Dick Durbin belongs in the funny papers

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The news, in brief …

• “Love won again”: Supreme Court rejects case seeking to overturn gay marriage ruling

  Supporters of the decision say it "reaffirms" legal rights and precedent. Read more.

• “Pathetic”: Democrats blast party centrists for caving in shutdown vote

  The move brought widespread criticism — including calls for Sen. Chuck Schumer to resign. Read more.

• Trump issues pardons for Giuliani, others who attempted to interfere with 2020 election

  Critics called it a "permission slip" to interfere with future elections. Read more.

• “Got some kind of an act going”: Trump accuses Greene of putting on show for Democrats

  Greene has been critical of the president's foreign policy moves. Read more.

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Aaugh!

Charlie Brown stares up at the sky. He’s flat on his back and his sweater is covered in mud. Lucy is laughing just behind him, holding the football she swore she’d let him kick. He lets out a small sigh, taking comfort in the fact that there are bigger suckers out there. Somewhere in Springfield, there’s Dick Durbin.

The senior senator from Illinois was part of a breakaway faction of Democrats who sided with Republicans in the upper chamber on Monday and began the process of ending the longest government shutdown in history. Democrats had dug in their heels and refused to pass a stop-gap spending bill, demanding the renewal of expiring health insurance tax credits and a reversal of recent cuts to Medicare. A promised vote on the extension of tax credits will reportedly come before the Senate in two weeks. We don’t need to see a subtle smirk on Lucy’s face to guess how the last panel will play out.

It didn’t have to be this way. The federal shutdown had made President Donald Trump and his party deeply unpopular. Their attempts to stick the shutdown to the recalcitrant Dems had failed. The Democrats had real leverage, and a Sunday tradition outside of the funnies proved it just this weekend.

The NFL spent decades making itself into an unofficial seventh branch of the military, their near-weekly troop buying up megasized American flags that would otherwise go to exurban RV dealerships. The post-9/11 mandatory hoo-rah died down a bit once the league realized that time could be filled with discussions about prop bets and Vegas lines, but the lazy default patriotism still lingers. Republicans’ shutdown tanked the party’s approval rating to the point that football fans felt comfortable booing a Trump-led troop ceremony the week of Veterans Day.

The Durbins of the world either didn’t see that moment or failed to understand it. They marched along like a gullible squad of Calvins, ready to believe the sun does set in Flagstaff just because John Thune said so.

Trump is a liar and a swindler, and he’s remade his party in his image. MAGA Republicans push the same lies and welch on their obligations with none of Trump’s swagger. D.C. conservatives are an army of J. Wellington Wimpys promising that they’ll gladly consider some Democratic goal, sometime in the future, in exchange for complete capitulation today. It would be laughable, if Durbin and the moderates didn’t keep handing over their wallets.

What do you think? Will the moderate Dems offering up their party’s signature victory for nothing in return face any consequences? Is Chuck Schumer toast? Sound off in the comments.

Before you go …

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