To be fair the old system (where Senators would frequently vote for cloture but against final passage, and the filibuster was saved for certain extreme situations) wasn’t really sustainable as information became more widely accessible.
Because if you oppose a bill but you voted for cloture and the bill passed as a result, then it’s reasonable to ask “If you really opposed that bill then why did you vote in favor of it when it came to cloture? Why didn’t you stop it when you could if it’s so bad?”
It goes against all logic in the first place to have two votes when you really only care about the one.
Parliamentary procedure was invented for a rigid social hierarchy with slow transportation and communications. It is obsolete for the modern information age.
What’s even more insane is elevating a silly parliamentary procedure into a major political tradition.
In the current environment it's political cover for Republicans who want to resist various portions of the Trump agenda. Without it the Senate looks more like the house, where Trump just steamrolls any resistance within his party. (And thus steamrolls Congress, since Republicans have both chambers).
Is that a good outcome? I understand and share the frustration with the filibuster from a systemic perspective. But seems to me it has some real and important practical stakes in the next year or three.
But Matt's point (about which I think he is, unfortunately, exactly correct) is that "moderate" Senate Dems don't actually want to eliminate the filibuster EVER. And they're mainly afraid of it being eliminated now because that would then expose them in the future; so what looks like cowardice is ALSO strategic. I think this analysis (read the whole thread) by Scott Ashworth (Philosophy/PolSci prof) is on point:
"So in the event dems take a small majority in the senate with a mandate to actually do something, whomever is the most moderate dem likes the filibuster.
Note this gives a purely structural account of Manchin and Sinema, suggesting there will always be someone for that role."
Moreover, I think this is pretty well classified as a Principal-Agent Problem: The Agents (Senators) prize their power within the organization over their ability to actually deliver for their Principal.
See also the NYC city council, both progressives and moderates, is currently throwing an embarrassing fit over the ballot props that took away a tiny modicum of their power despite their illegal attempts to stop it. At every level of politics the people involved are happy to take a worse outcome for their constituents if it allows them to feel more important. And we wonder why the public is cynical about politicians.
if you give up the "leverage" to save that leverage it is no longer real.
Since the Republican threat of the nuclear option was sufficient to split Democrats without any actual concessions, Republicans will never negotiate substantively against the filibuster again. This means the filibuster only applies to Democratic majorities from now on, and will only last long enough to the point where a Democratic minority finally finds an issue they can hold 40 votes on. It is a chekhov's gun situation where having seen the nuclear option on the wall, eventually it will be used. I would expect it to be a few years though.
I am discounting the possibility a Democratic majority goes nuclear since Democrats are so hidebound by procedure they will keep trying to negotiate with Thune in vain even if they somehow win a trifecta.
Yes, we agree. A major function of the filibuster, in practice, is to protect moderates in the majority party from difficult votes. As in, votes where they disagree with 80% of their party.
I'm just saying that it's good, at the moment, to protect moderate Republicans from those votes. If the votes were allowed come to the floor, I don't trust anyone beyond maybe Collins or Murkowski to take a public stand against the administration. Look what happened to the freedom caucus in the house.
Seems like the revealed preference is that Democrats of all factions like the filibuster, regardless of what they might otherwise say to get more fundraising dollars.
How has the filibuster helped the Senate resist Trump on tariffs? There's a majority in the Senate that has consistently voted against tariffs (Democrats + Paul, Murkowski, Collins, and Mitch). How would the absence of the filibuster changed anything on those votes?
The end of the filibuster would mean that they have to vote on tariffs, and some of them would vote for Trump and some would vote against tariffs, and it would be an awful fight.
How do you see that working mechanically? I'm pretty sure you'd just see every Republican but the 4 mentioned vote for the tariffs without much of a fight (even if they don't like them) and then those 4 would take the hit because it's good for their brand (Murkowski, Collins) or they're constitutionally incapable of supporting tariffs (Paul) or they're already a lame duck and dngaf (McConnell).
Ask the Senate GOP caucus that question; Punchbowl has reported that they are using the existence of the filibuster as an apologetic in conversations with the White House, which has actually backfired inasmuch as that likely inspired Trump to advocate for repealing it.
I would like to think so, but given how thoroughly Trump has bent the House to his will I'd really rather not find out. Fundamentally the whole problem with the shutdown plan is the Senate R's will probably cave on the filibuster before letting it become a problem for Trump.
Most of the Russell Vought agenda, which is sweeping and transformative. So far it has come to one minor partisan rescission and a lot of executive actions that may or may not hold up in court. That sweeping agenda quietly not coming to pass is what Republican Congressional resistance to a Trump administration initiative looks like.
People propose this a lot but it makes no sense, the reason they do a cloture vote is to save floor time. A floor filibuster would make it impossible to move other priorities, and in any case a floor filibuster with 41 senators opposed could functionally last forever. So it's in the majority party's interest to get enough votes to invoke cloture and move on rather than wasting months of floor time.
I want majority parties to either put up or shut up. The filibuster means that the majority party can pretend to be an opposition party, throwing out bills that please their base, but counting on the filibuster to shut it down. I want them to actually have to vote - either pass it and show us what you really believe, or drop it because you don’t actually believe it. The filibuster turns Congress into a platform for social media, rather than a place where you actually try to pass laws you care about.
Right, I would have been more sympathetic to the "this shutdown has had real effects and it's not like we can magically make Trump act normal through a deal" line if they caved a week ago and said they needed to get SNAP running again and get federal workers paid. But given that their strategic position got significantly better in the time since and yet they were willing to leave with neither the ACA win or the spending recession win really does make it look like using SNAP as a pawn for political gamesmanship is on the table, but if their donors freak out about business travel being disrupted, that's what's worth eating shit for.
Donors are one thing, but flights being limited also means that it’s much harder for Senators themselves to go back home when the Senate isn’t in session.
No Senators were meaningfully affected whatsoever by flight cancellations, though. I fly out of DCA and service is currently operating essentially as normal. Cancellations were concentrated among short flights to small regional airports within 2 hours of DC. TSA security line times at DCA have thus far been unaffected.
Fetterman flies to Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, King flies to Portland (ME), Shaheen typically flies through Boston-Logan, Kaine flies to Richmond. I can’t find anything confirming Hassan’s home airport.
Anyway, looking at all the data for cancellations and delays from DCA over the weekend, Fetterman might have been heavily impacted by the significant proportion of delays and cancellations for flights into Pittsburgh, but flights from DCA to all the other home airports for those Senators have been largely unaffected.
Interesting! I would have thought DCA to Portland and Richmond would be precisely the type of flight that is most hit - a short flight to a secondary airport.
I would say personal inconvenience if air travel was the trigger is not the suject
Fear of big and wide backlash from the huge number of middle-Americans flying around Thanksgiving is more likely.
While impossible to know per se - I can quite understand that Fucking Up Thannksgiving Risk might cause one to say, "let us re-run this in February"
If this is a punt to Februaryish and Healthcare etc has begun to really bite, then a 2nd shut down bite might have real added leverage (and without the possible backlash trigger of Thanksgiving)
The reason that still doesn't make sense to me is that they will have way less leverage in February. I'm not saying there are no ethical ramifications here. Part of the understanding of a shutdown is that people will lose benefits, people won't get paid, and yea a holiday might be messed up. However you should have decided you are willing to pay that price at the outset. Remember, the Republicans are under pressure too and unlike the Democrats they could have unilaterally changed the procedural rules and owned the policy outcomes. While you can always talk yourself into a split the difference and/or kick the can type of solution one now has to ask, what was the point?
It's not, because he lives too close to DC. I was just continuing my tradition of putting losing VP nominees on blast for no reason (you're on notice, John Edwards). It'll probably be one of the Nevadans.
Will we see Air Traffic Controllers emerge as a powerful faction in politics?
It sounds crazy, but maybe it could happen. There seems to be a pattern where Americans are *really* reliant on air travel, especially the more wealthy and politically influential Americans, so anything that threatens air travel becomes a serious threat. The ATC can use that to get whatever they want. I'm wondering if they'll emerge as sort of an unofficial 4th branch of government, like the church in medieval England or the Eunuchs in Qing dynasty China, bullying congress with their monopoly on air travel.
I can't speak for others but I would be really pissed if my thanksgiving week travel plans got disrupted due to the shutdown. I don't really care about the enhanced support for Obamacare because it was meant to be temporary. Those who see increases in premium should vote against the party that ended it. I don't see it as my personal problem or a political problem for Democrats.
This feels like a complete misreading of the situation, if not misinformation. I fly out of DCA frequently, including two days ago, and there has not been any noticeable disruption as of yet.
The peak day for flight cancellations this weekend only ranked as the 70th-worst day for flight travel disruption since 2020, or something to that effect. Virtually all the flights that were axed were to small regional airports within 2 hours of DC. I promise you there was zero impact to any Senators.
I was pretty nervous all day yesterday about my flight last night. The one before me on the same route was canceled but fortunately mine went out only an hour late.
Mine was delayed 20 minutes, which was unfortunate, but nothing outside of the typical airport experience. I did hear about Cornyn’s flight being delayed, that’s a fair data point.
If you’re already having too 5% bad travel days even before the full cuts go into effect, it makes sense that rural senators from the northeast would want to end this.
I could totally see that they might have been worried about future cancellations / the trendline, I just wanted to issue a strong corrective to the idea that there was major disruption to Senator’s flight plans already.
Why do you keep arguing in every thread this shutdown is exactly like every other shutdown when the empirical evidence is that this shutdown is nothing like any other shutdown
If they "won" and saved the ACA credit, no one would know. It's straight up better politically to just let this go. The public isn't going to know Trump is bad until he does bad things.
Trump does not care about consequences and the costs imposed on others. That is why he is litigating to withhold SNAP. There is nothing that would move him and he would likely veto any compromise with an ACA subsidy expansion out of malice.
Yes, the Dems should let him do the bad things. That's how they could save the country. As long as they are more concerned with protecting Trump's voters from Trump we're screwed.
It would have been politically illuminating to have a few weeks of news around Thanksgiving about the president suing to be allowed to not feed poor people, while keeping flights grounded in an attempt to raise healthcare costs.
Maybe this is cope by me, but I think maybe Democrats can make some hay with Trump and Republicans being cool with starving poor people and ruining Thanksgiving travel but that Dems would have caught hell if those things had actually happened.
That means that people get hurt though. And a lot of Democrats do not want to see people hurt even if it means that Democrats will do worse in future elections.
I do not see how letting poor people starve to protect upper and middle class health subsidies is politically or morally the right choice. If Dems want to fight Trump they have to win elections, to win elections means telling "the Groups" to shove it up their ass.
No. It’s still a win because Republicans and Trump have really responded poorly and the focus has been shifted to increasing healthcare costs. We will soon return to Republicans actively making millions of lives worse.
This may still happen, but on a longer delay that active partisans think. My small employer (12 employees) just announced that they are no only going to cover 50% of the healthcare costs of dependents (they used to cover 100%) because the costs are basically doubling this year. The announcement just happened because open enrollment is starting.
Yep. I think the timing of resolving the shutdown is pretty good in that everyone (myself included) is about to find out that we're going to make a decent chunk less money less year because our premiums are skyrocketing. And I think people are going to blame Trump and Republicans.
People only respond to bad things actually happening. Lots of rending garments and gnashing of teeth about the bad things that "will happen if..." doesn't move the needle.
As long as the Rs were letting bad things happen the Dems were winning. The Dems who caved are saving the Rs from themselves.
You a very Trumpian “I don’t care if people miss months of paychecks. I don’t care if tens of millions of people get no SNAP benefits. I don’t care if air travel shuts down. I just want to punish my enemies and willing to inflict suffering on others to do so.”
This seems needlessly accusatory. I don't want bad things to happen, but if "we will soon return to Republicans actively making millions of lives worse" is actually true, then perhaps it would be better to let Republicans fully own the blame so that they lose badly in the midterms instead of it only hurting a little and the Republicans holding the Senate.
The rule of law and liberal constitutional governance are, in fact, much more important than government spending.
Now I'm not actually convinced any of this is actually a good idea, because I don't believe the Rs in the Senate have the fortitude to hold out on the filibuster against Trump, and the Dems need the filibuster to actually pressure Trump, but giving Trump the stamp of legitimacy in order to shield Trump voters from Trump is the doing the opposite of "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies".
We do not want Catherine Cortez-Masto and Jacky Rosen and Maggie Hassan* to be primaried!
(Say what you will about Fetterman...)
*NH Republicans have a bench of governors lined up to run for Senate, from John Sununu (who will be viable to win in literally any "Dem down year" for probably the next 20 years, notwithstanding a probable upcoming loss given the likely '26 midterm electorate) to Kelly Ayotte (who won her governor's race in '24 by 9 points (!!!); and barely lost the senate seat by 1,000 votes in 2016)
Again, all the people upset at the end of the shutdown have a very Trumpian perspective: “I don’t care about the harm and consequences imposed on others. I just want to punish my enemies.”
I think this is probably right: one more week of flight cancellations, one more week of Trump fighting to withhold SNAP, one more week of Republicans refusing to budge on lowering health care premiums (but then Dems quickly caving to retain the "health care premiums are going up because of Trump!!" card for next year's midterms) might have been politically optimal.
These senators are stuck between a rock and hard place. They will get primaried if they disavow banning ICE engines and they will get primaried if they don't fight Trump. Because shutdowns are forgotten but past unpopular comments about banning ICE engines are Republican campaign fodder, they chose the lesser of two evils.
Thermostatic public opinion + sticky liberal policies mean having a super majority for a few years is way better than being a large minority for most years.
That’s the whole reason Matt and others like myself prefer the filibuster be gone even if it’s in the current state of the senate. You want Republicans to show that they govern like crap instead of claiming their “best” ideas are being thwarted by democrats
There are a number of Senators in the Backdown Club who will be retiring this year, so they have nothing to fear themselves. It will make the races to replace them more interesting, though.
Democrats should have been champing at the bit to get rid of the filibuster. That was a no lose strategy. The republicans would own their crappy policies and future democratic congresses could get things done. You know which party likes the filibuster? The one that doesn’t want government to do anything.
The point isn’t that Republicans are the only ones that face political consequences, but let them own healthcare premiums under ACA or overreach on abortion bans. The only things Republicans care about are tax cuts and conservatives/hacks in the judiciary. They can do those by reconciliation or without the filibuster already. Forcing them to own the budget is not bad. Having said that, the fact that this agreement just goes to January makes me feel like it is not as bad a cave as the internet will have you believe.
Dems try to win the battle at the expense of losing the war. They act as if they are in power and the priority is to improve outcomes for Americans today. Contrast this with McConnell making the Republican Senate's primary objective depriving Obama of a second term. McConnell understood that, when out of power, the most important goal is to get it back.
The irony is that the right is led by somebody who never thinks past what's in front of him. They have the best ever opportunity to play the long game and are unwilling to do so.
I never really understood how Democrats' public explanation of the shutdown being about ACA exchange subsidies but their true, more private demand being about spending recission was supposed to work. What was the actual goal here?
The goal of this shutdown was to give Schumer (already steadily on the outs with progressives in his caucus over Israel) a reason to not be yelled at like he was in March for not pursuing a fight. The actual result of the shutdown was always going to be just like it was for Senator Cruz's shutdown versus President Obama. Nothing. That was never in doubt.
This is nonsense. The shutdown fight dramatically reduced Trump’s popularity. Whether that change will be durable we have yet to see, but it pushed the game forward in a way that has been hugely beneficial for Democratic priorities (last night notwithstanding.) When you’re in the minority there isn’t much you can do except highlight how bad and ineffective the other side is, which is precisely what the Democrats spent the past 45 days doing.
How much do you want to bet that Ted Cruz said each of these things when the 2013 shutdown ended? "Raising awareness" is always a funny thing for a Senator in particular to brag about. You're literally in the United States Senate, you have the ability to conduct investigations and press conferences at the drop of a hat whenever you damn well feel like it. You are the last person in America who needs to raise awareness!
When the shutdown ended in 2013, Ted Cruz was deeply unpopular. The Cruz shutdown was deeply unpopular, and nobody blamed Obama. This is exactly the opposite of the current situation. Don't take my word for it, go read that radical lefty bombthrower, Nate Silver [1].
(I really don't understand this style of argumentation, by the way. Why point to a past event that has a fact pattern that's *almost exactly the mirror image of the current situation*, unless you're trying to make the opposite point you seem to be making?)
I'm looking at the listed legislative concessions, which is what the minority leader of the Dems asked for on ACA marketplace credits and did not receive as the moderate members now supply votes for a CR. I agree if the null hypothesis for "the shutdown is pointless" is "Dems hold their popularity", this read of defeat would be wrong and the shutdown would not be a failure.
But the null hypothesis is the legislative demands Schumer put forth on renewing the ACA marketplace credits as is. Not holding Dem popularity steady. And so, I stuck with my analogy to Cruz's shutdown demands on the ACA. It didn't work then. It doesn't work now. This is a legislative question, and it has an answer.
There were several successful goals: forcing the GOP to eliminate the filibuster was one. Getting the ACA subsidies was another. Boosting credibility with Dems' own partisans was a third. And losing on both fronts, but still ending up with the administration and GOP in a substantially weaker political position was a final one. These were not mutually exclusive. Many of these things were good outcomes.
The argument people are having in this thread is *why* Democrats would accept all the political risk and damage of the shutdown, and then turn around and fumble the ball before we could find out if they would achieve any of their goals.
It is interesting how its viewed as Schumer keeping his job due to progressives, I think it's more people disagree with his tactics on trying to pick fight or lay low and let thermostatic backlash and Trump/Rs overreach (which isn't a ideological split).
Yeah, I had a very hard time understanding what the goal was here.
"You want us to fight? Ok, listen to this evil genius plan. We'll make Republicans really feel the pain by shutting down the government and taking their key constituencies hostage: government workers, white collar business travelers, and poor people on SNAP. Then they'll be faced with an impossible dilemma: (a) end the filibuster so that they can do whatever they want, or (b) be blamed for the shutdown and lose 0.2pp in the 2026 midterms once everyone has forgotten about this."
Perhaps true, but I think revealed preference shows that Democratic politicians cared much more about the pain felt by SNAP recipients. Not a good choice of hostages!
There was no goal. The Democratic Party in its current state is incapable of formulating goals or strategies that don't revolve around "give us money." It was just pure reaction-- "we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do it"-level reasoning.
There are lots of voters and lots of Senators. Different people care about different things. Sometimes even the same person can care about different things.
The issue is “we aren’t going to cooperate if you lie to us and back out of deals.” The recession actions by Republicans destroyed all trust in them. It’s amazing that Republicans weren’t prepared for the blowback.
I understand that Democrats' true demands were about spending recission, but if Republicans somehow accepted continued ACA subsidies but gave nothing on recission, would Democrats consider that a win?
Yes, because Dems can be shown as delivering on cost of living and if Republicans do rescission on ACA, then it is a media cycle to exploit as we get closer to midterms.
Quite a bit was being done on bipartisan lines about impoundments right before the shutdown:
From September 30th[1]:
"The Senate Appropriations Committee has passed eight of the 12 spending bills, all with bipartisan support. (One was approved 27-0. The others received, at most, three dissenters, except for the Commerce-Justice-Science bill, which passed 19-10 due to a dispute over the FBI building.) And despite Republicans boasting a majority, Democrats were not doing horribly in these negotiations!
They succeeded in protecting funding for the National Science Foundation and the National Weather Service, both targeted by the Trump administration, in the Commerce-Justice-Science bill. And blocking proposed Trump cuts to the Labor Department, Education Department, and National Institutes of Health in a bill approved 26-3 by committee. And keeping the GAO, another Trump enemy, funded in a bill approved 26-1. And even reviving environmental justice programs in a bill approved 26-2. What’s more, several of these measures added guardrails to prevent Trump impoundments, by including detailed tables and instructions that would normally have been put in non-binding reports directly in the legislative text."
I am being melodramatic but to elaborate, nominally it was single topping while under the hood it was a mix of "We need to fight Trump" plus "We vote for authoritarianism" plus "Maybe we should let them kill the filibuster but actually maybe we shouldn't" plus "Oh no Thanksgiving might be cancelled" plus "Oh no poor people can't eat now".
I'm seriously conflicted here actually, because I'm team "The filibuster is good actually" and killing the filibuster really does seem like the obvious goal of the Dem shutdown strategy.
But I genuinely believe the Dems who say they think killing the filibuster would be a good outcome, and their truly pathetic inability to hold the line on this is an absolute new low point in the party's complete failure to be an effective opposition. This really confirms that there's still nothing at all slowing the broader political system's swirling descent down the toilet.
Why do you think the filibuster is good? I lean a little bit towards Yglesias/Trump and find the supposed moderation benefits extremely dubious and lopsided towards regulation. Tons of radical fiscal policy can already theoretically happen; Medicare for All funded by vast carbon taxes and everyone's income bracket getting hiked can pass through the reconciliation process without a single rule change. The reason it doesn't is Dem voters don't agree and thus Dem legislators don't agree on it being a good idea.
The reconciliation process is definitely a huge mess... that lets stuff get passed too easily.
The government should only be able to appropriate spending that actually advances through the actual appropriations process and they just shouldn't be able to spend money that doesn't, at all, period.
And we should let bad things happen when Congress fails to do it's job so that voters actually get hurt and actually respond by removing incumbent elected officials.
>> But that was the actual choice that induced critical senators to blink, and you shouldn’t let overheated rhetoric obscure that.
On their own terms, though, surrendering to protect an appropriations process that they were already *losing* to Trump's reneging is... dumb.
(note: Please pardon the following metaphor; it's intended to demonstrate a point, not imply violence.)
A bully walks up to you on the playground and punches you. You fight back, but he wins and steals your lunch box. As he's walking away, you pull out a gun and force him to stop. And then he pulls out a wand that can magically disable your gun... so you just let him continue walking away with your lunch, in order to preserve your gun... that he can clearly still counter the next time he tries to steal your lunch ANYWAYS?
This is insane. Instead of protecting the filibuster, these cowards have made it into a "dead rule walking".
All they've done is show Trump that HE gets to choose the time and place at which he will kill the filibuster, which will inevitably be to his own maximum advantage - IE a fight where he ISN'T losing.
Moreover, this episode is but a microcosm of the Dems' pitiful history of playing themselves on the filibuster: They're always screwing over their future selves by showing Republicans exactly what their Achilles heel will be in the next fight. "If you hit me RIGHT HERE, I won't be able to fight back, and how dare you ever attempt to- wait, what are you doing? Fuck o- OWW THAT HURTS YOU SHOT ME".
You're the one telling people to always face facts. That's been the operating principle of the Republican party when Democrats are in power for the last decade at least. Remember Mitch McConnell.
Well James, it’s good if the goal is to prevent anything from being done because you operate on post hoc ergo propter hoc. It’s bad if you want anything to happen. But that’s not what, say, former republicans who would rather the Dems turn into a pack of Mitt Romneys want, because it suits their feelings (which don’t care about your facts) to not realize that the current state of the GOP is their fault and that previously holding such views is a sign of personal failings. Remember that when you see anyone preaching “taking the high road” and ask yourself what they really want, because the “comity” they preach is likely self-serving.
Democrats aren't imposing anything. Republicans control all branches of government. The only reason Democrats have a seat at the table is because of the filibuster, which Republicans could repeal at any time.
Not saying this is you personally, but the instinct to just reflexively put all the responsibility of good governance on Democrats because Democrats are the responsible people is so tiresome
it’s the republicans imposing the conditions. if their actions are so bad that it’s unbearable, that is their fault and they should either change or be voted out.
Killing the filibuster would remove this ethical trap. The majority would be the ones doing whatever is done, and the opposition wouldn’t need to play three-dimensional chess, agonizing about when to save the majority from blame for its policies. They could just let the majority govern and explain what they would do instead if they were given the chance.
“If Republicans are in power, Democrats will patriotically cooperate to help America, but if Democrats are in power, Republicans will sabotage the economy as hard as they can”
^moderate swing voters who don’t care about the big cultural beefs but like having a job and some money will be totally rational in voting Republican!
This really seems to be the pain point here. In reading the statements of the Democrats that will vote to invoke cloture, they all expressed great concern for what this was doing to people reliant on SNAP and other federal operations. There's a real asymmetry here in that Republicans care less about this than Democrats do.
I guess the question I'd like to see Matt answer, as well as any Slow Borers if they like, is just how much such pain is tolerable in the pursuit of forcing Republicans to own all of it via nuking the filibuster?
It's not the Democrats' job to force pain on people. Either Republican policies are bad for people or they're not. If they're bad (like killing the ACA subsidies), then people will notice and you campaign on that. If they're not bad for people then maybe observers like me have misjudged Trump and the Republicans.
Just being very literal here. Slow Boring is consequentialist. The consequentialist way to make a moral choice is identify the alternatives and ask, for each one, “how much harm is prevented / benefit created, what is the likelihood, and how far into the future does that happen?”
In the abstract, every consequentialist argument for maintaining the government shutdown takes the form “the time-discounted likelihood-weighted net benefits were positive.”
In real life, that might be expressed by some people as, “the ACA victory was likely and more important than the harm done to people during the shutdown” or “the shutdown was reducing trump’s capacity to govern lawlessly, and that’s the highest good” or “the shutdown will result with high probability in election outcomes that will create vast benefits for many people.”
Consequential arguments against the shutdown are the opposites of those things.
EDIT: And just to add - the consequentialist has no way to distinguish between harm you cause and harm you abstain from preventing.
I would like to have a Presidency that, given the option to fund SNAP, doesn’t say “hey screw those people maybe starving them will give us some minor political leverage.” To the extent we want a better country in the long term (as opposed to a slow process of decline offset by minor attempts at harm reduction), removing those people from power exceeds every other short term priority.
Like what. We have less than a year til the midterms and three til a Presidential election that might determine the future of this country for a generation or two. Get explicit and outline your plan.
I think Democrats should adopt the Common Sense Democrat Manifesto that Matt has outlined repeatedly. That is a winning set of ideas. Then combine that with a good candidate -- not Kamala Harris or an 80-year old brain-addled Biden -- and sweep to victory.
“Do nothing substantive, pray an amazing candidate falls into our lap, hope that nobody in our coalition loses motivation or defects if we do nothing substantive, win.”
Yes, that is indeed a plan. It's called: "The Republicans won the last election. They control the government. We think they're doing a really bad job and Americans are suffering. We can do better; vote for us and give us a chance to prove it."
I get where you're coming from, but this is a naive way of looking at the issue.
In the short term, there's a lot of harm being done. But the medium- and long-term consequences of this cave will be far more damaging. When considering harm, what happens two or three steps down the line is nearly as relevant as what is happening right now!
I don't understand how the Democratic caucus comes back from this and forms a coherent opposition. They've shown that when they ask for something, all you've got to do is harm their constituents and they'll back down immediately. And they'll back down even if the administration is viewed as the responsible party and is facing political costs! How can you ever negotiate for anything if Trump can just arbitrarily (and illegally) threatens to kill SNAP, knowing you'll kowtow immediately?
I don’t like this decision either, but it’s too much to say “I don’t understand how the Democratic caucus comes back from this…”. They can learn if they’re pressed, and if they don’t learn they can be replaced. Let’s think long term there too.
1) "Worse conditions help me get elected". I don't like to support that at all and completely agree with you here.
2) "Worse conditions now will help us pass a better bill in 3 months which will make things better overall". This is arguably justifiable - and the mechanism was that this was hurting Republicans worse than Democrats.
If you always cave though because you never want anything temporarily bad to happen, it's hard to make bigger longer term changes.
(Of course, if you always dream about the future and never care about the present, then you can also get to some absurd results)
People blame the party in charge even if they aren’t responsible for the problem. (Republicans are fairly responsible for deteriorating economic conditions.)
There's a difference between trying to make things worse and enabling the right to bear the consequences of their policies.
Perhaps a more artful version: "the more the Republicans worsen conditions for Americans and are seen as responsible for doing so, the better the political outcome for Democrats. This forces the left to decide between marginally restraining the Republican's agenda and diluting the right's ownership of their policies versus playing the long game to regain power."
So, the confusing part for me as a bystander is with respect to points 8 and 9 -- I mean, this was *obviously* going to be a predictable set of stakes for *any* important bill that the Republicans want to pass. The time to think about the future of the filibuster was before refusing to sign on to the appropriations bill, not after Trump says something blindingly obvious to even the most casual observer of the Senate.
My guess is that the Dems did not have the stomach to have the shutdown last through Thanksgiving and have millions of Americans who previously were not affected by the shutdown have their holiday travel interrupted. If both parties work backwards from that point, there would be no reason Republicans would meaningfully cave on anything now if they knew Dems would eventually fold.
It does seem like a weak move for the Dems to fold now, but perhaps not that surprising given that many of them in the Senate didn't have the stomach for a shutdown in the first place, and I also think sincerely feel like it is harming their constituents. I am not sure whether the tradeoff of [ending the shutdown and returning to normalcy] vs. [what they may have gotten by holding strong for another month +] is worth it, but it's not super clear to me either way.
I think holiday travel is over leveraged as an explanation by the laptop class who fly frequently. Instead, it was almost certainly a general ratcheting of diverse pressures, whether they be government workers no longer getting pay checks, agencies effectively shuttered and no longer doing any work, etc. with essentially no identifiable upside other than the potential political benefits of increased misery, a price Democrats fortunately are unwilling to pay.
The travel definitely was a big factor and it wasn't just screwing with the "laptop class". Significant cutbacks on air travel would paralyze the economy.
You don’t think 1.5 million federal workers not getting paychecks for a month also isn’t economically significant? You don’t think the SEC, FDA, PTO, etc. not being reviewing or approve new filings isn’t economically significant?
Oh definitely. I am mostly objecting to the "laptop class" framing because air travel would affect a lot more than just that. For a lot of people that is more obvious than the disastrous effects of federal employees missing paychecks.
yes--the group of people who fly for holiday travel are disproportionately UMC and so politicians pay more attention to their views + they are a (mostly) new group of people who were not previously affected by the shutdown + the specter of politics ripping away families from being with each other for the quintessential US holiday all make this an especially potent force, IMO
All the people angry at “Democrats caving” generally have the same mentality as Trump. It’s pure “I don’t care about the costs imposed on others as long as I hurt my enemy.”
I think people maybe overrate how elite air travel is, especially around holidays. TSA estimated around 31M travelers last Thanksgiving. Cut it in half for round trips if you want, that is still a lot of people, it's not just coastal elites.
But if this were true, at least they should have waited - get closer to Thanksgiving where people are really sweating it about being able to fly and then give in with a lot of proclamations about how you’re doing the right thing for Americans and not going to let them miss seeing their families and that’s why you have to cave. Then you can at least position yourselves as the saviors of the holiday.
I think they felt a need to look like they were fighting back to pacify the base, and didn't think they'd get this far. If nothing else, it probably ended up helping on election night last week.
Yes, the base would have been mad had they not filibustered. Leadership would have become more unpopular.
But the party is very unpopular now and that didn't stop voters from cleaning the Republicans' clock on Tuesday. The voters *hate* Trump and the Republicans. They will metaphorically crawl over broken glass to vote against them, no matter the Democrat running (AG Jay Jones!)
My preferred course, not followed of course: Schumer forbids invoking the filibuster; the base rises up in holy outraged; Schumer takes all the arrows and courageously gives up his leadership position. But at the end of the day, no stupid filibuster and the Republicans own all the consequences of their horrific policies.
(I don't think the filibuster mattered at all on election night.)
Just another point to make... it was Democratic senate leadership who decided to do this, not the individual "defecting" Senators. They most certainly got together and asked themselves, "Okay we're going to give it enough to get to 60 votes, let's select the Democratic senators who might actually benefit electorally from this and have them do it."
The election this past week showed that voters can see through attempts to gaslight or mislead them. Or at least, voters in non-presidential election can. The kinds of voters who showed up last week are the same kinds of voters who are likely to vote in a primary.
Is the shutdown actually over? I know the senate passed something, and the other hurdles can be cleared without Dem assistance, but let’s not count our chickens before they hatch
And even if the Senate passes their Backdown Bill, the House is still on recess -- and as soon as he brings it back, Johnson will need to face the vote on the Epstein Files that he shut them down to stop in the first place. And THEN, he'll have to decide whether to bring the Senate bill to the floor and try to pass it. Correct: it's not over 'til it's over.
Sounds like a party completely adrift with no plan. Where is leadership? Do they have a strategy? Did they consider the endgame? Are they evaluating the policy outcomes here?
Democrats pulled the plug on a winning but hard nosed strategy because they have a conscience and don’t like people going hungry or standing in TSA lines. As much as I wish they’d kept milking this issue to hurt Trump, it’s nice having people care about America.
I agree, and it speaks well for Democrats that they actually care about people.
But this was all foreseeable! And since it was, it was a given that the Democrats would lose the shutdown. To which the only proper answer was: don't force a shutdown.
Maybe it's nice, but it's not a strategy for attaining or wielding power, which is their job.
I'd rather these Senators instead used their leverage to secure some concessions that would benefit America. Perhaps they could consider a timeframe that goes beyond the next three weeks.
Not that it will ever happen but I'd really love to better understand the mentality that gets us to observation number 6. I was also looking at the list of Democrats that agreed to the deal and wouldn't characterize them as the front line moderates. We can debate whether the decision to do the shut down was the right one but once you've committed to it why would you cave in this manner and for nothing? Did they not understand that the price they might pay would be procedural changes, which while annoying under Republican trifecta would at least force the GOP to fully own what they do? Whatever the headlines say the most natural read is that the Democrats were bluffing from day 1 and then.... called themselves on it. Baffling.
"I was also looking at the list of Democrats that agreed to the deal and wouldn't characterize them as the front line moderates."
That's why it's appropriate to be angry/disgusted with most of the Dem caucus (excepting Bernie, CVH, etc, plus nutcases like Fetterman who were always on board with the GOP) because this is basically a deliberate scheme to conceal responsibility and thereby protect vulnerable members from primaries (e.g. Kaine covering for Warner in VA, since the former was re-elected in 2024 while the latter is up in 2026).
As Waldman says here: "you can’t be the prodemocracy party and then [lie] to prevent the public from knowing what position your members of Congress actually took in order to shield them from accountability to voters"
ETA: FWIW, I'm not arguing for this in the abstract: I'm literally furloughed, with a wife who was RIFed (pre-shutdown), and paying hundreds of dollars on regular basis (would be thousands if I wasn't fortunate enough to have pet insurance that, ironically, is in many ways better than my own health insurance) to care for a beloved dog with worsening seizures. I don't know exactly what a realistic win looks like, but I definitely feel betrayed by "moderate" Dems who chose to cave immediately after election wins, while concealing responsibility to avoid primaries.
>I definitely feel betrayed by "moderate" Dems who chose to cave immediately after election wins, while concealing responsibility to avoid primaries.
Something that aggravates me about both “moderate” and “progressive” dems is the utter inability to engage in self-reflection. Or to grasp the fact that if you fuck up consistently, the electorate may well choose your opponent, no matter how crazy you think they are.
Here in Chicago, the progressives have learned absolutely nothing from Johnson’s utter stupidity and instead blame it on the republicans (of which there are very few in Chicago), “white capital” (because race hustling sadly pays off here due to the “muh 400 years of oppression” narrative that Johnson weaponized) or, if you get a few drinks into some people, the Jews (an old standby). The consequence is that the progressive movement here will almost certainly face a major setback in 2027.
In NYC, the moderates have completely failed to accept they their choice of Cuomo was a huge factor in their defeat. No, it’s because “socialists” (not that many in NYC to reach 50%), antisemitism (which is everything I dislike) and those damn kids on TikTok (get good?). The consequence is that the DSA captured the most high profile local office in the country.
Matt proposes a sticky note stating “the median voter is a white non-college person in their 50s in the suburbs”. Good. I would add another: “your opponents being crazy/stupid/inept does not absolve you from the responsibility to govern well, fix your own shit and constantly improve”.
That sucks for you, and if things return for normal now then that is a good thing.
As for the moderates, commentor StrangePolyHedrons made the interesting observation that these Senators might have been chosen by the leadership to take one for the entire team, because the Democrats were going to have to cave in any case because, unlike the Republicans, they care about the pain being inflicted on people like you.
I am glad at least one party cares about the ramifications for people but again I have to ask.... did the Democrats not understand this when everything started in October?
The bet being made was that those suffering would blame Republicans and the pressure would result in either (i) Republicans cave on something substantive that the Democrats can point to in the mid terms and/or as a sign that they are tough and principled or (ii) force the Republicans to change procedure to override them, allowing Democrats to blame the GOP for the bad they do, plausibly claim clean hands, and argue that they will govern better. In either case the Democrats can't say they caved to avoid suffering, when the entire strategy was premised on that suffering working to their advantage.
Exactly; I am explicitly saying that my family and I are willing to suffer (relatively speaking, since we do have some savings from my Army service and have mostly given up our hopes of having kids) if there is a clear purpose; opposing Trump/MAGA is basically the Civil Rights Movement of our time, which means that it demands both strategy and sacrifice. What is demoralizing and humiliating is to fold because you ("moderate" Senate Dems) apparently didn't do the basic work of analyzing various foreseeable courses of actions, and didn't even understand the basics of your own negotiating position. Or you did and chose to lie to your voters.
Unrelated, but I want to thank you for your book recommendation of Waging a Good War (Ricks) before I leave. Reading this side by side with the Thirty-Six Stratagems absolutely tickled my heart.
You mean those 8 democrats deserve it, or the 40 democrats who stood strong deserve it for allowing these 8 to call themselves democrats? Or I deserve it because I voted for a democrat in Texas who didn’t even win?
It's just really hard to express in words how farcical and enraging the filibuster practice invented out of thin air in 2009 is.
The American experiment in self-government will end over THIS?
To be fair the old system (where Senators would frequently vote for cloture but against final passage, and the filibuster was saved for certain extreme situations) wasn’t really sustainable as information became more widely accessible.
Because if you oppose a bill but you voted for cloture and the bill passed as a result, then it’s reasonable to ask “If you really opposed that bill then why did you vote in favor of it when it came to cloture? Why didn’t you stop it when you could if it’s so bad?”
It goes against all logic in the first place to have two votes when you really only care about the one.
Parliamentary procedure was invented for a rigid social hierarchy with slow transportation and communications. It is obsolete for the modern information age.
What’s even more insane is elevating a silly parliamentary procedure into a major political tradition.
That’s not what parliamentary procedure is
What a wise, astute, detailed response.
Ask for a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order for your birthday
That book was published 100 years after the filibuster, let alone the era I was alluding to. What the fuck are you on about?
In the current environment it's political cover for Republicans who want to resist various portions of the Trump agenda. Without it the Senate looks more like the house, where Trump just steamrolls any resistance within his party. (And thus steamrolls Congress, since Republicans have both chambers).
Is that a good outcome? I understand and share the frustration with the filibuster from a systemic perspective. But seems to me it has some real and important practical stakes in the next year or three.
But Matt's point (about which I think he is, unfortunately, exactly correct) is that "moderate" Senate Dems don't actually want to eliminate the filibuster EVER. And they're mainly afraid of it being eliminated now because that would then expose them in the future; so what looks like cowardice is ALSO strategic. I think this analysis (read the whole thread) by Scott Ashworth (Philosophy/PolSci prof) is on point:
https://bsky.app/profile/soashworth.bsky.social/post/3m5ariktnz22k
"So in the event dems take a small majority in the senate with a mandate to actually do something, whomever is the most moderate dem likes the filibuster.
Note this gives a purely structural account of Manchin and Sinema, suggesting there will always be someone for that role."
Moreover, I think this is pretty well classified as a Principal-Agent Problem: The Agents (Senators) prize their power within the organization over their ability to actually deliver for their Principal.
See also the NYC city council, both progressives and moderates, is currently throwing an embarrassing fit over the ballot props that took away a tiny modicum of their power despite their illegal attempts to stop it. At every level of politics the people involved are happy to take a worse outcome for their constituents if it allows them to feel more important. And we wonder why the public is cynical about politicians.
if you give up the "leverage" to save that leverage it is no longer real.
Since the Republican threat of the nuclear option was sufficient to split Democrats without any actual concessions, Republicans will never negotiate substantively against the filibuster again. This means the filibuster only applies to Democratic majorities from now on, and will only last long enough to the point where a Democratic minority finally finds an issue they can hold 40 votes on. It is a chekhov's gun situation where having seen the nuclear option on the wall, eventually it will be used. I would expect it to be a few years though.
I am discounting the possibility a Democratic majority goes nuclear since Democrats are so hidebound by procedure they will keep trying to negotiate with Thune in vain even if they somehow win a trifecta.
Yes, we agree. A major function of the filibuster, in practice, is to protect moderates in the majority party from difficult votes. As in, votes where they disagree with 80% of their party.
I'm just saying that it's good, at the moment, to protect moderate Republicans from those votes. If the votes were allowed come to the floor, I don't trust anyone beyond maybe Collins or Murkowski to take a public stand against the administration. Look what happened to the freedom caucus in the house.
Seems like the revealed preference is that Democrats of all factions like the filibuster, regardless of what they might otherwise say to get more fundraising dollars.
What parts are any Republicans resisting?
ending the filibuster
They can always say their hands are tied, without having to actually either vote with or against Trump.
Tariff policy. The Senate is broadly skeptical of Trump’s actions, including on the GOP side of the aisle. This has been widely reported.
How has the filibuster helped the Senate resist Trump on tariffs? There's a majority in the Senate that has consistently voted against tariffs (Democrats + Paul, Murkowski, Collins, and Mitch). How would the absence of the filibuster changed anything on those votes?
The end of the filibuster would mean that they have to vote on tariffs, and some of them would vote for Trump and some would vote against tariffs, and it would be an awful fight.
How do you see that working mechanically? I'm pretty sure you'd just see every Republican but the 4 mentioned vote for the tariffs without much of a fight (even if they don't like them) and then those 4 would take the hit because it's good for their brand (Murkowski, Collins) or they're constitutionally incapable of supporting tariffs (Paul) or they're already a lame duck and dngaf (McConnell).
Ask the Senate GOP caucus that question; Punchbowl has reported that they are using the existence of the filibuster as an apologetic in conversations with the White House, which has actually backfired inasmuch as that likely inspired Trump to advocate for repealing it.
Link? I believe they've used that line with Trump, I'm skeptical that it was discussed in the context of tariffs.
Things would in fact be much worse if the senate was actually passing Trump stuff instead of it all being judicial suspect executive actions.
I don't think they would actually pass them though. They don't want to be on record voting for this stuff.
And if it is passed and the things they pass are bad, then the next election becomes a referendum on actual policy and not just vibes.
I would like to think so, but given how thoroughly Trump has bent the House to his will I'd really rather not find out. Fundamentally the whole problem with the shutdown plan is the Senate R's will probably cave on the filibuster before letting it become a problem for Trump.
Most of the Russell Vought agenda, which is sweeping and transformative. So far it has come to one minor partisan rescission and a lot of executive actions that may or may not hold up in court. That sweeping agenda quietly not coming to pass is what Republican Congressional resistance to a Trump administration initiative looks like.
Simply make people who want to filibuster actually do the talking
People propose this a lot but it makes no sense, the reason they do a cloture vote is to save floor time. A floor filibuster would make it impossible to move other priorities, and in any case a floor filibuster with 41 senators opposed could functionally last forever. So it's in the majority party's interest to get enough votes to invoke cloture and move on rather than wasting months of floor time.
In a filibuster you can only yield back to the chair, not to anyone else
the Senate has no previous question motion so as long as someone wants to talk you have to let them (unless you invoke cloture).
I don't want Trump to have unrestricted rule, nor do I want Democrats to. Bipartisanship is good.
Keep the filibuster!!!
I want majority parties to either put up or shut up. The filibuster means that the majority party can pretend to be an opposition party, throwing out bills that please their base, but counting on the filibuster to shut it down. I want them to actually have to vote - either pass it and show us what you really believe, or drop it because you don’t actually believe it. The filibuster turns Congress into a platform for social media, rather than a place where you actually try to pass laws you care about.
When parties win majorities, they should be allowed to do things! Destroy the filibuster!
To be fair, the Articles of Confederation almost ended the American experiment for the exact same reason. It’s not like nobody tried.
Which senator will be the first to admit to caving because air travel became more inconvenient for them personally?
I wouldn't be surprised if Thanksgiving air travel played a role in the timing.
Everything else aside, we're flying with a toddler at Christmas and this is a big relief for my dad brain.
Right, I would have been more sympathetic to the "this shutdown has had real effects and it's not like we can magically make Trump act normal through a deal" line if they caved a week ago and said they needed to get SNAP running again and get federal workers paid. But given that their strategic position got significantly better in the time since and yet they were willing to leave with neither the ACA win or the spending recession win really does make it look like using SNAP as a pawn for political gamesmanship is on the table, but if their donors freak out about business travel being disrupted, that's what's worth eating shit for.
Donors are one thing, but flights being limited also means that it’s much harder for Senators themselves to go back home when the Senate isn’t in session.
No Senators were meaningfully affected whatsoever by flight cancellations, though. I fly out of DCA and service is currently operating essentially as normal. Cancellations were concentrated among short flights to small regional airports within 2 hours of DC. TSA security line times at DCA have thus far been unaffected.
Where do you think Fetterman, King, Shaheen, Kaine, and Hassan fly? (The two Nevadans and Durbin all fly to big airports.)
Fetterman flies to Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, King flies to Portland (ME), Shaheen typically flies through Boston-Logan, Kaine flies to Richmond. I can’t find anything confirming Hassan’s home airport.
Anyway, looking at all the data for cancellations and delays from DCA over the weekend, Fetterman might have been heavily impacted by the significant proportion of delays and cancellations for flights into Pittsburgh, but flights from DCA to all the other home airports for those Senators have been largely unaffected.
Interesting! I would have thought DCA to Portland and Richmond would be precisely the type of flight that is most hit - a short flight to a secondary airport.
I would say personal inconvenience if air travel was the trigger is not the suject
Fear of big and wide backlash from the huge number of middle-Americans flying around Thanksgiving is more likely.
While impossible to know per se - I can quite understand that Fucking Up Thannksgiving Risk might cause one to say, "let us re-run this in February"
If this is a punt to Februaryish and Healthcare etc has begun to really bite, then a 2nd shut down bite might have real added leverage (and without the possible backlash trigger of Thanksgiving)
The reason that still doesn't make sense to me is that they will have way less leverage in February. I'm not saying there are no ethical ramifications here. Part of the understanding of a shutdown is that people will lose benefits, people won't get paid, and yea a holiday might be messed up. However you should have decided you are willing to pay that price at the outset. Remember, the Republicans are under pressure too and unlike the Democrats they could have unilaterally changed the procedural rules and owned the policy outcomes. While you can always talk yourself into a split the difference and/or kick the can type of solution one now has to ask, what was the point?
I wonder if one of them is your newest avatar!
It's not, because he lives too close to DC. I was just continuing my tradition of putting losing VP nominees on blast for no reason (you're on notice, John Edwards). It'll probably be one of the Nevadans.
Was going to say, he actually is doing his job representing his constituents.
Will we see Air Traffic Controllers emerge as a powerful faction in politics?
It sounds crazy, but maybe it could happen. There seems to be a pattern where Americans are *really* reliant on air travel, especially the more wealthy and politically influential Americans, so anything that threatens air travel becomes a serious threat. The ATC can use that to get whatever they want. I'm wondering if they'll emerge as sort of an unofficial 4th branch of government, like the church in medieval England or the Eunuchs in Qing dynasty China, bullying congress with their monopoly on air travel.
They tried this in the '80s and all got fired.
I can't speak for others but I would be really pissed if my thanksgiving week travel plans got disrupted due to the shutdown. I don't really care about the enhanced support for Obamacare because it was meant to be temporary. Those who see increases in premium should vote against the party that ended it. I don't see it as my personal problem or a political problem for Democrats.
This feels like a complete misreading of the situation, if not misinformation. I fly out of DCA frequently, including two days ago, and there has not been any noticeable disruption as of yet.
The peak day for flight cancellations this weekend only ranked as the 70th-worst day for flight travel disruption since 2020, or something to that effect. Virtually all the flights that were axed were to small regional airports within 2 hours of DC. I promise you there was zero impact to any Senators.
I guarantee you that special arrangements were made to keep DCA well-functioning.
I'm nitpicking, but John Cornyn was impacted last night (his flight back to DC was delayed by ~45 minutes):
https://x.com/hjessy_/status/1987717005017809223
I was pretty nervous all day yesterday about my flight last night. The one before me on the same route was canceled but fortunately mine went out only an hour late.
Mine was delayed 20 minutes, which was unfortunate, but nothing outside of the typical airport experience. I did hear about Cornyn’s flight being delayed, that’s a fair data point.
If you’re already having too 5% bad travel days even before the full cuts go into effect, it makes sense that rural senators from the northeast would want to end this.
I could totally see that they might have been worried about future cancellations / the trendline, I just wanted to issue a strong corrective to the idea that there was major disruption to Senator’s flight plans already.
So this is worst case scenario for the Dems right? Win a bunch of momentum from the elections just to kill it all by caving for absolutely nothing?
Just staggering cowardice.
"Caving for nothing" is always the result of these shutdown fights! See GOP circa the 2010s.
The wrinkle here is that the shutdown seems to have driven anger towards Republicans than the party ostensibly responsible for it.
Matt points out how this was really a fight over Senate procedure. Swing voters don't care about that stuff.
Why do you keep arguing in every thread this shutdown is exactly like every other shutdown when the empirical evidence is that this shutdown is nothing like any other shutdown
If they "won" and saved the ACA credit, no one would know. It's straight up better politically to just let this go. The public isn't going to know Trump is bad until he does bad things.
You have to be willing to let bad things happen for the public to experience them.
Trump does not care about consequences and the costs imposed on others. That is why he is litigating to withhold SNAP. There is nothing that would move him and he would likely veto any compromise with an ACA subsidy expansion out of malice.
Yes, the Dems should let him do the bad things. That's how they could save the country. As long as they are more concerned with protecting Trump's voters from Trump we're screwed.
You aren’t bearing any of the costs of the shutdown.
Not yet, but fortunately I'm sufficiently aware of Trump's misdeeds that I don't need financial inducements to convince me.
It would have been politically illuminating to have a few weeks of news around Thanksgiving about the president suing to be allowed to not feed poor people, while keeping flights grounded in an attempt to raise healthcare costs.
Is the juice worth the squeeze at that point?
Maybe this is cope by me, but I think maybe Democrats can make some hay with Trump and Republicans being cool with starving poor people and ruining Thanksgiving travel but that Dems would have caught hell if those things had actually happened.
The Democrats were never going to be able to stand the heat that doing so would entail.
Poor things -- they care about suffering.
At some point there's value in that. I think we reached it.
That means that people get hurt though. And a lot of Democrats do not want to see people hurt even if it means that Democrats will do worse in future elections.
And this is extreme cowardice. Pacifism in the face of aggression has no place in politics.
I do not see how letting poor people starve to protect upper and middle class health subsidies is politically or morally the right choice. If Dems want to fight Trump they have to win elections, to win elections means telling "the Groups" to shove it up their ass.
I don't understand what you're saying here. What shows pacifism?
The idea that you can do politics without being willing to have anyone get hurt.
But it's not the Democrats doing it. It's the Republicans.
They have to get over this delusion that they have power and are partners in governing.
No. It’s still a win because Republicans and Trump have really responded poorly and the focus has been shifted to increasing healthcare costs. We will soon return to Republicans actively making millions of lives worse.
I wish this were true, but I don’t think the focus actually shifted to healthcare costs among people who are not already politically active partisans.
This may still happen, but on a longer delay that active partisans think. My small employer (12 employees) just announced that they are no only going to cover 50% of the healthcare costs of dependents (they used to cover 100%) because the costs are basically doubling this year. The announcement just happened because open enrollment is starting.
Yep. I think the timing of resolving the shutdown is pretty good in that everyone (myself included) is about to find out that we're going to make a decent chunk less money less year because our premiums are skyrocketing. And I think people are going to blame Trump and Republicans.
People only respond to bad things actually happening. Lots of rending garments and gnashing of teeth about the bad things that "will happen if..." doesn't move the needle.
As long as the Rs were letting bad things happen the Dems were winning. The Dems who caved are saving the Rs from themselves.
You a very Trumpian “I don’t care if people miss months of paychecks. I don’t care if tens of millions of people get no SNAP benefits. I don’t care if air travel shuts down. I just want to punish my enemies and willing to inflict suffering on others to do so.”
This seems needlessly accusatory. I don't want bad things to happen, but if "we will soon return to Republicans actively making millions of lives worse" is actually true, then perhaps it would be better to let Republicans fully own the blame so that they lose badly in the midterms instead of it only hurting a little and the Republicans holding the Senate.
The rule of law and liberal constitutional governance are, in fact, much more important than government spending.
Now I'm not actually convinced any of this is actually a good idea, because I don't believe the Rs in the Senate have the fortitude to hold out on the filibuster against Trump, and the Dems need the filibuster to actually pressure Trump, but giving Trump the stamp of legitimacy in order to shield Trump voters from Trump is the doing the opposite of "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies".
“the party in power gets to enact their preferred policies” is not about punishment.
But the "Rs [are] letting bad things happen" in the form of the big health care premium increases.
Prospectively, no one is having money taken out of their pockets yet.
No, but HR is about to hold a bunch of meetings telling everyone how much their premium is going to go up and I think people will get that.
I sort of agree that it's still a win. But it's a smaller win than it could have been, and in that sense it's a loss. It left meat on the bone.
You do have to stop when you're ahead, but I can't see how they could have thought the trajectory was at its apex yet.
The focus has shifted to increasing costs. Like people wouldn't have noticed doubling of premiums absent the shutdown?
Non ACA people wouldn’t. Now there are at least two news cycles on it.
Of no importance for the midterms.
The only silver lining is these senators will get primaried and Schumer will have more pressure to resign. Gets worse before better type deal.
We do not want Catherine Cortez-Masto and Jacky Rosen and Maggie Hassan* to be primaried!
(Say what you will about Fetterman...)
*NH Republicans have a bench of governors lined up to run for Senate, from John Sununu (who will be viable to win in literally any "Dem down year" for probably the next 20 years, notwithstanding a probable upcoming loss given the likely '26 midterm electorate) to Kelly Ayotte (who won her governor's race in '24 by 9 points (!!!); and barely lost the senate seat by 1,000 votes in 2016)
Again, all the people upset at the end of the shutdown have a very Trumpian perspective: “I don’t care about the harm and consequences imposed on others. I just want to punish my enemies.”
I think one more week of current harm would have been helpful for future expectations for the people who are currently being harmed.
I think this is probably right: one more week of flight cancellations, one more week of Trump fighting to withhold SNAP, one more week of Republicans refusing to budge on lowering health care premiums (but then Dems quickly caving to retain the "health care premiums are going up because of Trump!!" card for next year's midterms) might have been politically optimal.
Yes, but what are the harm and consequences of letting Trump off now? I don't think it's obvious that one is greater than the other.
These senators are stuck between a rock and hard place. They will get primaried if they disavow banning ICE engines and they will get primaried if they don't fight Trump. Because shutdowns are forgotten but past unpopular comments about banning ICE engines are Republican campaign fodder, they chose the lesser of two evils.
They should absolutely be primaried. I’d rather have a 30 seat senate for 4-6 years than a 48 seat senate for 12 years with 8 who will cave.
This does not seem like a good trade to me.
Thermostatic public opinion + sticky liberal policies mean having a super majority for a few years is way better than being a large minority for most years.
I've never seen a leftist just straight up admit "I'd prefer Republicans have even more power" but I'm glad you're being honest
That’s the whole reason Matt and others like myself prefer the filibuster be gone even if it’s in the current state of the senate. You want Republicans to show that they govern like crap instead of claiming their “best” ideas are being thwarted by democrats
Wait, you prefer having only 30 democrats to having 40 real democrats?
Paging Jim DeMint...
There are a number of Senators in the Backdown Club who will be retiring this year, so they have nothing to fear themselves. It will make the races to replace them more interesting, though.
Democrats should have been champing at the bit to get rid of the filibuster. That was a no lose strategy. The republicans would own their crappy policies and future democratic congresses could get things done. You know which party likes the filibuster? The one that doesn’t want government to do anything.
Yeah, because it is not like Democrats have ever been electorally punished for passing legislation.
The point isn’t that Republicans are the only ones that face political consequences, but let them own healthcare premiums under ACA or overreach on abortion bans. The only things Republicans care about are tax cuts and conservatives/hacks in the judiciary. They can do those by reconciliation or without the filibuster already. Forcing them to own the budget is not bad. Having said that, the fact that this agreement just goes to January makes me feel like it is not as bad a cave as the internet will have you believe.
Dems try to win the battle at the expense of losing the war. They act as if they are in power and the priority is to improve outcomes for Americans today. Contrast this with McConnell making the Republican Senate's primary objective depriving Obama of a second term. McConnell understood that, when out of power, the most important goal is to get it back.
The irony is that the right is led by somebody who never thinks past what's in front of him. They have the best ever opportunity to play the long game and are unwilling to do so.
I never really understood how Democrats' public explanation of the shutdown being about ACA exchange subsidies but their true, more private demand being about spending recission was supposed to work. What was the actual goal here?
The goal of this shutdown was to give Schumer (already steadily on the outs with progressives in his caucus over Israel) a reason to not be yelled at like he was in March for not pursuing a fight. The actual result of the shutdown was always going to be just like it was for Senator Cruz's shutdown versus President Obama. Nothing. That was never in doubt.
This is nonsense. The shutdown fight dramatically reduced Trump’s popularity. Whether that change will be durable we have yet to see, but it pushed the game forward in a way that has been hugely beneficial for Democratic priorities (last night notwithstanding.) When you’re in the minority there isn’t much you can do except highlight how bad and ineffective the other side is, which is precisely what the Democrats spent the past 45 days doing.
How much do you want to bet that Ted Cruz said each of these things when the 2013 shutdown ended? "Raising awareness" is always a funny thing for a Senator in particular to brag about. You're literally in the United States Senate, you have the ability to conduct investigations and press conferences at the drop of a hat whenever you damn well feel like it. You are the last person in America who needs to raise awareness!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_government_shutdown
When the shutdown ended in 2013, Ted Cruz was deeply unpopular. The Cruz shutdown was deeply unpopular, and nobody blamed Obama. This is exactly the opposite of the current situation. Don't take my word for it, go read that radical lefty bombthrower, Nate Silver [1].
(I really don't understand this style of argumentation, by the way. Why point to a past event that has a fact pattern that's *almost exactly the mirror image of the current situation*, unless you're trying to make the opposite point you seem to be making?)
[1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-made-a-huge-blunder-on-the
I'm looking at the listed legislative concessions, which is what the minority leader of the Dems asked for on ACA marketplace credits and did not receive as the moderate members now supply votes for a CR. I agree if the null hypothesis for "the shutdown is pointless" is "Dems hold their popularity", this read of defeat would be wrong and the shutdown would not be a failure.
But the null hypothesis is the legislative demands Schumer put forth on renewing the ACA marketplace credits as is. Not holding Dem popularity steady. And so, I stuck with my analogy to Cruz's shutdown demands on the ACA. It didn't work then. It doesn't work now. This is a legislative question, and it has an answer.
There were several successful goals: forcing the GOP to eliminate the filibuster was one. Getting the ACA subsidies was another. Boosting credibility with Dems' own partisans was a third. And losing on both fronts, but still ending up with the administration and GOP in a substantially weaker political position was a final one. These were not mutually exclusive. Many of these things were good outcomes.
The argument people are having in this thread is *why* Democrats would accept all the political risk and damage of the shutdown, and then turn around and fumble the ball before we could find out if they would achieve any of their goals.
I wouldn't say "dramatically." He lost a couple points. Yay.
It is interesting how its viewed as Schumer keeping his job due to progressives, I think it's more people disagree with his tactics on trying to pick fight or lay low and let thermostatic backlash and Trump/Rs overreach (which isn't a ideological split).
Truly the best answer
Schumer didn't get yelled at: mission accomplished!
He's getting yelled at, but to your point, the yellers are not ones in the Senate yet.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/10/schumer-is-no-longer-effective-dems-outraged-over-shutdown-deal-00644253
Yeah, I had a very hard time understanding what the goal was here.
"You want us to fight? Ok, listen to this evil genius plan. We'll make Republicans really feel the pain by shutting down the government and taking their key constituencies hostage: government workers, white collar business travelers, and poor people on SNAP. Then they'll be faced with an impossible dilemma: (a) end the filibuster so that they can do whatever they want, or (b) be blamed for the shutdown and lose 0.2pp in the 2026 midterms once everyone has forgotten about this."
These days a lot of Republicans actually are on SNAP.
Perhaps true, but I think revealed preference shows that Democratic politicians cared much more about the pain felt by SNAP recipients. Not a good choice of hostages!
There was no goal. The Democratic Party in its current state is incapable of formulating goals or strategies that don't revolve around "give us money." It was just pure reaction-- "we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do it"-level reasoning.
There are lots of voters and lots of Senators. Different people care about different things. Sometimes even the same person can care about different things.
The issue is “we aren’t going to cooperate if you lie to us and back out of deals.” The recession actions by Republicans destroyed all trust in them. It’s amazing that Republicans weren’t prepared for the blowback.
I understand that Democrats' true demands were about spending recission, but if Republicans somehow accepted continued ACA subsidies but gave nothing on recission, would Democrats consider that a win?
It's better than the nothing they got.
Yes, because Dems can be shown as delivering on cost of living and if Republicans do rescission on ACA, then it is a media cycle to exploit as we get closer to midterms.
Quite a bit was being done on bipartisan lines about impoundments right before the shutdown:
From September 30th[1]:
"The Senate Appropriations Committee has passed eight of the 12 spending bills, all with bipartisan support. (One was approved 27-0. The others received, at most, three dissenters, except for the Commerce-Justice-Science bill, which passed 19-10 due to a dispute over the FBI building.) And despite Republicans boasting a majority, Democrats were not doing horribly in these negotiations!
They succeeded in protecting funding for the National Science Foundation and the National Weather Service, both targeted by the Trump administration, in the Commerce-Justice-Science bill. And blocking proposed Trump cuts to the Labor Department, Education Department, and National Institutes of Health in a bill approved 26-3 by committee. And keeping the GAO, another Trump enemy, funded in a bill approved 26-1. And even reviving environmental justice programs in a bill approved 26-2. What’s more, several of these measures added guardrails to prevent Trump impoundments, by including detailed tables and instructions that would normally have been put in non-binding reports directly in the legislative text."
[1] https://www.wakeuptopolitics.com/p/how-we-got-to-a-government-shutdown
It’s almost like one of those bagels where you put all the toppings on it since you can’t actually decide what you really want.
Wait, what? This was literally a single topping - just Obamacare.
I am being melodramatic but to elaborate, nominally it was single topping while under the hood it was a mix of "We need to fight Trump" plus "We vote for authoritarianism" plus "Maybe we should let them kill the filibuster but actually maybe we shouldn't" plus "Oh no Thanksgiving might be cancelled" plus "Oh no poor people can't eat now".
I'm seriously conflicted here actually, because I'm team "The filibuster is good actually" and killing the filibuster really does seem like the obvious goal of the Dem shutdown strategy.
But I genuinely believe the Dems who say they think killing the filibuster would be a good outcome, and their truly pathetic inability to hold the line on this is an absolute new low point in the party's complete failure to be an effective opposition. This really confirms that there's still nothing at all slowing the broader political system's swirling descent down the toilet.
Why do you think the filibuster is good? I lean a little bit towards Yglesias/Trump and find the supposed moderation benefits extremely dubious and lopsided towards regulation. Tons of radical fiscal policy can already theoretically happen; Medicare for All funded by vast carbon taxes and everyone's income bracket getting hiked can pass through the reconciliation process without a single rule change. The reason it doesn't is Dem voters don't agree and thus Dem legislators don't agree on it being a good idea.
I think filibuster/cloture rules also tends to reward partisan performance which I don't think encourages bipartisanship.
The reconciliation process is definitely a huge mess... that lets stuff get passed too easily.
The government should only be able to appropriate spending that actually advances through the actual appropriations process and they just shouldn't be able to spend money that doesn't, at all, period.
And we should let bad things happen when Congress fails to do it's job so that voters actually get hurt and actually respond by removing incumbent elected officials.
It’s telling that the people defending the filibuster are also the folks who won’t be in politics 6 years from now.
>> But that was the actual choice that induced critical senators to blink, and you shouldn’t let overheated rhetoric obscure that.
On their own terms, though, surrendering to protect an appropriations process that they were already *losing* to Trump's reneging is... dumb.
(note: Please pardon the following metaphor; it's intended to demonstrate a point, not imply violence.)
A bully walks up to you on the playground and punches you. You fight back, but he wins and steals your lunch box. As he's walking away, you pull out a gun and force him to stop. And then he pulls out a wand that can magically disable your gun... so you just let him continue walking away with your lunch, in order to preserve your gun... that he can clearly still counter the next time he tries to steal your lunch ANYWAYS?
This is insane. Instead of protecting the filibuster, these cowards have made it into a "dead rule walking".
All they've done is show Trump that HE gets to choose the time and place at which he will kill the filibuster, which will inevitably be to his own maximum advantage - IE a fight where he ISN'T losing.
Moreover, this episode is but a microcosm of the Dems' pitiful history of playing themselves on the filibuster: They're always screwing over their future selves by showing Republicans exactly what their Achilles heel will be in the next fight. "If you hit me RIGHT HERE, I won't be able to fight back, and how dare you ever attempt to- wait, what are you doing? Fuck o- OWW THAT HURTS YOU SHOT ME".
Bitches.
Pathetic is exactly right.
Matt writes: "...so the worse conditions became in America, the better the political outcome for Democrats."
Count me out of this line of thinking.
It was just a fact.
Fact or not, imposing worse conditions on Americans for political benefit isn't something I want to see us do.
You're the one telling people to always face facts. That's been the operating principle of the Republican party when Democrats are in power for the last decade at least. Remember Mitch McConnell.
Well James, it’s good if the goal is to prevent anything from being done because you operate on post hoc ergo propter hoc. It’s bad if you want anything to happen. But that’s not what, say, former republicans who would rather the Dems turn into a pack of Mitt Romneys want, because it suits their feelings (which don’t care about your facts) to not realize that the current state of the GOP is their fault and that previously holding such views is a sign of personal failings. Remember that when you see anyone preaching “taking the high road” and ask yourself what they really want, because the “comity” they preach is likely self-serving.
Lot to unpack here, but I think I largely agree with you.
Unpack away!
Wow, I don’t know if I’ve seen a more vitriolic comment in the Slow Boring comments section before.
So there is / are this / these poster(s) named Vicky and Dan...
Democrats aren't imposing anything. Republicans control all branches of government. The only reason Democrats have a seat at the table is because of the filibuster, which Republicans could repeal at any time.
Not saying this is you personally, but the instinct to just reflexively put all the responsibility of good governance on Democrats because Democrats are the responsible people is so tiresome
it’s the republicans imposing the conditions. if their actions are so bad that it’s unbearable, that is their fault and they should either change or be voted out.
Killing the filibuster would remove this ethical trap. The majority would be the ones doing whatever is done, and the opposition wouldn’t need to play three-dimensional chess, agonizing about when to save the majority from blame for its policies. They could just let the majority govern and explain what they would do instead if they were given the chance.
“If Republicans are in power, Democrats will patriotically cooperate to help America, but if Democrats are in power, Republicans will sabotage the economy as hard as they can”
^moderate swing voters who don’t care about the big cultural beefs but like having a job and some money will be totally rational in voting Republican!
In the short term it would be worse, but in the medium and long term better, is the thinking.
This really seems to be the pain point here. In reading the statements of the Democrats that will vote to invoke cloture, they all expressed great concern for what this was doing to people reliant on SNAP and other federal operations. There's a real asymmetry here in that Republicans care less about this than Democrats do.
I guess the question I'd like to see Matt answer, as well as any Slow Borers if they like, is just how much such pain is tolerable in the pursuit of forcing Republicans to own all of it via nuking the filibuster?
All the pain.
Either the filibuster goes or the republic does.
Please fully explain this line of thinking.
Sorry, that’s stuff for paid subscribers to my podcast.
It's not the Democrats' job to force pain on people. Either Republican policies are bad for people or they're not. If they're bad (like killing the ACA subsidies), then people will notice and you campaign on that. If they're not bad for people then maybe observers like me have misjudged Trump and the Republicans.
Just being very literal here. Slow Boring is consequentialist. The consequentialist way to make a moral choice is identify the alternatives and ask, for each one, “how much harm is prevented / benefit created, what is the likelihood, and how far into the future does that happen?”
In the abstract, every consequentialist argument for maintaining the government shutdown takes the form “the time-discounted likelihood-weighted net benefits were positive.”
In real life, that might be expressed by some people as, “the ACA victory was likely and more important than the harm done to people during the shutdown” or “the shutdown was reducing trump’s capacity to govern lawlessly, and that’s the highest good” or “the shutdown will result with high probability in election outcomes that will create vast benefits for many people.”
Consequential arguments against the shutdown are the opposites of those things.
EDIT: And just to add - the consequentialist has no way to distinguish between harm you cause and harm you abstain from preventing.
I would like to have a Presidency that, given the option to fund SNAP, doesn’t say “hey screw those people maybe starving them will give us some minor political leverage.” To the extent we want a better country in the long term (as opposed to a slow process of decline offset by minor attempts at harm reduction), removing those people from power exceeds every other short term priority.
First, I agree. But I think there are better ways to defeat Trump than taking a course of action that will make conditions worse for Americans.
Like what. We have less than a year til the midterms and three til a Presidential election that might determine the future of this country for a generation or two. Get explicit and outline your plan.
I think Democrats should adopt the Common Sense Democrat Manifesto that Matt has outlined repeatedly. That is a winning set of ideas. Then combine that with a good candidate -- not Kamala Harris or an 80-year old brain-addled Biden -- and sweep to victory.
“Do nothing substantive, pray an amazing candidate falls into our lap, hope that nobody in our coalition loses motivation or defects if we do nothing substantive, win.”
I mean it is a plan.
Uh...that isn't what I said. The things Matt advocates for are from "do nothing substantive" in my view.
Yes, that is indeed a plan. It's called: "The Republicans won the last election. They control the government. We think they're doing a really bad job and Americans are suffering. We can do better; vote for us and give us a chance to prove it."
Oh, and recruit the best candidates you can.
I get where you're coming from, but this is a naive way of looking at the issue.
In the short term, there's a lot of harm being done. But the medium- and long-term consequences of this cave will be far more damaging. When considering harm, what happens two or three steps down the line is nearly as relevant as what is happening right now!
I don't understand how the Democratic caucus comes back from this and forms a coherent opposition. They've shown that when they ask for something, all you've got to do is harm their constituents and they'll back down immediately. And they'll back down even if the administration is viewed as the responsible party and is facing political costs! How can you ever negotiate for anything if Trump can just arbitrarily (and illegally) threatens to kill SNAP, knowing you'll kowtow immediately?
Pathetic.
I don’t like this decision either, but it’s too much to say “I don’t understand how the Democratic caucus comes back from this…”. They can learn if they’re pressed, and if they don’t learn they can be replaced. Let’s think long term there too.
There are two different things here.
1) "Worse conditions help me get elected". I don't like to support that at all and completely agree with you here.
2) "Worse conditions now will help us pass a better bill in 3 months which will make things better overall". This is arguably justifiable - and the mechanism was that this was hurting Republicans worse than Democrats.
If you always cave though because you never want anything temporarily bad to happen, it's hard to make bigger longer term changes.
(Of course, if you always dream about the future and never care about the present, then you can also get to some absurd results)
People blame the party in charge even if they aren’t responsible for the problem. (Republicans are fairly responsible for deteriorating economic conditions.)
There's a difference between trying to make things worse and enabling the right to bear the consequences of their policies.
Perhaps a more artful version: "the more the Republicans worsen conditions for Americans and are seen as responsible for doing so, the better the political outcome for Democrats. This forces the left to decide between marginally restraining the Republican's agenda and diluting the right's ownership of their policies versus playing the long game to regain power."
So, the confusing part for me as a bystander is with respect to points 8 and 9 -- I mean, this was *obviously* going to be a predictable set of stakes for *any* important bill that the Republicans want to pass. The time to think about the future of the filibuster was before refusing to sign on to the appropriations bill, not after Trump says something blindingly obvious to even the most casual observer of the Senate.
I actually thought it was so obvious that it was the real plan. The filibuster is fake, and Republicans can get rid of it at any time.
I guess the truth is that there was no plan, and a bunch of Democrats just didn't want to lead or accept trade offs.
I’m convinced our politicians are becoming dumber over time.
My guess is that the Dems did not have the stomach to have the shutdown last through Thanksgiving and have millions of Americans who previously were not affected by the shutdown have their holiday travel interrupted. If both parties work backwards from that point, there would be no reason Republicans would meaningfully cave on anything now if they knew Dems would eventually fold.
It does seem like a weak move for the Dems to fold now, but perhaps not that surprising given that many of them in the Senate didn't have the stomach for a shutdown in the first place, and I also think sincerely feel like it is harming their constituents. I am not sure whether the tradeoff of [ending the shutdown and returning to normalcy] vs. [what they may have gotten by holding strong for another month +] is worth it, but it's not super clear to me either way.
I think holiday travel is over leveraged as an explanation by the laptop class who fly frequently. Instead, it was almost certainly a general ratcheting of diverse pressures, whether they be government workers no longer getting pay checks, agencies effectively shuttered and no longer doing any work, etc. with essentially no identifiable upside other than the potential political benefits of increased misery, a price Democrats fortunately are unwilling to pay.
The travel definitely was a big factor and it wasn't just screwing with the "laptop class". Significant cutbacks on air travel would paralyze the economy.
You don’t think 1.5 million federal workers not getting paychecks for a month also isn’t economically significant? You don’t think the SEC, FDA, PTO, etc. not being reviewing or approve new filings isn’t economically significant?
There are lots of things not happening.
Oh definitely. I am mostly objecting to the "laptop class" framing because air travel would affect a lot more than just that. For a lot of people that is more obvious than the disastrous effects of federal employees missing paychecks.
Also, the laptop class votes in midterms! Upper middle class working professionals vote like their lives depend on it!
yes--the group of people who fly for holiday travel are disproportionately UMC and so politicians pay more attention to their views + they are a (mostly) new group of people who were not previously affected by the shutdown + the specter of politics ripping away families from being with each other for the quintessential US holiday all make this an especially potent force, IMO
Air freight is also being affected.
All the people angry at “Democrats caving” generally have the same mentality as Trump. It’s pure “I don’t care about the costs imposed on others as long as I hurt my enemy.”
who has a majority right now dan
You really should actually read what you read before you comment.
I think people maybe overrate how elite air travel is, especially around holidays. TSA estimated around 31M travelers last Thanksgiving. Cut it in half for round trips if you want, that is still a lot of people, it's not just coastal elites.
But if this were true, at least they should have waited - get closer to Thanksgiving where people are really sweating it about being able to fly and then give in with a lot of proclamations about how you’re doing the right thing for Americans and not going to let them miss seeing their families and that’s why you have to cave. Then you can at least position yourselves as the saviors of the holiday.
Yeah, maybe. I think they wanted to build in some lead time to account for the ability of senators to delay the passage of the bill before a final vote (edit: see, e.g., https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/11/09/congress/rand-paul-shutdown-hemp-00644108). But they likely could have dragged out a little longer.
This also has to go back to the House for sign off which could get delayed due to Epstein files stuff
So why did they pull the trigger on the shutdown in the first place? Was not all of this foreseeable?
I think they felt a need to look like they were fighting back to pacify the base, and didn't think they'd get this far. If nothing else, it probably ended up helping on election night last week.
Yes, the base would have been mad had they not filibustered. Leadership would have become more unpopular.
But the party is very unpopular now and that didn't stop voters from cleaning the Republicans' clock on Tuesday. The voters *hate* Trump and the Republicans. They will metaphorically crawl over broken glass to vote against them, no matter the Democrat running (AG Jay Jones!)
My preferred course, not followed of course: Schumer forbids invoking the filibuster; the base rises up in holy outraged; Schumer takes all the arrows and courageously gives up his leadership position. But at the end of the day, no stupid filibuster and the Republicans own all the consequences of their horrific policies.
(I don't think the filibuster mattered at all on election night.)
Almost all Democrats did! It is just 8 who didn’t.
Just another point to make... it was Democratic senate leadership who decided to do this, not the individual "defecting" Senators. They most certainly got together and asked themselves, "Okay we're going to give it enough to get to 60 votes, let's select the Democratic senators who might actually benefit electorally from this and have them do it."
If that was the idea, they wouldn’t have chosen three people who have already declared they aren’t running for reelection.
I'm impressed that Matt got up to 13. Shutdowns are lame and dumb and good riddance and I'm very tired of talking about them.
You may not be interested in procedure, but procedure is interested in you.
Chapeau, dude. Chapeau.
We're going to be talking about them again in January...
Having caved once for nothing the Democrats just proved the filibuster isn't a real threat so I expect January drama to be minimal.
It'll depend on how mad the base gets. So far it seems like very mad, which increases the odds of another shutdown.
Maybe… it’s notable that none of the defectors are up for reelection
The election this past week showed that voters can see through attempts to gaslight or mislead them. Or at least, voters in non-presidential election can. The kinds of voters who showed up last week are the same kinds of voters who are likely to vote in a primary.
Is the shutdown actually over? I know the senate passed something, and the other hurdles can be cleared without Dem assistance, but let’s not count our chickens before they hatch
And even if the Senate passes their Backdown Bill, the House is still on recess -- and as soon as he brings it back, Johnson will need to face the vote on the Epstein Files that he shut them down to stop in the first place. And THEN, he'll have to decide whether to bring the Senate bill to the floor and try to pass it. Correct: it's not over 'til it's over.
And it only takes two defections or so!
Sounds like a party completely adrift with no plan. Where is leadership? Do they have a strategy? Did they consider the endgame? Are they evaluating the policy outcomes here?
Leadership doesn’t control the senators. Maybe Mitch McConnell could, but no senate democratic leader ever has.
Democrats pulled the plug on a winning but hard nosed strategy because they have a conscience and don’t like people going hungry or standing in TSA lines. As much as I wish they’d kept milking this issue to hurt Trump, it’s nice having people care about America.
I agree, and it speaks well for Democrats that they actually care about people.
But this was all foreseeable! And since it was, it was a given that the Democrats would lose the shutdown. To which the only proper answer was: don't force a shutdown.
Hopefully the midterm voters see things like you, then
Maybe it's nice, but it's not a strategy for attaining or wielding power, which is their job.
I'd rather these Senators instead used their leverage to secure some concessions that would benefit America. Perhaps they could consider a timeframe that goes beyond the next three weeks.
Not that it will ever happen but I'd really love to better understand the mentality that gets us to observation number 6. I was also looking at the list of Democrats that agreed to the deal and wouldn't characterize them as the front line moderates. We can debate whether the decision to do the shut down was the right one but once you've committed to it why would you cave in this manner and for nothing? Did they not understand that the price they might pay would be procedural changes, which while annoying under Republican trifecta would at least force the GOP to fully own what they do? Whatever the headlines say the most natural read is that the Democrats were bluffing from day 1 and then.... called themselves on it. Baffling.
"I was also looking at the list of Democrats that agreed to the deal and wouldn't characterize them as the front line moderates."
That's why it's appropriate to be angry/disgusted with most of the Dem caucus (excepting Bernie, CVH, etc, plus nutcases like Fetterman who were always on board with the GOP) because this is basically a deliberate scheme to conceal responsibility and thereby protect vulnerable members from primaries (e.g. Kaine covering for Warner in VA, since the former was re-elected in 2024 while the latter is up in 2026).
https://bsky.app/profile/interfluidity.com/post/3m5amzsihrk2h
As Waldman says here: "you can’t be the prodemocracy party and then [lie] to prevent the public from knowing what position your members of Congress actually took in order to shield them from accountability to voters"
ETA: FWIW, I'm not arguing for this in the abstract: I'm literally furloughed, with a wife who was RIFed (pre-shutdown), and paying hundreds of dollars on regular basis (would be thousands if I wasn't fortunate enough to have pet insurance that, ironically, is in many ways better than my own health insurance) to care for a beloved dog with worsening seizures. I don't know exactly what a realistic win looks like, but I definitely feel betrayed by "moderate" Dems who chose to cave immediately after election wins, while concealing responsibility to avoid primaries.
>I definitely feel betrayed by "moderate" Dems who chose to cave immediately after election wins, while concealing responsibility to avoid primaries.
Something that aggravates me about both “moderate” and “progressive” dems is the utter inability to engage in self-reflection. Or to grasp the fact that if you fuck up consistently, the electorate may well choose your opponent, no matter how crazy you think they are.
Here in Chicago, the progressives have learned absolutely nothing from Johnson’s utter stupidity and instead blame it on the republicans (of which there are very few in Chicago), “white capital” (because race hustling sadly pays off here due to the “muh 400 years of oppression” narrative that Johnson weaponized) or, if you get a few drinks into some people, the Jews (an old standby). The consequence is that the progressive movement here will almost certainly face a major setback in 2027.
In NYC, the moderates have completely failed to accept they their choice of Cuomo was a huge factor in their defeat. No, it’s because “socialists” (not that many in NYC to reach 50%), antisemitism (which is everything I dislike) and those damn kids on TikTok (get good?). The consequence is that the DSA captured the most high profile local office in the country.
Matt proposes a sticky note stating “the median voter is a white non-college person in their 50s in the suburbs”. Good. I would add another: “your opponents being crazy/stupid/inept does not absolve you from the responsibility to govern well, fix your own shit and constantly improve”.
That sucks for you, and if things return for normal now then that is a good thing.
As for the moderates, commentor StrangePolyHedrons made the interesting observation that these Senators might have been chosen by the leadership to take one for the entire team, because the Democrats were going to have to cave in any case because, unlike the Republicans, they care about the pain being inflicted on people like you.
I am glad at least one party cares about the ramifications for people but again I have to ask.... did the Democrats not understand this when everything started in October?
The bet being made was that those suffering would blame Republicans and the pressure would result in either (i) Republicans cave on something substantive that the Democrats can point to in the mid terms and/or as a sign that they are tough and principled or (ii) force the Republicans to change procedure to override them, allowing Democrats to blame the GOP for the bad they do, plausibly claim clean hands, and argue that they will govern better. In either case the Democrats can't say they caved to avoid suffering, when the entire strategy was premised on that suffering working to their advantage.
Exactly; I am explicitly saying that my family and I are willing to suffer (relatively speaking, since we do have some savings from my Army service and have mostly given up our hopes of having kids) if there is a clear purpose; opposing Trump/MAGA is basically the Civil Rights Movement of our time, which means that it demands both strategy and sacrifice. What is demoralizing and humiliating is to fold because you ("moderate" Senate Dems) apparently didn't do the basic work of analyzing various foreseeable courses of actions, and didn't even understand the basics of your own negotiating position. Or you did and chose to lie to your voters.
Unrelated, but I want to thank you for your book recommendation of Waging a Good War (Ricks) before I leave. Reading this side by side with the Thirty-Six Stratagems absolutely tickled my heart.
1000%
The dems have no balls. Were winning even if they should t have been. Trump being blamed for snap. They deserve what they get
You mean those 8 democrats deserve it, or the 40 democrats who stood strong deserve it for allowing these 8 to call themselves democrats? Or I deserve it because I voted for a democrat in Texas who didn’t even win?