Status Of The Shutdown And What It Portends For The Future

     Here are a couple of excerpts from pundits, suggesting that we're nearing a solution to the current impasse but that even though Social Security and Medicare are safe, any government benefit that older white voters perceive as going to the undeserving will continue to draw fevered opposition from the GOP:

     Jonathan Bernstein writing for the Washington Post:

Republicans do seem to be getting ready to surrender (although they seem to have only reached the stage at which they’re asking for rewards for surrendering; it may take a while longer for them to fully understand the concept). A true economic disaster may yet be avoided. But everyone should remember just how irresponsible they’ve been on this one.

     Ronald Bernstein writing for the National Journal:

Veteran Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who has studied the two parties' coalitions since the 1980s, recently conducted several focus groups with GOP voters that probed this passion. He concluded that the roaring sense of embattlement among the almost all-white tea party and evangelical Christian voters central to the GOP base draws on intertwined ideological, electoral, and racial fears. ... 

Greenberg's analysis echoes the findings of other scholars, such as Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol, whose studies have concluded that the tea party's most ardent priority is reducing government transfer payments to those it considers undeserving....

House GOP leaders flailing for an exit strategy this week are again suggesting broad negotiations that will constrain entitlement programs such as Medicare. But our latest polling shows older and downscale whites overwhelmingly resist changes in Medicare or Social Security, which they consider benefits they have earned—and pointedly distinguish from transfer programs.

Those findings suggest that the real fight under way isn't primarily about the size of government but rather who benefits from it. The frenzied push from House Republicans to derail Obamacare, shelve immigration reform, and slash food stamps all point toward a steadily escalating confrontation between a Republican coalition revolving around older whites and a Democratic coalition anchored on the burgeoning population of younger nonwhites.