Polarized parties plus inconsistent president equals a looming shutdown

Take an inconstant and unpredictable president, add two parties increasingly distant from each other, stir in an immigration fight: The recipe yields a government shutdown.

The shutdown, which will start at midnight Friday unless Congress finds a way to avert it — illustrates how our increasingly polarized politics have made even the routine acts of government a high-wire adventure.

On each side, strategists think the public will blame the other party for a shutdown. And although common sense might say otherwise, on that point they can both be right.

I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in Washington and elsewhere in national politics and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

TRUMP AT ONE YEAR — WEAKENED

More on the shutdown in a moment, but, first, some key findings of our new USC-Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.

President Trump ends his first year in a notably weakened position, the poll found. Yes, most of his core supporters have stuck with him, but not all of them have. And given his extremely narrow victory in 2016, he needs to be expanding his support, not watching it erode.

About one in eight people who approved of Trump’s job performance when we did our last national poll in April disapprove now. Very few have moved in the opposite direction.

As importantly, in April, about one in seven people said it was too early to make up their minds about Trump’s job performance. Because our poll repeatedly queries the same panel of people (just over 3,800 respondents in the current survey), we know that most of those who were uncertain then have made up their minds now. And by about 2-1, they’ve gone against Trump.

The result: The public’s assessment of Trump’s job performance, which was 47% disapprove, 40% approve in April, is now 55%-32%. A 7-point deficit has become a 23-point hole.

That’s dragged down the Republican Party as both sides prepare for this year’s midterm elections: Democrats have an 11-point lead when we asked which party’s candidate a person would vote for if the congressional election were happening today. If that holds up, Democrats would be favored to win the majority of the House.

Of course, the election won’t be today. Republicans hope the good economy will bolster their chances. Perhaps they’re right. But it’s notable that the people we polled already express a lot of optimism about the economy, and that’s not helping Trump or the GOP yet.

The past two weeks help illustrate why: In the nation’s political conversation, talk about the economy has disappeared, drowned out by attention to Trump-generated controversies about his comment on “shithole” countries and government shutdowns.

Our poll also looked ahead at how the 2020 presidential race has begun to shape up. For an early preview of the presidential sweepstakes, check this link here.

THE SHUTDOWN SHOW

As Lisa Mascaro reported Thursday night, the House passed a stopgap measure to extend money for government agencies for a month, but it quickly stalled in the Senate.

Senate leaders may try to negotiate a deal to keep the government open for a few days to buy more time, but on both sides, some think that now is the time to have a fight.

Advocates for so-called Dreamers, the young immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children, insist that Democrats should vote against any spending bill that fails to provide an answer to their plight. Many of them risk deportation because of Trump’s order to end the Obama administration’s DACA program.

A month ago, enough Senate Democrats voted for a stopgap spending bill to allow it to pass, but few of them are willing to do so again, and several Republicans say they won’t vote for another stopgap, either.

On the GOP side, immigration restrictionists warn that a DACA deal could wreck the party’s support. If Trump becomes “Amnesty Don,” he will alienate a key constituency, they warn.

White House advisor Stephen Miller and anti-immigration lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) want Trump to hold out for a long list of new limits on legal immigration to offset any DACA deal.

Their opposition scuttled an agreement last week, leading to the now-notorious White House meeting in which Trump angrily denounced immigration from countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Central America, according to Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who negotiated the deal.

Hovering over all of the debate is the president, who has repeatedly been unwilling — or unable — to tell members of Congress what he would support.

“As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said this week about Trump’s position on DACA.

McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) don’t want to put a DACA bill up for a vote, with the potential of dividing their party, unless they know Trump will back it.

Already this month, they’ve twice seen Trump nearly torpedo bills they supported by firing off tweets after critical commentaries on Fox News. They don’t want to relive that experience with immigration.

Just over a week ago, Trump offered to “take all the heat” if members of Congress were to pass an immigration compromise. He’s since demonstrated just the opposite.

WHO GETS THE BLAME?

Democrats say the public should blame Republicans for any shutdown. After all, the GOP controls both houses of Congress and the White House. It’s the majority party’s responsibility to govern, they say.

Moreover, as the Democrats, and some Republicans, correctly note, if Trump had accepted some version of the compromise that Graham and Durbin offered last week, which he initially said he would support, this would all be over by now.

Republicans counter that a shutdown will be the fault of the Democrats who are withholding their votes in the Senate. In 2013, when Republicans voted for a shutdown, Democrats insisted that as a matter of principle, Congress shouldn’t use government money bills as leverage to win policy arguments. Now, they’re doing exactly that.

No one knows how the public will respond.

The reality, however, is that right now, neither party is paying much attention to the wider public. Both parties have their eyes focused on their own supporters. And both know that in this polarized era, those supporters will blame the other guy.

IF A SHUTDOWN HAPPENS

Most major government functions continue: Social Security checks still go out, the military keeps defending the country, the post office delivers the mail, courts stay open (at least for now).

But millions of federal government workers get furloughed without pay, and lots of other government activities will begin to close.

We’ll be tracking the action today and through the weekend as well as the inaction to come if the shutdown takes place. Follow the coverage on our Essential Washington blog and make sure you sign up for our breaking news alerts, too.

TRUMP AT ONE YEAR

Whatever happened to populism? As Noah Bierman and Brian Bennett looked backed at Trump’s first year, they found that the candidate who ran against the GOP establishment has largely adopted that establishment’s policies. Immigration marks the one big exception, they wrote.

Evan Halper looked at the impact of Trump’s environmental policies: Some of his biggest moves have been held up in court, but already, the impact can be seen around the country in dirtier air, toxic sites not cleaned up and health protections deferred.

Trump has had at least one big success: lots of conservative federal judges appointed, as Kyle Kim shows in an interesting graphic that compares Trump’s record with past presidents.

WHAT’S THE STATUS OF DACA?

As we reported, last week, a federal judge in San Francisco ordered the administration to reinstate the DACA program until a lawsuit brought by California and other states could be fully heard.

Late on Saturday, the Homeland Security Department announced it would once again start processing applications for DACA permits, as Sarah Wire reported.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department said it would appeal to the Supreme Court to get the DACA ruling overturned. But the lawyers said they would not ask the high court to put the ruling on hold while the litigation continues. As Joe Tanfani wrote, that means DACA will continue in effect for months, and maybe longer.

The administration has asked the high court to rule on the issue by June, but there’s no guarantee the justices will move that fast.

DACA recipients who get their permits renewed now get another two years of protection, so advocacy groups have urged Dreamers to get their applications in while the window remains open.

SOME OTHER NOTABLE STORIES

Congress approved a six-year extension of the National Security Agency’s surveillance authority, after a long deadlock. The bill puts very few new limits on the government’s ability to conduct surveillance, disappointing privacy advocates, Halper wrote.

The Supreme Court put on hold a lower court decision ordering North Carolina to draw new congressional districts, David Savage wrote. The ruling was expected because the court already has two cases on its docket regarding partisan gerrymandering. The North Carolina case, in which a panel of federal judges said Republicans drew district lines to lock in a partisan advantage, will be on hold until the justices resolve one or both of those previous cases.

Mick Mulvaney is increasingly putting his mark on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Jim Puzzanghera wrote. This week, Mulvaney requested zero money for the CFPB for the next three months. The agency already has enough money to run its programs, he said.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S TWEETS

Twitter has long been Trump’s favored means of pushing his message. We’re compiling all of Trump’s tweets. It’s a great resource. Take a look.

LOGISTICS

That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration with our Essential Washington blog, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

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David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter