffries think the public will reward them for a flimsy deal that funds domestic military deployments, economic ruin, and corruption, they don’t deserve their offices.

The old rule that “the party that shuts down government takes the hit” is dead. The Democrats cling to scraps of power because they refuse to understand what power is, what it does, and how to use it.

Their only power now is the power to say no. To resist.

And yet, despite all of us screaming “Don’t walk into the trap,” they are about to do just that.

So chalk up another victory for the hacks in the Democratic consulting class, the same geniuses who believe you can poll-test every issue until it inspires no one, defends no one, and wrecks party enthusiasm.

On election night, when turnout falls short, remember this moment. Democrats should be talking about the economy and corruption, about Epstein and Trump’s criminality, and tying it directly to the pain felt by farmers, manufacturers, businesses, and workers.

Stop thinking some clever health care policy bank shot will save you. It won’t. Resistance to evil doesn’t come from focus groups. It comes from strength, courage, and honor.

Demand something that speaks to Americans beyond the core of your base.

Demand more of him than he can give.

There is no algorithm for this. No model based on outdated assumptions will save you. Walking into that room and negotiating with the ultimate political terrorist by tossing away your one shred of leverage isn’t strategy.

It’s surrender.