Around a month ago, The Fordham Ram published an editorial that attempted to forecast what a government shutdown could mean for an already-ailing America. In it, we collectively declared that the (then forthcoming) shutdown was gearing up to be more consequential than all those that preceded it, ultimately arguing that its afterlives and outcomes may very well “come back upon the average American with great violence and great harm.”
Regrettably, our prediction proved to be spot-on, as 42 million Americans were thrust into a hunger crisis when their Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were cut off; thousands of children who rely on the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Clinical Center for healthcare found their ability to access needed treatments greatly diminished; and over 1.4 million federal workers went weeks without pay as a result of the economic constraints of the shutdown. Put simply, the shutdown only created the suffering, pain and uncertainty that The Ram feared it would, as millions were left to fester without any real means to take care of themselves.
In light of this tragic failure of governance, it is the stance of this editorial board of The Fordham Ram that it would perhaps be best for these languishing victims of the shutdown if another group was left to fester and rot in their place in the future: namely, the Democratic Party.
To elaborate on this sentiment, it is important to remember what the main impetus of this shutdown actually was: Democrats’ rightful desire to resolve issues surrounding the extension of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) enhanced subsidies and premiums. That is, the Democrats’ purported reason for repeatedly voting to keep the government shutdown was the fact that any proposed stopgap measures failed to include the one thing that Democrats actually wanted: concrete measures to keep the ACA’s soon-to-rise healthcare premiums actually affordable to the 24 million Americans who rely on the program. In fact, they were so committed to obtaining these measures, to seeing this principled decision to fight for Americans’ healthcare pay off, that they were willing to take on all the criticism and practical consequences that were sure to come their way. After all, they stood their ground for a record-breaking amount of time in order to secure ACA’s future.
Thus, when this past week saw 14 Democratic members of Congress break this promise and vote to end the government shutdown, despite not having the very thing they were holding out for the whole time (i.e., a concrete solution to the ACA’s looming problems), the political world was left in shock. After over a month of holding firm in the face of this long, painful shutdown, Democrats somehow found a way to sell the whole thing out. In effect, they reduced their righteous, principled stand to a massive nothing — a massive nothing in which they ultimately sold out millions of Americans’ healthcare access for a non-binding, unofficial promise that Republicans would merely consider a vote on the matter of extending the ACA. In the words of the great Jon Stewart, “Democrats … sold out the entire shutdown not to get what [they wanted], but for a promise to not get what [they wanted] later [on].”
What makes this already infuriating decision especially frustrating, is the fact that Democrats had the upper hand optically when it came to this shutdown. It is not like the Democrats had their backs up against their walls as the masses called for their heads. No, not only did the majority of Americans blame Republicans and President Donald Trump for the shutdown in polls, but they also showed up en masse to vote for Democrats in a seeming stamp of approval for their current political playbook. Public support and consensus was clearly on their side.
And even if one were to assert that the Democrats’ obstinance was hurting the average American, it remains to be seen how anyone other than the Trump administration, the Republican Party and the Federal Judiciary was actively endangering Americans’ basic wellbeing. After all, not only were conservative legislators’ wholly unwilling to engage in good faith negotiations about the subsidies that millions of Americans rely on to quite literally stay alive, but Trump and the Supreme Court were actively working to block Americans from receiving any sort of aid. The burden of blame clearly did not lie solely, or perhaps even fully, on the Democratic holdouts.
Yet, despite all this going for the Democrats, they caved to political pressure instead of working to save the lives and healthy future of millions. This, in the eyes of The Ram, is nothing short of a pathetic measure that undermines the very legitimacy of the entire party. The Democratic Party as we know it simply cannot be allowed to exist in its current iteration — they are clearly too inept to govern, too scared to follow through on their own promises/policies and too dangerous for the average American.
Finally, in alignment with the disappointment and disgust felt by members of The Ram over this unfathomably cruel and inexplicably dumb decision, it appears to us worthwhile to list out exactly which Democratic members of Congress voted to leave millions of Americans without affordable access to healthcare. It is our belief that their cowardice functioned as nothing other than a shocking betrayal of their constituents’ fundamental wellbeing, and that they therefore deserve to be primaried to oblivion in the near future. Thus, with this in mind, their names are the following: Jared Golden of Maine, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Adam Gray of California, Don Davis of North Carolina, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Tom Suozzi of New York, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.