Was the Great Cave Actually a Great Idea?

By now, we’ve had a whole week to absorb what we might call the “Great Cave,” and its rather stunning ripple effects.

We’ve watched the story morph from a devastating betrayal by Democrats to a devastating train wreck for Republicans, all in just a few news cycles. At every point I’ve tried to make sense of what’s happened, though it hardly seems to matter anymore. The effect has overtaken the cause.

But here, nonetheless, is my take. Yes, it’s all speculation on my part, and we may never get the whole story, but still.

When it first came out that eight senators — seven Democrats, one independent — were voting with Republicans to end the shutdown, the howls of agony could be heard coast-to-coast. And for good reason. It appeared that these senators were cravenly accepting defeat, just as victory seemed in their grasp.

But was it really? Victory would have meant, more than anything else, saving the Obamacare subsidies, whose expiration will soon push health insurance premiums beyond the reach of untold millions of people. The dominant feeling was that such a victory was possible, but only if Democrats grew a spine, only if they held firm and continued to filibuster against the opening of the government.

The only problem with this strategy was the pain the shutdown was causing. That pain was gut-wrenching and getting worse, but only one party cared about things like SNAP payments delayed, air traffic slowed to a crawl, government workers on furlough, holidays jeopardized, and all manner of chaos, uncertainty, and hardship. Republicans were making it quite clear that they didn’t give a shit.

Even those Democrats who were the most gung-ho about continuing the shutdown had to be scared to death about how long it might last, and not just because of that pain. There was also this deep dread — we know, because we felt it too — that the shutdown was providing cover for all sorts of vile machinations. The nagging fear was that the government would never reopen at all, and that this was the plan all along.

So a group of Democratic senators hatched a plot, sort of. It was probably Chuck Schumer leading it, though we may never know. It wasn’t exactly 3D chess, and the messaging behind it was remarkably inept.

But the hypothesis was that one viable way to end the impasse — an impasse, remember, that could have lasted weeks, months, or years longer — was to give Republicans the votes they needed to reopen the government. They must have figured this would cause all sorts of problems for Republicans, who were still reeling from the electoral battering they took earlier in the week.

While the plan seemed viable, it would certainly put at risk any leverage Democrats might have had in pushing through the Obamacare subsidies. Not that this supposed leverage had actually leveraged anything.

But the subsidies were arguably a far bigger problem for Republicans, whose constituents might well come for them with pitchforks when they see their next insurance bill. So the Democrats obviously decided that at this point, a strategic retreat from the subsidies was the best of their mostly bad options.

The catch was that whoever provided those eight votes would become instant pariahs. Any senator attached to the “cave” would be slaughtered by their fellow Democrats, not to mention most of the reality-based community. Ask Chuck Schumer, who threw himself to the wolves back in March.

So somehow it was decided that a few sacrificial lambs were required. Did they ask for volunteers? Who knows? But what they came up with was a small group of senators who were retiring anyway, and they put those senators directly in the line of fire, to be instantly branded as “sell-outs,” “collaborators,” “quislings,” “traitors” and, worst of all, “Republicans.”

Think what you want of their actions, it had to take guts. With the exception of the unspeakable John Fetterman, these senators were all leaving public office after years of honorable, if unspectacular, service. In voting “against” the party, they were putting their reputations, and possibly their entire legacies, on the line. They knew exactly what they were doing, and nobody wants to go out that way. We may yet come to admire their courage.

Especially because it appears to have worked. The Great Cave strategy is showing clear signs of success.

For one thing, the government is back open. The SNAP payments are out, the planes are flying again, and there’s back pay for everyone who missed paychecks. It shouldn’t have closed in the first place, but it needed to be opened.

Democrats also won a vote in the Senate on a bill to reinstate the Obamacare subsidies. Yes, there’s plenty of room for cynicism here — we know all about Republicans and promises — but it might just prove a potent weapon. Not that we expect such a bill to pass, but its very existence will put huge pressure on the GOP. Anyone who votes against it will have to explain to the pitchfork crowd exactly why their insurance premiums just tripled.

And while they’re at it, they’ll also need to explain why they voted to protect pedophiles.

Because by far the most important result of the Great Cave — the big win — was that it re-opened the House, got Adelita Grijalva sworn in, and proceeded to blow the doors off the Epstein scandal.

We can now say with some certainty that the coming food fight over the Epstein files will provide much of our entertainment this holiday season. The vote in the House to release the files will happen next week, and as many as 100 Republicans have said they’ll vote for the release.

And as of yesterday, Trump is the one doing the caving.

He just gave Republicans in Congress permission to vote for the release of the files. It’s a decision fraught with peril for him, and he must be thinking it’s either that or an open rebellion of his own party. But it certainly changes the equation, opening him up to new vulnerabilities, mostly having to do with what’s actually in the files. So you have to wonder if he’ll get DOJ to slow-walk, or otherwise impede their release.

But Trump remains between a rock and a hard place. For some time now, it has been impossible for individual Republicans to cross him without sacrificing, at minimum, their careers. Suddenly, that’s changed, and a number of them are getting feisty. When Marjorie Taylor Greene starts poking the bear, you know the bear has problems.

Will Republicans start turning on Trump in significant numbers? They certainly have enough reasons to. His insane policies and erratic decisions are causing widespread distress among their voters. The pitchforks are only metaphorical for now, but there’s reason to be nervous.  Especially after last week’s election, which had to feel like a code-red emergency for them. For the first time Trump seems to be taking fire from his own side.

Yes, we’ve all seen Trump slither out of tight spots before. But it smells different this time. It smells like even the GOP is fed up with the wanton destruction being wrought by this petulant five-year-old. We’ve been waiting a whole decade for these jerks to understand that Trump isn’t just bad for the country, he’s bad for them personally.

You wouldn’t want to say this out loud, but maybe — just maybe — they’re finally getting the message.