“Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”

That was former Delegate Jay Jones’ deep political insight, seeking to justify his assertion that the children of the Speaker of the House should die so Democrats could prevail. 

Is that not exactly what Virginia Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner are now putting fully into action? Which is worse, truly? A text that emerges from a fevered brain that probably (we hope) was just ugly words, or weeks and weeks of standing by as the federal government and its workforce dissolves? I submit Kaine and Warner’s actions are worse than Jones’ words. 

They are doing it to gain a victory for big government spending and the growing middle-class dependency on government financial entitlements. They are doing it, they think, to put pressure on President Trump, but they cannot be that stupid to think he really cares as he jets around the world. And they are doing it in part to help cement Abigail Spanberger’s victory and win a larger Democratic majority in the House of Delegates.

The personal pain they inflict is of no concern to them.

They are also doing this, of course, because they can. They have now voted thirteen times to directly prevent passage of a continuing resolution but are getting no more heat for it than if they were routine votes. The docile Virginia media is on their side if it covers the votes at all.

They can also do this because the toothless and feckless Republican Party poses absolutely no threat to either of them, certainly not to Warner, who is on the ballot again next year. They think they are winning this standoff. They are not. The imperial presidency of Trump and some future president with authoritarian tendencies will simply grow stronger. It is true that both sides in Congress are being blamed, but that just means Congress as an institution is losing what little respect and credibility it still had.

— SDH