“Senators hate this, though, because the filibuster really does give individual members more leverage and make things less leadership driven, which helps make being a senator more fun than being a House member. “
I believe the contrary to be true. The instant K Sinema said thumbs down on nuking the filibuster in the last session, the instant her leverage went from enormous to zero. Who has more power? The deciding 51st vote or the person who will determine with about ten other members whether something can even be debated?
A Senate that requires a simple majority to pass legislation gives huge power to centrists. They can extract concessions to get their vote. A Senator who can only reduce the margin of defeat of a bill? Not so powerful.
Look how much influence the Freedom Caucus has had in the House. Look at what Massie and three others have accomplished with the Epstein discharge petition. That dynamic would simply not exist if a supermajority were required.
I have to admit that I'm very confused about all of this. First, I'm not sure that the ACA concession is worth betting the farm on in the first place. Second, don't we want moderate Senators in both parties to have more of a pivotal role? Overall, I'm vaguely annoyed that the Democrats are caving, but I'm mainly too ignorant to come up with an informed opinion on this. I should probably just ask an LLM, but someone please explain this to me like I'm a 5(0) year old.
The shutdown was hurting the country, but republicans were paying a higher price politically, so many people (though not everyone) is mad that the dems didn't extract more concessions (they got vague promises, nothing more) from the republicans before agreeing to vote to end the shutdown, though no one had a plan for exactly which concessions should have been extracted.
I’m more cynical. The Democrats pocketed the 2025 elections victory and are playing that without the subsidies millions of voters will turn against the Republicans and they will have to own it.
What I don’t understand is why the Republicans maintain the filibuster. Trump is pursuing a very dramatic agendas. He’s reshaping the entire economy as well as redefining societal order. I expect that if the Supreme Court pushes back on Trump he will push the Senate to abolish the filibuster and give him some friendly laws.
I think the problem is that something (a big, beautiful bill in this case) can pass via "budget reconciliation" but then be held up by the filibuster through a shutdown. That doesn't make sense (remember that this is how we got the ACA in the first place and how it could have been killed if John McCain had not stepped in), and this standoff should have occurred when the removal of the subsidies was enacted into law. However, the core issue is that the Democrats lost the election last year. This all could have been avoided had they done a better job of painting a picture of what a second Trump administration would look like and provided a compelling alternate vision. This is all a bad look. We caused a lot of people real harm and a lot of stress for pretty much no reason. Shame on all of them!
The reaction among other Democrats (than me) to the way the shutdown ended "when we were winning" seems to be overwhelmingly angry. I think that's mistaken on the merits and wrong on the morals.
Yes, poll respondents were blaming the Republicans more than the Democrats for the shutdown, but let's consider two things about that:
1) Blaming the Republicans more is not at all the same as a willingness to help the Democrats by continuing to endure the shutdown. Blame assumes that people don't like the thing in question; they want it to end.
2) The Democrats' blame-gap advantage was probably as great as it was going to get. It's easy to imagine people shifting to an emotional "plague on both your houses" attitude as the pain dragged on.
As for the moral stakes, wanting to prolong the shutdown in the expectation that acute suffering will work to our advantage is the morality of breaking human eggs to make a political omelette. That way of thinking has a deservedly bad reputation and historical associations. Anyway (if any other consideration is necessary), how big an omelette can one make out of a government shutdown?
The eight Democrats who voted to reopen let their party quit while it was ahead in the polling and also be the party that brought relief to the American people. Not such a bad outcome.
Color me clueless. I’m feeling pretty upbeat about the Surrender Caucus taking it on the chin to end this thing before some unforeseen event or Republican sleight of hand scuppered our chance of keeping the chips we’ve won. Everyones’s like “They should have held out longer!” How much longer? For what? Trump solidly owns all the badness of the shutdown, including going to the mat to keep poor kids from eating food. Now he’ll own the premium spike. The most important thing is that Dems win in 2026. I think this was the best/safest move toward that end. So I’m calling Dems for win on shutdown 2025. But y’all are more weedsy than I am. 🤷♀️
Damn you, Matt! I am trying to figure out how I feel about this-which is at least as complicated as your 13 points-and you didn't tell me how I should feel about this.
Totally agree on rethinking filibuster but this situation reminds me that America is a country by and for the well-to-do. Notice that the shutdown ended weeks after SNAP was gutted but hours after air travel was interrupted. Coincidence?
My biggest fear regarding the elimination of the filibuster is Republicans using it to rewrite elections rules. For instance, every electoral reform that Democrats have proposed to make the system more fair, Republicans could enact with a twist that makes the system more unfair. For example, if Democrats can pass a law making Washington D.C. a state, Republicans can pass a law splitting Wyoming into 100 states. If Democrats can pass a law requiring independent redistricting committees in all 50 states, Republicans can pass a law granting Republicans in Washington control of the redistricting process in all 50 states.
Maybe it's inevitable that this is eventually going to happen anyway, and this is how our Democracy will turn into a dictatorship, but eliminating the filibuster could quite easily speed this up.
Would it speed it up though? Seems like republicans have always gone with the "well this [moving goalpost] type of legislation isn't subject to filibuster rules, so we're going to pass it with a simple majority..." when convenient for them.
The problem is that all this was predictable and if this was all they had the stomach for, we all would've been better off if they hadn't bothered with a shutdown at all.
I think the Dems caving is comically bad. But, this is fed in large part by the fact I have been team Abolish the Filibuster for a while now. (I am also on team "let Republicans catch the car" so maybe this cave is giving me half of what I want anyway).
But recently I have come to a new concern over getting rid of the filibuster: what if, in letting it be ended during a Republican trifecta, and specifically THIS Republican trifecta, it just enables them to functionally end democracy.
The reason I, as a Democrat, wanted to end the filibuster, is that it gives voters more direct feedback of what the parties want to do. I feel much of what the GOP runs on is violently unpopular and they are reaping a huge advantage by being able to rabble rouse their base on it and then not actually get to/have to do it.
But that feedback system breaks down if their first filibuster-less act is "It's now law that the majority get's to directly select new members of Congress" or some shit.
Fair concern to have, but given how much republicans (and the administration specifically) have had for laws general, you wonder whether it's really the filibuster that's standing in their way...Like, had there been a key vote that Thune couldn't get to 60 on, but could've easily passed with his 52-seat majority, would he really let the Filibuster rules stop him? Or would he pull out the "well this [moving goalpost] type of legislation isn't subject to filibuster rules, so we're going to pass it with a simple majority..." like they do with judges, etc... anyway?
I don't think it's as bad as others have made it seem.
Dems would look terrible if they did nothing, so it was right for them to force the shutdown. Premiums are going to jump now and Dems can credibly say they tried to do something about it. February will come and with no holiday travel inconveniences to worry about, they force the GOP to nuke the filibuster.
Meanwhile between now and then, economic sentiment is probably going to drag along with Trump's popularity. I can't see any world in which the GOP is MORE popular post-filibuster murder, and frankly that will give them 9 months or so to pass stupid, unpopular policies.
I’m the only one I know who’s actually psyched about it. People are pretending there was no risk to holding out longer. There sure as shootin’ was. Could’ve scored a few more points (how many exactly I’m not sure), but could’ve also lost them. Frankly, I think might possibly have been a canny move.
I think we’ll have more luck gradually lowering the filibuster and seeing what happens. You can always vote to raise it back if disaster ensues. Take it down to 55.
This was exactly what I was afraid would happen going into the shutdown. If these incredibly paltry gains are what Dems were willing to settle for, we all would have been better off not bothering with a shutdown at all. Senators' fondness for the filibuster is incredibly shortsighted and self-serving.
They could've gotten the Republicans to finally nuke the filibuster! The entire reason the shutdown was strategically sound in the first place was that they could either get actual concessions or to force the Republicans to get rid of the filibuster. All they had to do was hold out and they could have gotten one of those two outcomes. It turns out they didn't have the stomach for that strategy, which I wish they'd known when they started.
I definitely hear you that it might've just been better to just avoid the whole shutdown mess in the first place, (though Rs are paying a higher price for it, so we'll see...), but I am convinced the senators would've let this shutdown go into at least March of 2026 before even considering nuking the filibuster. Almost nothing is more important to them.
Yeah, that's why I'm upset, really. If they weren't willing to nuke the filibuster, doing the shutdown wasn't worth it. They made all those federal workers go without pay for weeks for small potatoes.
I'm frustrated by what feels like surrender but I'm also persuadable that this was the right move. It's easy for those of us with some privilege to say "keep fighting" when it's not our families struggling to eat. Whatever the media might say, we are supposed to be the ones who care for the working class.
In any case, Dems have successfully elevated the ACA premiums as an issue, AND made it plainly obvious how little Trump and his cabinet actually care about working families in this country. That doesn't go away now...the imagery of Trump having a Gatsby party, bulldozing the east wing for a ball room, bailing out his buddies who invested in Argentina, all while suing to freeze SNAP payments, all of that will last. And it'll all be front and center again come February, and with higher premiums by then to boot. In the meantime, let people travel home to their families for the holidays and buy Christmas presents for their kids; there was nothing to be gained before then beyond driving the knife in, and there's still time for that to come.
Re this:
“Senators hate this, though, because the filibuster really does give individual members more leverage and make things less leadership driven, which helps make being a senator more fun than being a House member. “
I believe the contrary to be true. The instant K Sinema said thumbs down on nuking the filibuster in the last session, the instant her leverage went from enormous to zero. Who has more power? The deciding 51st vote or the person who will determine with about ten other members whether something can even be debated?
A Senate that requires a simple majority to pass legislation gives huge power to centrists. They can extract concessions to get their vote. A Senator who can only reduce the margin of defeat of a bill? Not so powerful.
Look how much influence the Freedom Caucus has had in the House. Look at what Massie and three others have accomplished with the Epstein discharge petition. That dynamic would simply not exist if a supermajority were required.
I have to admit that I'm very confused about all of this. First, I'm not sure that the ACA concession is worth betting the farm on in the first place. Second, don't we want moderate Senators in both parties to have more of a pivotal role? Overall, I'm vaguely annoyed that the Democrats are caving, but I'm mainly too ignorant to come up with an informed opinion on this. I should probably just ask an LLM, but someone please explain this to me like I'm a 5(0) year old.
The shutdown was hurting the country, but republicans were paying a higher price politically, so many people (though not everyone) is mad that the dems didn't extract more concessions (they got vague promises, nothing more) from the republicans before agreeing to vote to end the shutdown, though no one had a plan for exactly which concessions should have been extracted.
I’m more cynical. The Democrats pocketed the 2025 elections victory and are playing that without the subsidies millions of voters will turn against the Republicans and they will have to own it.
What I don’t understand is why the Republicans maintain the filibuster. Trump is pursuing a very dramatic agendas. He’s reshaping the entire economy as well as redefining societal order. I expect that if the Supreme Court pushes back on Trump he will push the Senate to abolish the filibuster and give him some friendly laws.
I think the problem is that something (a big, beautiful bill in this case) can pass via "budget reconciliation" but then be held up by the filibuster through a shutdown. That doesn't make sense (remember that this is how we got the ACA in the first place and how it could have been killed if John McCain had not stepped in), and this standoff should have occurred when the removal of the subsidies was enacted into law. However, the core issue is that the Democrats lost the election last year. This all could have been avoided had they done a better job of painting a picture of what a second Trump administration would look like and provided a compelling alternate vision. This is all a bad look. We caused a lot of people real harm and a lot of stress for pretty much no reason. Shame on all of them!
The reaction among other Democrats (than me) to the way the shutdown ended "when we were winning" seems to be overwhelmingly angry. I think that's mistaken on the merits and wrong on the morals.
Yes, poll respondents were blaming the Republicans more than the Democrats for the shutdown, but let's consider two things about that:
1) Blaming the Republicans more is not at all the same as a willingness to help the Democrats by continuing to endure the shutdown. Blame assumes that people don't like the thing in question; they want it to end.
2) The Democrats' blame-gap advantage was probably as great as it was going to get. It's easy to imagine people shifting to an emotional "plague on both your houses" attitude as the pain dragged on.
As for the moral stakes, wanting to prolong the shutdown in the expectation that acute suffering will work to our advantage is the morality of breaking human eggs to make a political omelette. That way of thinking has a deservedly bad reputation and historical associations. Anyway (if any other consideration is necessary), how big an omelette can one make out of a government shutdown?
The eight Democrats who voted to reopen let their party quit while it was ahead in the polling and also be the party that brought relief to the American people. Not such a bad outcome.
Color me clueless. I’m feeling pretty upbeat about the Surrender Caucus taking it on the chin to end this thing before some unforeseen event or Republican sleight of hand scuppered our chance of keeping the chips we’ve won. Everyones’s like “They should have held out longer!” How much longer? For what? Trump solidly owns all the badness of the shutdown, including going to the mat to keep poor kids from eating food. Now he’ll own the premium spike. The most important thing is that Dems win in 2026. I think this was the best/safest move toward that end. So I’m calling Dems for win on shutdown 2025. But y’all are more weedsy than I am. 🤷♀️
Involved here: the filibuster was NOT on the chopping block
Damn you, Matt! I am trying to figure out how I feel about this-which is at least as complicated as your 13 points-and you didn't tell me how I should feel about this.
Totally agree on rethinking filibuster but this situation reminds me that America is a country by and for the well-to-do. Notice that the shutdown ended weeks after SNAP was gutted but hours after air travel was interrupted. Coincidence?
My biggest fear regarding the elimination of the filibuster is Republicans using it to rewrite elections rules. For instance, every electoral reform that Democrats have proposed to make the system more fair, Republicans could enact with a twist that makes the system more unfair. For example, if Democrats can pass a law making Washington D.C. a state, Republicans can pass a law splitting Wyoming into 100 states. If Democrats can pass a law requiring independent redistricting committees in all 50 states, Republicans can pass a law granting Republicans in Washington control of the redistricting process in all 50 states.
Maybe it's inevitable that this is eventually going to happen anyway, and this is how our Democracy will turn into a dictatorship, but eliminating the filibuster could quite easily speed this up.
Would it speed it up though? Seems like republicans have always gone with the "well this [moving goalpost] type of legislation isn't subject to filibuster rules, so we're going to pass it with a simple majority..." when convenient for them.
The problem is that all this was predictable and if this was all they had the stomach for, we all would've been better off if they hadn't bothered with a shutdown at all.
What more should they have stomached?
I think the Dems caving is comically bad. But, this is fed in large part by the fact I have been team Abolish the Filibuster for a while now. (I am also on team "let Republicans catch the car" so maybe this cave is giving me half of what I want anyway).
But recently I have come to a new concern over getting rid of the filibuster: what if, in letting it be ended during a Republican trifecta, and specifically THIS Republican trifecta, it just enables them to functionally end democracy.
The reason I, as a Democrat, wanted to end the filibuster, is that it gives voters more direct feedback of what the parties want to do. I feel much of what the GOP runs on is violently unpopular and they are reaping a huge advantage by being able to rabble rouse their base on it and then not actually get to/have to do it.
But that feedback system breaks down if their first filibuster-less act is "It's now law that the majority get's to directly select new members of Congress" or some shit.
Fair concern to have, but given how much republicans (and the administration specifically) have had for laws general, you wonder whether it's really the filibuster that's standing in their way...Like, had there been a key vote that Thune couldn't get to 60 on, but could've easily passed with his 52-seat majority, would he really let the Filibuster rules stop him? Or would he pull out the "well this [moving goalpost] type of legislation isn't subject to filibuster rules, so we're going to pass it with a simple majority..." like they do with judges, etc... anyway?
I don't think it's as bad as others have made it seem.
Dems would look terrible if they did nothing, so it was right for them to force the shutdown. Premiums are going to jump now and Dems can credibly say they tried to do something about it. February will come and with no holiday travel inconveniences to worry about, they force the GOP to nuke the filibuster.
Meanwhile between now and then, economic sentiment is probably going to drag along with Trump's popularity. I can't see any world in which the GOP is MORE popular post-filibuster murder, and frankly that will give them 9 months or so to pass stupid, unpopular policies.
Seems like not the worst outcome.
I’m the only one I know who’s actually psyched about it. People are pretending there was no risk to holding out longer. There sure as shootin’ was. Could’ve scored a few more points (how many exactly I’m not sure), but could’ve also lost them. Frankly, I think might possibly have been a canny move.
I think we’ll have more luck gradually lowering the filibuster and seeing what happens. You can always vote to raise it back if disaster ensues. Take it down to 55.
This was exactly what I was afraid would happen going into the shutdown. If these incredibly paltry gains are what Dems were willing to settle for, we all would have been better off not bothering with a shutdown at all. Senators' fondness for the filibuster is incredibly shortsighted and self-serving.
What more were they going to get?
They could've gotten the Republicans to finally nuke the filibuster! The entire reason the shutdown was strategically sound in the first place was that they could either get actual concessions or to force the Republicans to get rid of the filibuster. All they had to do was hold out and they could have gotten one of those two outcomes. It turns out they didn't have the stomach for that strategy, which I wish they'd known when they started.
I definitely hear you that it might've just been better to just avoid the whole shutdown mess in the first place, (though Rs are paying a higher price for it, so we'll see...), but I am convinced the senators would've let this shutdown go into at least March of 2026 before even considering nuking the filibuster. Almost nothing is more important to them.
Yeah, that's why I'm upset, really. If they weren't willing to nuke the filibuster, doing the shutdown wasn't worth it. They made all those federal workers go without pay for weeks for small potatoes.
I'm frustrated by what feels like surrender but I'm also persuadable that this was the right move. It's easy for those of us with some privilege to say "keep fighting" when it's not our families struggling to eat. Whatever the media might say, we are supposed to be the ones who care for the working class.
In any case, Dems have successfully elevated the ACA premiums as an issue, AND made it plainly obvious how little Trump and his cabinet actually care about working families in this country. That doesn't go away now...the imagery of Trump having a Gatsby party, bulldozing the east wing for a ball room, bailing out his buddies who invested in Argentina, all while suing to freeze SNAP payments, all of that will last. And it'll all be front and center again come February, and with higher premiums by then to boot. In the meantime, let people travel home to their families for the holidays and buy Christmas presents for their kids; there was nothing to be gained before then beyond driving the knife in, and there's still time for that to come.