Good piece - as a foreigner (who lived in the US once upon a time for a while) the strategic problem seemed to me that Rs have surrendered congressional power to T and so cannot in fact be relied upon to make/implement a deal on anything in particular. So whatever happened to make a resolution, D's would find the rug pulled out.
I've no idea whether screwing up Thanksgiving would have been better for D polling or not, just some observations from a long way away.
I want to quote Josh Marshall, who I think nailed this:
"The December vote on Obamacare funding is basically a fake one. But it will show yet again how absolutely determined Republicans are to make people’s health care costs go through the roof. The upshot of the shutdown is that Democrats now own the affordability issue, and they’ve focused it on health care coverage, which Republicans want to make more expensive or take away altogether. That vote keeps it there. So will the huge price hikes millions will be feeling by December. Also, if I’m understanding the deal right this continuing resolution goes through January. So there’s another bite of the apple in just a couple of months."
If politics today is really all about attention and breaking through, then a clear demonstration that the Republicans not only want to, but did make health care more expensive, and were even willing to starve children to do so, is not a bad outcome. And it is extra hard to get a win from a shutdown, esp. for Democrats, since a shutdown hurts people who depend on the government.
If I had control over the caucus, I'd have pushed it at least to Thanksgiving, all the while reminding people that Republicans could end it any time they want either by keeping insurance premiums, already too high, down, or by getting rid of the filibuster. This is where having Schumer as the D leader hurts -- he was too quiet, when he should have played hardball.
But it's not a catastrophe, just a partially missed opportunity.
Except that if the GOP manages to ensure the election is rigged to re-elect their party, then the Ds have surrendered for nothing. How overwhelming would teh vote have to be to overcome the Rs overturning the results to favor themselves? The irony is that this is what Maduro did in Venezuela, and T is effectively going to war over this to try to oust him.
Well, a government shutdown whose goal is extending subsidies for health insurance purchases isn't going to have any effect on R's 'rigging' the election. But that's a separate issue. Right now, it looks like the #1 attempt at 'rigging' is based on putting lots of Texan Hispanic voters into marginally R district to push them over the top, based on Hispanic movement towards Republicans in 2024. But Trump's level of ethnic profiling, grabbing US citizens and dragging them off to detention based on their skin color and ability to speak Spanish may have neutralized that approach.
I don't want to come across as Pollyanna-ish - this is the worst government of my lifetime, in terms of how US citizens are treated (though LBJ and Nixon together managed to kill *millions* of Vietnamese for what turns out to have been nothing).
But if Democrats manage to silence or deprecate the identity politics wing of the party, there's hope for the 2026 elections.
Yeah, but, seriously. Fuck the damned Senate *centrists*. This cohort is infuriating given that 2 are retiring and the rest aren’t up for reelection for 3 or 5 years.
Thanks for a gloomy but probably realistic take, Dave. Probably best if I stay on BlueSky. I had both your thoughts when I woke up this morning. Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Dems. And then, eh, it’s not in the long run going to make much difference. Still, the squishes are killing us. I long for a party that acted like an opposition party.
The only way out for the Senate Democrats was for the Republicans to nuke the filibuster and pass their bill. They could have made it another carve-out, like they did for judge votes. That Republicans refused that, even after Trump publicly demanded it, shows how much they value it, even in the majority acting as if that will never change. So Democrats had no choice but to "cave", after a wildly sucessful messaging campaign making Republicans own the shutdown.
“the filibuster is antidemocratic”. Hmm. In a system where winner takes all, democracy is reduced to a ‘dictatorship of the majority’. Democracy, however, is not best when that is the model. In the best democracy, it is also about the protection of the minority. As such, the filibuster is effectively one of the last elements in the US political system that forces *some* compromise (little as it has become) between majority and minority. As we have witnessed.
The US (as do other district-based democracies) shows how ‘winner takes all’ elements of the political system make the system very brittle.
If you want to solve that, you need to change the US Constitution to introduce something like larger districts with proportional representation in each district. That opens up the way to have more than two parties where *every* party is a minority and has a stake in protecting systems that protects everyone.
The US system has completely lost the capability to compromise. It is happening all over the world, but proportional representation setups are somewhat less vulnerable.
“Caving right now is indefensible. But it also would have been indefensible two months from now, after people starved and the airports mostly shut down and 60+% of the country was blaming Trump but he still didn’t notice because his brain is mostly soup at this point.”
So - what were they supposed to do? Never cave? Cave in 30 days? I am not understanding.
Yeah this article doesn’t make any sense to me. It seems to be saying we should have continued hurting some of the most vulnerable people in the country for…no reason?
The filibuster can be a useful tool — despite its long, sad history of being used to ensure that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are denied to some and are not among the unalienable rights of all. Like any tool it needs to be used. Today's Democrats, unlike the southern Democrats of the past, are either unwilling or incapable of using it. That is what this fight was about: using the filibuster to prevent a (bare) majority from undemocratically imposing its freedom-limiting policies on the very nearly equally large minority that oppose them. The filibuster works only when there is a desire to achieve consensus. It no longer has any use.
For a few weeks I though that the Dems weren't bluffing. Turns out they were. So now that they've caved (again, again) they're in a much stronger position for the non-negotiations that will ensue between now and December whatever. Brilliant strategy.
You say the vote is indefensible on its merit, and also that it won’t change anything. So your position is really that we should continue to make SNAP recipients worry about putting food on the table, continue to destroy American air travel, continue to prevent federal employees from paying their rent, all just to keep playing a game that wouldn’t have made any difference in the end? That seems morally indefensible to me.
Don't we say "No negotiating with terrorists"? This shutdown should have continued so that those wanting to fly for Thanksgiving dinner would have had to cancel their flights. Business trips would have to be rearranged. And we could check the private corporate jet to commercial airline flight ratio to see whether private flights got priority. This would start hurting wealthier republicans and put pressure on the GOP. So yes, we need those Democrat Senators' names so we can donate to their primary challengers. If my CA senators buckled (I sincerely hope not), then it undermines their claims to me when asking for donations.
The next chance to stand up will end the same way the last two have. Another “bite of the apple in january” will end no differently. They feel no responsibility for those they represent . It’s heartbreaking.
The Dems made a strategic choice to make this about health care. Once they did that, this outcome seemed likely.
If the shut down is about health care then the GOP had 2 obvious approaches: (1) cave and find the health care subsidies, which some congressional republicans would have welcomed…but there was no way POTUS would get on board with that because he always doubles down, or (2) the Dems would cave when the value of staying in this fight for health care subsidies fell below the costs to their other interests or constituencies.
If the Dems had positioned the shutdown as being about something more relevant to the moment and existential to democracy (e.g., Senate rules, very specific appropriations language, agreement on oversight budgets, etc) it would have been harder to justify initially to the average voter but it also would have been much easier to stand behind the original rationale for the duration.
I think/hope the crucial win will be getting rid of Schumer. As well as being the quintessential aged Establshment Dem who's been there far too long, he's Israel's point man in a party that is no longer willing to support genocide.
And there will be another chance, after the Repubs have had time to demonstrate that they won't do anything positive for health care.
None of this changes the near-certainty that the 2026 elections will be rigged, but at least it will mean the Dems are more likely to fight.
Good piece - as a foreigner (who lived in the US once upon a time for a while) the strategic problem seemed to me that Rs have surrendered congressional power to T and so cannot in fact be relied upon to make/implement a deal on anything in particular. So whatever happened to make a resolution, D's would find the rug pulled out.
I've no idea whether screwing up Thanksgiving would have been better for D polling or not, just some observations from a long way away.
I want to quote Josh Marshall, who I think nailed this:
"The December vote on Obamacare funding is basically a fake one. But it will show yet again how absolutely determined Republicans are to make people’s health care costs go through the roof. The upshot of the shutdown is that Democrats now own the affordability issue, and they’ve focused it on health care coverage, which Republicans want to make more expensive or take away altogether. That vote keeps it there. So will the huge price hikes millions will be feeling by December. Also, if I’m understanding the deal right this continuing resolution goes through January. So there’s another bite of the apple in just a couple of months."
If politics today is really all about attention and breaking through, then a clear demonstration that the Republicans not only want to, but did make health care more expensive, and were even willing to starve children to do so, is not a bad outcome. And it is extra hard to get a win from a shutdown, esp. for Democrats, since a shutdown hurts people who depend on the government.
If I had control over the caucus, I'd have pushed it at least to Thanksgiving, all the while reminding people that Republicans could end it any time they want either by keeping insurance premiums, already too high, down, or by getting rid of the filibuster. This is where having Schumer as the D leader hurts -- he was too quiet, when he should have played hardball.
But it's not a catastrophe, just a partially missed opportunity.
Except that if the GOP manages to ensure the election is rigged to re-elect their party, then the Ds have surrendered for nothing. How overwhelming would teh vote have to be to overcome the Rs overturning the results to favor themselves? The irony is that this is what Maduro did in Venezuela, and T is effectively going to war over this to try to oust him.
Well, a government shutdown whose goal is extending subsidies for health insurance purchases isn't going to have any effect on R's 'rigging' the election. But that's a separate issue. Right now, it looks like the #1 attempt at 'rigging' is based on putting lots of Texan Hispanic voters into marginally R district to push them over the top, based on Hispanic movement towards Republicans in 2024. But Trump's level of ethnic profiling, grabbing US citizens and dragging them off to detention based on their skin color and ability to speak Spanish may have neutralized that approach.
I don't want to come across as Pollyanna-ish - this is the worst government of my lifetime, in terms of how US citizens are treated (though LBJ and Nixon together managed to kill *millions* of Vietnamese for what turns out to have been nothing).
But if Democrats manage to silence or deprecate the identity politics wing of the party, there's hope for the 2026 elections.
Yeah, but, seriously. Fuck the damned Senate *centrists*. This cohort is infuriating given that 2 are retiring and the rest aren’t up for reelection for 3 or 5 years.
Thanks for a gloomy but probably realistic take, Dave. Probably best if I stay on BlueSky. I had both your thoughts when I woke up this morning. Way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Dems. And then, eh, it’s not in the long run going to make much difference. Still, the squishes are killing us. I long for a party that acted like an opposition party.
The only way out for the Senate Democrats was for the Republicans to nuke the filibuster and pass their bill. They could have made it another carve-out, like they did for judge votes. That Republicans refused that, even after Trump publicly demanded it, shows how much they value it, even in the majority acting as if that will never change. So Democrats had no choice but to "cave", after a wildly sucessful messaging campaign making Republicans own the shutdown.
First sane take I’ve read all morning. Thanks.
“the filibuster is antidemocratic”. Hmm. In a system where winner takes all, democracy is reduced to a ‘dictatorship of the majority’. Democracy, however, is not best when that is the model. In the best democracy, it is also about the protection of the minority. As such, the filibuster is effectively one of the last elements in the US political system that forces *some* compromise (little as it has become) between majority and minority. As we have witnessed.
The US (as do other district-based democracies) shows how ‘winner takes all’ elements of the political system make the system very brittle.
If you want to solve that, you need to change the US Constitution to introduce something like larger districts with proportional representation in each district. That opens up the way to have more than two parties where *every* party is a minority and has a stake in protecting systems that protects everyone.
The US system has completely lost the capability to compromise. It is happening all over the world, but proportional representation setups are somewhat less vulnerable.
“Caving right now is indefensible. But it also would have been indefensible two months from now, after people starved and the airports mostly shut down and 60+% of the country was blaming Trump but he still didn’t notice because his brain is mostly soup at this point.”
So - what were they supposed to do? Never cave? Cave in 30 days? I am not understanding.
Yeah this article doesn’t make any sense to me. It seems to be saying we should have continued hurting some of the most vulnerable people in the country for…no reason?
The filibuster can be a useful tool — despite its long, sad history of being used to ensure that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are denied to some and are not among the unalienable rights of all. Like any tool it needs to be used. Today's Democrats, unlike the southern Democrats of the past, are either unwilling or incapable of using it. That is what this fight was about: using the filibuster to prevent a (bare) majority from undemocratically imposing its freedom-limiting policies on the very nearly equally large minority that oppose them. The filibuster works only when there is a desire to achieve consensus. It no longer has any use.
For a few weeks I though that the Dems weren't bluffing. Turns out they were. So now that they've caved (again, again) they're in a much stronger position for the non-negotiations that will ensue between now and December whatever. Brilliant strategy.
Yes ... and it's still infuriating!
You say the vote is indefensible on its merit, and also that it won’t change anything. So your position is really that we should continue to make SNAP recipients worry about putting food on the table, continue to destroy American air travel, continue to prevent federal employees from paying their rent, all just to keep playing a game that wouldn’t have made any difference in the end? That seems morally indefensible to me.
Don't we say "No negotiating with terrorists"? This shutdown should have continued so that those wanting to fly for Thanksgiving dinner would have had to cancel their flights. Business trips would have to be rearranged. And we could check the private corporate jet to commercial airline flight ratio to see whether private flights got priority. This would start hurting wealthier republicans and put pressure on the GOP. So yes, we need those Democrat Senators' names so we can donate to their primary challengers. If my CA senators buckled (I sincerely hope not), then it undermines their claims to me when asking for donations.
Stupid is as stupid does.
The next chance to stand up will end the same way the last two have. Another “bite of the apple in january” will end no differently. They feel no responsibility for those they represent . It’s heartbreaking.
The Dems made a strategic choice to make this about health care. Once they did that, this outcome seemed likely.
If the shut down is about health care then the GOP had 2 obvious approaches: (1) cave and find the health care subsidies, which some congressional republicans would have welcomed…but there was no way POTUS would get on board with that because he always doubles down, or (2) the Dems would cave when the value of staying in this fight for health care subsidies fell below the costs to their other interests or constituencies.
If the Dems had positioned the shutdown as being about something more relevant to the moment and existential to democracy (e.g., Senate rules, very specific appropriations language, agreement on oversight budgets, etc) it would have been harder to justify initially to the average voter but it also would have been much easier to stand behind the original rationale for the duration.
I think/hope the crucial win will be getting rid of Schumer. As well as being the quintessential aged Establshment Dem who's been there far too long, he's Israel's point man in a party that is no longer willing to support genocide.
And there will be another chance, after the Repubs have had time to demonstrate that they won't do anything positive for health care.
None of this changes the near-certainty that the 2026 elections will be rigged, but at least it will mean the Dems are more likely to fight.
Thanks, Dave. Insightful!