One good reason the shutdown should have continued; plus, a settlement in Kansas, and Kara Miller’s new podcast

We’ve been hashing out the pros and cons of ending the government shutdown on Facebook this week. My position has been that the Democrats shouldn’t have caved, but that it was a close call. Certainly the shutdown couldn’t have gone on too much longer, especially with families in danger of going hungry and federal workers not receiving paychecks.

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More than anything, I didn’t see any possible way that the Democrats could achieve their stated objective of forcing Donald Trump and the Republican Congress to extend health-care subsidies. The government could have stayed shut for six more months and that wouldn’t have changed.

But now I’ve concluded that there was a better reason for allowing the shutdown to continue: pressuring the Republicans to end the filibuster once and for all. The requirement that the Senate needs 60 votes to conduct business is anti-democratic and will hamper any hopes of reform if and when the Democrats retake the upper chamber. As Jamelle Bouie writes in The New York Times:

In the face of a Republican Party that would not yield, Senate Democrats had a choice. They could continue the shutdown — threatening the livelihoods of federal workers and those families that rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — or they could hold the line long enough to force Republicans to follow Trump’s lead and nuke the filibuster to end the showdown.

I think Democrats should have welcomed this outcome, as the filibuster is a fatal obstacle to even the most moderate Democratic legislative agenda.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo lists getting rid of the filibuster as one of five key goals that Democrats need to embrace, along with Supreme Court reform, statehood for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, outlawing extreme gerrymandering, and weakening the power of the presidency through changes in the law:

If you support keeping the filibuster you are not serious about moving the country forward in any positive direction…. If you support the filibuster that means that your response to Trumpite autocracy is to do nothing and hope for the best. That’s unacceptable and you need to go. What’s so important about the filibuster question is not only how essential it is itself. It’s that there’s no reason not to do it. The filibuster is an historical accident which perverts how the Constitution is supposed to work.

But even if you think the Democrats were right to end the shutdown, they should have done so in a more coordinated manner. Instead of war breaking out between the seven apostate Democrats and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, they should have called a joint news conference and declared victory.

As Lawrence O’Donnell said in his commentary on MSNBC the other night, the shutdown resulted in significant concessions from Republicans on SNAP benefits and back pay for government employees — all of whom will be rehired, contrary to some of Trump’s earlier threats. “That is not nothing,” O’Donnell said. “They got something. They didn’t get what they wanted. They didn’t get everything. They didn’t get the big thing. They got something.”

So now it’s on to the next phase of the Epstein files. The latest reporting shows that Trump knew that Jeffrey Epstein was raping children but didn’t do anything about it. If that stands as a fact uncontradicted by other evidence (as opposed to the standard pro forma denials), what will that mean to Trumpworld? Will mere nonparticipation be enough to ensure their continued loyalty? Or will we learn even darker secrets about the man who is destroying the White House, both literally and figuratively?

The end of a shameful saga

The board of commissioners in Marion County, Kansas, has agreed to pay a total of $3 million to settle outstanding claims over an illegal raid of a newspaper office, the publisher’s home and a city councilor’s home. The sheriff’s office has issued a statement of regret.

The settlement should bring to a close the saga of the Marion County Record, although former police chief Gideon Cody continues to face criminal charges. The raid on editor-owner Eric Meyer’s home was followed within a day by the death of his mother, 98-year-old Joan Meyer, who was captured on video standing up for the First Amendment in a confrontation with officers who were rifling through her belongings.

Details of the settlement were reported earlier this week by Anne Kaminsky of the Kansas Reflector, who has done great work over the past two-plus years of tracking this shameful saga.

My previous coverage is here.

Kara Miller returns to the air

My former “Beat the Press” colleague Kara Miller is debuting a high-profile podcast starting tomorrow. Called “It Turns Out,” the every-other-week podcast will, according to the annoucement, reveal “the hidden realities reshaping our world — from how marriage impacts inequality, to the way that the tax code has transformed wealth.”

“It Turns Out” is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Program in Public Understanding. Kara also writes “The Big Idea” column for The Boston Globe” and previously hosted “Innovation Hub” on GBH Radio and multiple other NPR outlets.