The blame game

Are the Democrats or Republicans responsible for the recent government shutdown? Technically speaking, both parties played a role, so we shouldn't look in such a binary manner. Both parties tried to pin the blame on the other.

I'm not going to go into depth about the shutdown. Instead, I want to address some of the cornier examples of the blame game. This includes political parties openly going against their own beliefs and blaming their opponents.

Gerrymandering is wrong. Despite the narrative, both parties are doing it. This gets a little more complicated when you consider what things would be like without gerrymandering. To match representation with overall party support, you would essentially have to embrace a form of gerrymandering. Since there are cities skewed heavily towards Democrats, the overall trend without gerrymandering would likely give Republicans disproportionate representation.

The usual narrative is that Republicans are doing all the gerrymandering. This was amplified when Texas decided to redraw congressional maps outside the normal schedule. I have heard Democrats insist that this was specifically for the purpose of gerrymandering, which is definitely wrong. I honestly haven't heard counterarguments from Republicans, so I'm clearly missing a side to the debate.

In response, Gavin Newsome announced plans to intentionally gerrymander California for the benefit of Democrats. Gerrymandering is wrong. Newsome has generally been critical of gerrymandering. He openly pursued what he himself considers wrongdoing. He has successfully pinned the blame for his pursuit of wrongdoing on Republicans by insisting that the same behavior is wrong when it comes from the Republicans.

This goes both ways. Laws should not be too easy to pass. Like Republicans, I support the filibuster. During the shutdown, Republicans started talking about ending the filibuster. Their argument was that they should take advantage of the change before it's enacted by the Democrats. Although they didn't quite reach that point, Republicans were planning on blaming Democrats to justify their own wrongdoing.

In both these cases, one of the major parties openly embraced wrongdoing and tried to cast the blame on the other side. The opposing party doing wrong does not magically make it right when your party does the same.

I also wanted to bring up healthcare. Our current approach to healthcare is the Affordable Care Act. This was passed without a single vote from Republicans. One of the issues Democrats were fighting over during the shutdown was subsidies. Subsidies were always a part of the Affordable Care Act. During the pandemic, Democrats created a temporary expansion of subsidies. Democrats have been pushing hard the idea that the Affordable Care Act is unaffordable without these temporary subsidies. They insist that healthcare under the Affordable Care Act is a broken healthcare system. They even insist that their Affordable Care Act will kill people unless we force taxpayers to spend more on the same syatem.

Subsidizing an already subsidized healthcare model won't fix the reasons healthcare is so expensive under the Affordable Care Act. Instead, it changes who pays. I don't want to let the Republicans completely off the hook since they haven't pursued any meaningful change, but we need to keep something in mind. The arguments coming from the Democrats right now make it very clear that the Democrats' Affordable Care Act has failed miserably. Instead of admitting to their mistakes, they insist on throwing more money at it. They defend themselves by referring to healthcare under their Affordable Care Act as the Republican healthcare crisis. They are trying to pin the entirety of the blame for their own healthcare system on the opposing party.