Will they do it? Will congressional Democrats actually force a shutdown of the federal government at the end of this month? While plenty of other political stories are currently swirling around, this is the big question that wonks who still pay attention to Congress are asking right now. So far, it seems like Democrats actually are preparing for a shutdown strategy, mostly because they got so much pushback from their own rank-and-file voters when they refused to do so earlier this year. So let's take a look at what's in play, heading into the next few weeks.

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Donald Trump is driving the American economy straight into a ditch. That's a pretty simple concept, and it's (just barely) short enough to fit on a bumpersticker. Which makes it a dandy political slogan for Democrats to start hammering out relentlessly.

Doing so is pretty easy, since you can connect all sorts of dots to it: A soft jobs market. Inflation rising. Hamburger prices up. Electricity prices way up. Trump's tariff war, which has created a "Trump tax" on a whole bunch of products. Trump took hold of an economy that had achieved a "soft landing," and now he's driving us all right into a ditch. Everything he does seems to make things worse. See how easy that is to do?

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I'm not sure whether that title is the most apt, or if "Conventional Thinking" might have been better. Because it seems that both major American political parties are considering holding national conventions next year before the midterm elections. Which is indeed unconventional -- even thinking about midterm conventions. Semantic games aside, though, I do find myself wondering if it would be a good idea or not.

The idea was first proposed by the Democrats, who are considering holding a convention to showcase their up-and-coming prospective candidates and to whip up their base in an effort to motivate them to turn out to vote. I was actually surprised to read (in Axios, who got the scoop on this story) that it wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened. As they report:

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Just before the 20th anniversary of the impact of Hurricane Katrina, a group of current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency employees have signed an extraordinary letter warning America that we could be headed for a similar disaster. Not the hurricane itself, but the man-made disaster which followed, as George W. Bush's FEMA proved to be completely incompetent at disaster recovery in a big way. They even called their letter the "Katrina Declaration," to amplify their warning.

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The Democratic Party has been worried (with good reason) about their chances in the midterm congressional elections and beyond. Their brand has suffered, and voters aren't exactly flocking to their banner. But there are signs of life here and there, and a big one just happened in Iowa. Yesterday, a Democrat won a special election to the state senate, which will deny the Republicans a two-thirds supermajority in the chamber.

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If they want to win the midterms next year, Democrats should really return in a big way to that old chestnut from the Bill Clinton era: "It's the economy, stupid." Because that is where both Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are the weakest, and the economy is almost always either at or very near the top of the list of issues voters care the most about.

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We have to begin today with an absurdity. It's been that kind of week....

This week, Donald Trump proved once again -- beyond the shadow of a doubt -- that his understanding of basic mathematics would be considered sub-par in any random fifth-grade math class in this country. Most 10-year-olds could spot Trump's glaring error, to put that another way.

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Lo and behold, Democrats have finally found a good political narrative, heading into their big summer break. For once, they have woven a few disparate political issues into one poignant, easy-to-understand storyline. And for once, they are (so far, at least) all singing in unison from the same songbook.

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Once again, this week was consumed by an out-of-control political fire that is engulfing Donald Trump, his attorney general, the F.B.I., and all of Trump's fellow Republicans in Congress. They built a political Ponzi scheme out of the Epstein files, and it has now completely collapsed around them.

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I should start out by clarifying that headline. When I say "Trump Is Getting Weaker," I am not referring to the news today that Donald Trump is suffering from problems with the veins in his legs and the bruising on his hands. I speak not of physical weakness, but instead of political weakness. And I'm going to mostly set aside the continuing internecine battle among Republicans over the Jeffrey Epstein files as well, since although the issue has been making headlines for weeks now, there is something much more interesting going on in the background. While Trump flails around desperately trying to somehow pin all the blame over the Epstein files cover-up on Democrats (which isn't convincing anyone), the widening schism within his own party has happened independently from some much larger trends. Democrats are gleefully trolling Trump and the Republicans over the Epstein files fiasco, but no matter what the upshot of it all turns out to be, the fact will remain that Trump is getting a whole lot weaker on pretty much every other issue under the sun. Sooner or later, Democrats should start making some political hay out of this weakness (assumably, after the Epstein files tempest blows over).

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