This Is Not News

In 2011 I wrote Thinking Through the Hostage Metaphor, where I suggested that in the hostage-taker analogy, the American public was like a sniper that could defeat the hostage-taker in the 2012 election. Well, for the most part, the American public took its shot, voting for Democratic candidates by a considerable majority. But thanks to the filibuster in the Senate (which I still hope will be reformed) and the combination of gerrymandering and heavily-Democratic urban districts giving Republicans a majority in the House, the Republican Party can still take some hostages to force the Democrats to do what they want. I’m starting to think we may be at the point where it’s time to shoot the hostage in the leg to get him out of the way of the hostage-taker. (Yeah, I saw Speed. Sue me.) It may be necessary to allow for some short term pain like a government shutdown in order to motivate some of the Republicans’ allies to come get the allegorical gun out of their hands. This is not gong to be a good ting if it happens, and I will not yell from the rafters if Democrats figure out some way to negotiate a decent tradeoff. But I’m having a harder and harder time seeing how we get to that point without some rough sledding first.