US government shutdown is backfiring on Donald Trump

Donald Trump is in a no-man’s land between the demands of his own supporters and the need to resolve the shutdown before the polls destroy him. Picture: AP.

Donald Trump has a big problem. The deadlock over the government shutdown is not turning out in his favour. In fact, it now threatens to be one of the most damaging moments of his presidency, if not a defining one.

Trump has taken a massive gamble which is so far backfiring on him.

By insisting that any funding bill to reopen the government include $US5.7 billion for his proposed border wall he has locked himself into a no-win position.

Trump initially thought he could bluff the Democrats and wait them out on this issue while at the same time winning plaudits from his base, who love the fact that he is fighting for his signature election promise, the border wall.

But so far, this script has gone astray. While his voting base support his push for the wall, polls show a clear majority of Americans blame Trump rather than the Democrats for the record month-long federal government shutdown.

In the end, Trump is the President and also the architect of the fateful decision to include wall funds in a spending bill. Voters increasingly blame him for holding the operations of the US government, and the pay cheques of 800,000 federal workers, hostage to an election promise.

Nor are the Democrats blameless in the shutdown — they are milking it for all they can — but it is not surprising that it is Trump who is getting most of the blame.

This gives the Democrats an enormous advantage over the president; they can afford to sit it out, but he cannot.

That is why Trump was forced at the weekend to offer a modest compromise of temporarily halting his own efforts to deport two categories of immigrants — the 700,000 children of illegal immigrants, known as the Dreamers, and also the 300,000 immigrants allowed into the US after disasters in their homeland on Temporary Protection Status (TPS).

Democrats want him to give permanent amnesty to these groups in return for funding on the wall but Trump fears he will look weak to his base if he agrees a tit-for-tat trade-off on immigration.

So he is faced with a dilemma. As things now stand he will not get a deal with Democrats to reopen the government without either dropping his demand on funding for the wall or offering permanent amnesty and pathways to citizenship for the Dreamers and TPS holders.

For Trump to back down on either issue would seriously damage his credibility with his voting base. But if the Democrats hold their ground, then the government shutdown will only get worse and Trump will continue to bleed public support.

Trump is hoping that his offer of a compromise will put greater pressure on the Democrats, eventually leading Americans to blame them rather than himself for the fiasco.

But this seems like wishful thinking right now. As things stand, Americans are still blaming him for the shutdown, leaving him in no-mans land between the demands of his own supporters and the need to resolve the shutdown before the polls destroy him.

That is a bad place for any deal-maker to be.

Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia