 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we want to discuss the U.S. shutdown, which is entered the 32nd day today and may continue for much longer. It's the largest shutdown, longest shutdown that has happened. To discuss this with us, we have Professor Ajaz Ahmad, who is on Skype from California. Ajaz, this must be surprising to most people in the world. Something called a government shutdown. People don't really, in the rest of the world, understand how a government can be shut down. Of course, not that everything is shut down. The state governments are working. Certain sections of the government are shut down. Certain other things still probably continue, including the military. But why is there something called a shutdown that takes place in the United States? And now it seems to be taking place periodically between the standoff with the president of the Congress? Yes, this is quite ritual and I can understand that people, maybe people outside the United States think that there is a big deal. It's not. This is the American version of division of power between the executive and the legislature. Like most countries, the legislature is not required to pass a budget by a certain date. Part of budgetary allocations are voted separately and so on. So this is quite a ritual in the United States, threatening governments that have government shutdown by the president, carrying it out for three days, four days, seven days, 10 days, something like that. This is the longest. So in that sense, it has become something of a news. But if you pick up, let's say the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the main newspapers, look at the headlines, they may or may not carry a story on the front page about the shutdown. So in that sense, it is fairly routine. But behind this whole question of the shutdown in the U.S., there is a much bigger story behind it. By itself, 800,000 U.S. federal workers are affected, roughly 400,000 of them have been ordered to report to work without being paid. The other half is being advised to get babysitting jobs or whatever, things of that sort. That's 800,000. It's very bad. But you know, this is in the context of a country where 80% of the workers, according to the Reserve Bank, the U.S. Federal Bank, 80% of the workers live paycheck by paycheck. That is to say that if they miss a paycheck, they cannot meet their obligations. 80%. 80% 80% 80% 20% of Americans cannot at any given time put together $400 if there is an emergency $30 million Americans have no health insurance and there is no health system in the United States without insurance you know the kind of country it is you know the immense capacity of the United States to project itself and have vast majority of the world believe that is an effluent country there is you know effluence for everyone etc etc it isn't so 800,000 people not getting a paycheck is not such an extraordinary thing in America to happen it happens to millions all the time and therefore there is no great agitation what is extraordinary is that even the union of the federal workers when they try to organize demonstrations they won't get more than 1000 or two or two that's interesting their own membership and that also is a comment on the complete destruction of the union movement in the United States the organized workers fighting for their rights because power simply does not exist and that is a very complex matter we need not go into all that at the moment so so while the shutdown is concerned there is these kinds of things going on it's fairly normal for America for people not to be able to pay their bills and get more debt more debt more debt you know that's it see if you take if you take out the issue of the shutdown itself which you said has become a regular ritual now in in the government in the standoff between the political parties and the president and therefore the the congress if we leave that out this time it is supposed to be about the wall and it's also about supposed to be about immigrants and Trump has held out the threat that if the congress does not accede to his demand of allocating x amount of millions of dollars for the billions of dollars for the wall then he's going to take actions against the immigrants and the democrat senators and congressmen seem to have said that this is hostage taking that he's taking the immigrants hostage so do you see this as also part of the larger trump agenda of anti-migration and bringing that it's even much bigger than that he has said that he's going to build the wall anyway even if he has to declare a national emergency you remember emergency of course as you don't remind us of india about mrs gantis emergency that is what i meant that's what i meant in the united states it's a very peculiar situation the constitution does not have the kind of thing that every other liberal constitution in the world has which is written in into the constitution and the legal right to declare emergency it's called you know it's called state of seeds in some constitutions whatever it's absolutely a constitution it's it's written in the liberal constitution so there is a latent possibility of dictatorship within the constitution which is actually what happened in india at the time of the emergency it is within the constitution it is the president of india which declares a quite constitution the emergency the united states doesn't have that but what it does have is several hundred statutes on the book passed by the congress each one of which gives the president the right to declare emergency for this that or the other but the emergency may be something like a drought or flooding or something but that gives the president the right to enormous rights i mean i could go on and on about that but the fact of the matter is that one is this um trump okay two or three things you said something about me immigration it is absolutely true that he has polarized the country on the question very successfully on the question of migrants he has been successful at it because from clinton on every American president has been screaming about immigrants illegal immigrants crime is that india i have a video that i can send you clinton saying something which is about 80 as nasty as trump and so on so there is a large sort of latent consensus in this country on this issue democrat and republic i think per year the u.s. sends back about 200 to 300 000 what it considers as illegal migrants and this happened under obama said twice as many as bush twice as many as bush so you know it's democrat and republic so he has trump has taken it to another level but it's a very familiar thing in america so that that that there's that then you have a situation in which there have been polls saying that roughly 80 percent of the republicans are saying that they'll believe anything that the trump says regardless of what news channels or media or anybody might say if bush says so it must be true so it's a kind of a religious faith it is it is charisma of an order that is very hard to match anywhere in the world at the moment trump's charisma in the very sense of what the word charisma actually means uh almost a religious belief in somebody's person personality and so on you can get away with anything because you have this belief people have this belief and so so he has that the result is that after 32 days of shutdown only a mark something like 55 percent are against the shutdown about 45 percent or not immigration question all of that and then what is happening is that trump is getting more and more and more trapped break off collusion with russia what neander and other investigators have done have gone into all kinds of things that trump and his people have been doing mostly financial and the other perjury and various kinds of felonies and various kinds and all of that evidence is now building up so what is he going to do is he going to simply stop that investigation is he going to get so trapped that he actually declares a state of emergency is he going you know majority of the republicans say that if trump feels that the election of 2020 should be postponed they would support it so you know this shutdown is being played in this within this very complex field of internal politics one more thing and then i'll stop a new congress you know the house of representatives the lower house the equivalent of our looks it has come in most of it is the usual democratic party nonsense but there is a small number about 20 of them who are who own nothing to this party so far the election is concerned they are outside that whole consensus they are senders in further left than senders making an outright bid for places of power within the structure of the democratic party trump has thrown the gauntlet to them are you on our side or their side the democratic party leadership is caught and this progressive coalition these new elections that have taken place so it's all all that complicated thing in which shutdown is being played out so by closing question again for you to tell us that is it that the u.s politics is now entering into a crisis in which fractures of different kinds will become more and more visible a and b is it possible that a leftward shift on the democratic party takes place of something equivalent to what happened in uk with the labor party which had with the Blair rights gone left of the center right of the center and with Jeremy Corbyn has now shifted back to a more well known labor left position so do you think a similar transition of the democratic party is possible or do you think in that that's not a very likely scenario you see democratic party has not had that kind of a left wing since the new p that is to say for almost a hundred years democratic party has never had organized left party with you know which is sort of a social democratic media that sort and what new deal did for the working class was still very minimal compared to european social democracy so uh so it is not that something that is latent or defeated within a democratic party which is coming back after decade two decades whatever it is a very different kind of coalition an upsurge that is taking place it is much more on the level of the popular masses really a new generation thing people who had attached their hopes to obama felt deeply betrayed rightly so then attached their hopes to sanders sanders read that moment correctly and sanders is social democrat a new deal democrat actually which is in terms of democratic party this is what the left of it is and what what sanders has done very well in america is to constantly be on the move small town cities you know getting their is base consolidated behind the more progressive um people fighting elections or whatever on their own there is a little victory it's it gets attached to him in all kinds of very good things so yes what is what is what is going to happen is that he is going to get out and out contest over democratic party leadership in the coming elections and that's going to be very bloody very bloody one thing that is happening is that more newer uh candidates are coming up you know declaring their intent to fight for the presidential elections and so on so for two years before the elections but this is america uh who are adopting that platform so next time next elections will be fought the the very primaries would be fought on these elections on a more ideological platform than we have seen earlier yeah yeah so this is going to be real fight for the soul of the democratic party yes thank you ajas for being with us explaining to us and the complexity of the american politics which is difficult for outsiders to figure out that easily and it's very very low but also the problem is the u.s politics influences unfortunately every other part of the world because of the global reach of the united states so though we don't have the right to vote in the united states we still are affected by the consequences thereof thank you very much ajas to be with us and we will follow this up now on a regular basis so we get get you on news click as we used to do earlier this is all the time we have today for news click do keep watching news click and our other videos