The Faces of the Shutdown Tragedy

Unessential? How dare you!

As the government shutdown wears on I may be convinced it's a mixed blessing but presently I am ecstatic to see 95% of the job killing EPA bureaucrats sitting at the house drinking coffee while coal miners go to work. Most Americans see no disruption to their quotidian routines and enjoy for the first time in 17 years, relief from IRS audits and amateur movie making.

I see two risks for Obama and the Democrats. The media could desert them. No, they will not abandon Obama but there will be sexier news to report. If the shutdown runs into the debt limit debate it will be harder to argue that Armageddon is at hand when the same case was made a few weeks earlier. A few weeks prior to that it was deemed essential to the national interest of the United States to unleash a missile attack upon Syria by the administration and its sycophants in the media so if anything as time goes by the current shutdown may serve as an inoculation against debt limit hysteria.

The other threat which should really worry Democrats when 61% of the public does not want to raise the debt limit is that the voters begin to question the wisdom of keeping 800,000 unessential people on the payroll. If they have gotten along just fine without them for three weeks they may wonder who needs them. Maybe some will want to shut the government every year just to locate the federal bloat.