I'll throw my 2 cents of criticism in here [View all]

Seems to me that there are bad outcomes no matter which way Senate Democrats vote on the CR. Blocking the CR will shut down the government, which will give Trump the opportunity to declare a national emergency and do whatever the hell he wants. If the government is shut down for more than 30 days, it becomes much easier to fire federal employees. And Trump will blame every single thing that has gone wrong over the past couple of months, including the crashing stock market, on the fact that "Democrats shut down the government." I can see why Democrats wouldn't want to hand Trump that weapon.

On the other hand, voting for the CR also gives Republicans want they want. It signs off on cuts that Democrats don't want. And Trump is going to attempt to impound the spending that they're signing off on anyway -- his goal is to make Congress irrelevant. I can see why Democrats wouldn't want to look like they're signing off on the GOP's latest insanity. And voting for the CR is obviously going to turn off a major portion of the base.

So it's an almost impossible choice either way. But to me, that's not the problem. The problem is that we don't seem to be able to make lemonade from lemons.

As long as Trump is president, this chaos is going to continue. No matter which way Democrats turn, they're not going to "solve" this just by voting on stuff -- it's not like there's a magic solution where things will get worse if Democrats vote one way, and better if they vote a different way. Things will continue to get worse no matter what.

The problem as I see it is that Senate Democrats have been faced with an impossible choice, and then they're publicly acting like it. They're dithering, they're being taunted by Republicans without seeming to be able to come up with a decent response, and they're not exactly flooding the airwaves and social media with a focused response. Frankly, they look weak, indecisive, and leaderless. They need to pick a direction, pick a message, and then promote that message relentlessly.

It is disturbing that no matter which way Democrats plan to vote, they don't seem to have a message. They don't seem to be able to explain what is happening in a coherent way. They can't even seem to come up with a unified message that attempts to assuage the concerns of their own base. In politics, looking like you're fighting goes a very, very long way. So when our side doesn't even look like it's fighting, then it feels like we've already lost before a vote has even been cast.

Recent polls are showing that Americans DO NOT LIKE what Trump is doing. He is giving Democrats a massive amount of political ammunition. As we know, his "gish gallop" style of politics makes it difficult to focus on one thing because the next day he's on to three more things. But at the same time, it SHOULD NOT BE THIS HARD for Democrats to come up with some kind of message -- something, anything! -- that makes it look like they have their act together.

Chuck Schumer is our leader in the Senate, and that's where this current action is taking place, and it's not like they haven't had time to figure out how they're going to message this. So I think the buck stops with him on this one.