There have been few more damning lines in recent American politics than the one George W. Bush and his crew used against Democratic presidential rival, Senator John Kerry, when Bush won reelection in 2004. In Kerry’s own words: “I voted for the Iraq war before I voted against it.” I know what he meant—he turned against it when he realized it had been fought under false pretenses and wanted to stop the spending. But Bush and Co. branded Kerry a spineless flip-flopper; Republicans even brandished flip-flops at their convention.

Roughly 20 years later, that painful memory should highlight the danger of Democratic senators thinking they can have things both ways: appeasing Republicans and also pleasing their base. But that’s what Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has done in agreeing to go along with the Republican’s funding bill to avert a government shutdown. Yes, the same bill that the House Republicans passed on Wednesday before tossing it to the Senate—and then going home for a fabulous “GOP Gone Wild!” spring break.

Up until Schumer’s Thursday night floor speech, it was a pretty fluid situation, with the vote scheduled for Friday afternoon. But this is what is likely to happen now that Schumer has come out in support of the six-month funding bill: Ascendant Republicans, who control the Senate and House, made clear that they intend to push through this CR—they call it a clean CR, but let’s brand it the dirty CR, since it has awful provisions, including a snuck-in cruelty that would cut $1 billion from the budget of Washington DC, increase military spending, and cut nonmilitary programs to keep the government open until next September. Neither the House nor Senate have negotiated with any Democrats on any of the provisions of this resolution.

Still, the Democrats could have leveraged their position: As it stands, Senate majority leader John Thune needs 60 votes, which means winning over at least eight Democrats, since Kentucky’s Rand Paul has said he’s a no.

The Brooklyn Democrat’s choice would have seemed a no-brainer. Oligarch Elon Musk and his acolyte Donald Trump are already shutting down the government, illegally, unconstitutionally, in pieces. This bears repeating because any attempt to paint the Democrats as the ones responsible for the government shutting down overlooks the first two months of Trump’s return to the White House. Clearly, the Senate minority leader should have told the American people exactly that: Republicans hold all the power, and they are bringing on a government shutdown all on their own. Setting aside DOGE’s destruction of federal programs and agencies, House Republicans passed the bill with only one Democratic vote (can someone please primary Jared Golden of Maine?). Voting down the dirty CR, decisively, is the only answer for Senate Democrats.

And yet, Schumer said on Thursday night: “There are no winners in a government shutdown. It’s not really a decision, it’s a Hobson’s choice: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.”

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He added: “For sure, the Republican bill is a terrible option. It is not a clean CR. It is deeply partisan. It doesn’t address far too many of this country’s needs. But I believe allowing Donald Trump to take even much more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he added. “I will vote to keep the government open and not shut it down.”

Schumer seems determined to hang poor John Kerry’s fate around his caucus members’ necks.

Meanwhile, Trump’s White House is gleeful. It’s a “heads we win, tails you lose” situation, one Trump official told Politico. “They’re 100 percent gonna swallow it,” another said. “They’re totally screwed.”

But there’s still a third option: If the Democrats can message that they are standing up to Trump and Musk’s shutdown of government since January, maybe they won’t be “screwed.”

Democrats are not screwed, unless they screw themselves. And us.

Which they probably will do.

Here’s why I think Schumer and the Democrats could have been bolder. It might seem like a weird gambit to suggest that the Democrats aren’t screwed, while giving you an example of when I was totally wrong. But I’m going to do it anyway.

In October 2013, after Republicans shut down the government for more than two weeks trying to gut the Affordable Care Act, I read the polls and saw that their obstructionism made them unpopular with voters. Americans polled blamed the GOP, not President Obama or the Democrats, for the shutdown. I kvelled, predicting Democrats would prevail in the 2014 midterms. Polls showed that between 55 percent and 74 percent of the public blamed Republicans for the shutdown. “That’s how you treat a bully,” I proclaimed, praising the Democrats’ hardball. I predicted that the American public would “kick the shutdown extortionists out of office.” I thought Senator Ted Cruz, a major pro-shutdown blowhard, would be exceptionally vulnerable.

As we know, Cruz won, and won again, and Republicans swept the midterms. Then they rode their shutdown disgrace into the White House in 2016. Sorry.

But if the idea that a shutdown will imperil Democrats’ chances to take back either the House or the Senate persuades you, it shouldn’t. So much can and will happen in the next 20 months.

I believe much worse will happen to Republicans in the elections to come. They are literally killing people, especially with the USAID cuts, but also with cuts to services for veterans and children, and healthcare and research programs that are carrying out clinical trials to help terminal cancer patients across the country. It’s just so ugly.

That’s a reason some Democrats argue that they should keep their heads down and stay out of the way of Republicans’ self-immolation. Unfortunately, the GOP is immolating much of the American government that we all rely on.

Also, we’ve learned at least in the last two decades, if not more, that appeasement only emboldens the GOP. On Wednesday, former representative Tom Malinowski set the terms of the debate in a vivid way that dominated progressive coverage all day. I wasn’t writing that day, but it got into my brain.

The center-left Dem told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent:

Like most Democrats, I’m trained to believe that you always vote for C.R.; that government shutdowns are a stupid idea…. But this is a bizarre situation in which the president of the United States and this billionaire are already shutting down the government. So if I’m a Democrat in Congress, why do I vote for a continuing resolution to fund programs that are not continuing? It really is just a blank check. It’s like giving Trump and Musk a trillion dollars and saying, Spend it as you like.…

The only practical check that’s left in that worst-case scenario is the congressional power of the purse…. And for Democrats to give that up…it’s giving up potentially the last check against a tyrannical government in the United States.

And that’s why Senate Democrats should be voting against this dirty CR, while also fighting all the dirty politics of the GOP under Trump. I don’t want federal workers to suffer, but thousands are already suffering. That’s what Schumer should be showcasing—the workers already laid off, the people already not getting care. Plus, Musk has promised they’re coming after more workers and programs, including Social Security. This CR gives the administration that authority, as Representative Rosa DeLauro explained, “If this CR becomes law, Musk and President Trump will be able to fire thousands of employees at the Social Security Administration. That will result in office closures, longer wait times and unacceptable backlogs for Americans who are trying to access their earned benefits.”

The attacks on workers are another thing that worries Democrats. A rattled Schumer told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes last night: Musk can use the shutdown to target “furloughed” employees as useless, and lay them off. OK, sure. But if Democrats continue to leave him in charge of slashing whole federal departments, it doesn’t matter where he gets his lists from. He will continue. And that’s not all:

Under this bill, Army Corps of Engineers construction projects to manage our waterways and mitigate flood risks will be cut by $1.4 billion, or 44%. And President Trump, not Congress, would determine all project funding levels and who gets the funding.

Instead of helping our communities address sky-high housing costs, the CR cuts rent subsidies by more than $700 million, leaving landlords to foot the bill or evict more than 32,000 households. And there is not enough funding for disaster relief, abandoning American families who have had their lives turned upside down by extreme weather.

The purpose of voting against the dirty CR is to make the case to the American public that what Musk and Trump are doing is unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral. I see a lot of my friends applauding Schumer’s compromise—partly because they don’t think the longtime Senate leader has the backbone to make that case. Some of them are saying the Democrats should give up, because they don’t trust them to marshal their strongest arguments and prevail here. That’s lame: Let’s give them the best messaging.

Also, phone calls have worked. E-mails have worked. Office visits have worked. Squishy centrists have found their spines, at least for a couple of days. So all may not be completely lost. Or maybe it is. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.