On Friday’s broadcast of PBS’s “Washington Week,” Washington Post columnist David Ignatius said that, with the government shutdown, Democrats are engaging in an effort “to try to make a point, the point that they’re trying to make is through causing pain for the people by holding fast and showing that Trump is refusing to make concessions on health care.”
Ignatius said, “This is the breakdown of our government, this shutdown, stretching toward two months, heading toward Thanksgiving, when everybody wants to fly home, our air traffic system is having to slow down, you want to say is on the verge of beginning to break. And I worry that the Democrats’ effort, as Leigh Ann said, to try to make a point, the point that they’re trying to make is through causing pain for the people by holding fast and showing that Trump is refusing to make concessions on health care. I just worry that that strategy is about to crack up. If the Democrats could take the win that they had this week, this is a week the Democrats just rolled in the Tuesday elections, and this is a moment when they, as a party that’s confident, I think, could find a path towards a compromise that would make them look good and make the country feel like –.”
Host and The Atlantic Editor in Chief Jeffrey Goldberg then cut in to say, “Where they simply come out and say, we want everybody to eat and fly around.”
Ignatius responded, “Yeah, but they’re the party that’s going to solve this problem. I can easily see, as I say, a way to take a win, and they don’t seem to want to do that.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
