The question has been framed in the streets: is a government that impoverishes healthcare and nutrition, flouts the law, enriches its officials, imprisons babies, and kills its citizens worth the money it collects, much less the respect and obedience it demands?
Democrats have nothing to lose by shutting down the government to force the majority party to respond to these questions and the one that looms over all: what, if any, is the political and moral future of the US?
In the American Civil War the North had the advantage in Navy, population, wealth, and industrial power.
Now those advantages in population and industrial capacity are flipped. In the scenario you project the south could devolve into infighting and hollow out, but a single charismatic figure could unite them, and that would pose a terrible threat to the NEUSA and the Cali Republic. Have you read Rurtledove’s American Front?
The south would collapse so fast lol what