6 Shutdown Veterans on How to Win the Blame Game

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

49% : Democrats can rightly explain that the GOP made it an explicit priority to extend all expiring tax cuts -- even for the wealthiest -- but then made a specific decision to allow taxes to go up only on the health care of 22 million Americans in working families.
48% : The winner needs to show 'the public knows you have their back, and they have yours' BY GENE SPERLING Gene Sperling was a top White House economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and Barack Obama during the 1995 and 2013 government shutdowns.
46% : Think back to the demand of Republicans to significantly cut back funding for education and the environment in 1995-1996, or the Republican demand to defund the Affordable Care Act, or to build a wall.
38% : Unless Congress acts, 15 million Americans will lose health care coverage thanks to Republican cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.
31% : Throw in the fact that House and Senate Republicans could care less that the administration is illegally withholding congressionally authorized spending and it becomes crystal clear that if you think that you can work something out with Donald Trump, you need to get your head examined.
26% : Trump has helped their cause with childish AI videos along with mass firing threats -- not exactly a display of reasonable, serious leadership in the face of a government shut down.
25% : Voters also believed that while Clinton was willing to let the government shut down twice, he was the one seeking a reasonable deal on fiscal discipline while the GOP was shutting down the government on extreme measures like block granting Medicaid.
23% : The public understood that Clinton was standing up for them by defending Medicare and Medicaid from dramatic cuts.
22% : Trump apparently thinks that he can cut a large number of federal government jobs and voters won't blame him.
22% : Trump and Office of the Management and Budget director Russell Vought are so eager to play nasty political games for their own political benefit that all of this could backfire on them because they overreached.
9% : Current polling suggests both sides are taking the blame for this current shutdown, but if Donald Trump and the Republicans can successfully blame Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for making unreasonable demands to extend tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, they can win this fight and force enough Democrats to vote for a clean continuing resolution.

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