> This is emotionally unsatisfying among thought-leaders and too boring for swing voters to care about.
I actually think Democrats currently occupy the winning side of this for people who are bored by congressional procedure.
A very simple message is: "Republicans control the presidency and both houses of Congress, if they want to fund the government, they can do that, they don't need us."
It's the counterargument to that that requires explaining arcane congressional procedure. Let Republicans try to explain it, while everyone's eyes glaze over.
This is hugely bolstered by everything that has happened in the Trump admin so far. Do people really believe that if they can raise an army of masked thugs to hassle hispanic people everywhere in the country, they can't pass a status quo funding bill? Their whole thing is that you can just do things, and now they can't pass a simple bill? It doesn't pass the smell test. It won't help when they try to explain why, seemingly in only two cases - keeping the government open and releasing the Epstein files - they're totally helpless, whereas in every other case they can just do whatever they want.
Yea, I think you can frame this in a way that is pretty simple. I mean, the Darth Vader analogy is pretty spot on. "We can't make a deal when we know they can backtrack on it at any time."
And I think the aim SHOULD be to nuke the filibuster. I agree with MY that it "obscures lines of accountability" and softens the hard edges of a Republican administration and handcuffs a Democratic administration.
I also agree this will almost certainly hurt Dems in the short-term, but people tend to overrate the damage of these things - as MY points out, parties usually bounce back and its long forgotten by midterms time.
It is really dumb to me that Democrats refused to nuke the filibuster and let it it gimp their agenda when they had a trifecta but then they push to have it nuked when Republicans have a trifecta?
You get to clutch your pearls when the other side does it. And you protect your vulnerable moderates I guess.. but it was quite bizarre to everyone at that time. I guess good ol Joe Manchin had his principles, and didnt care how extra good for him and WV it would be to be that 50th person on the bill. Also maybe tester and brown thought they'd survive if they held that line too.
The best case scenario end game for this strategy would be "you're right, we'll fix the rescissions problem so that we can actually negotiate". The second best case scenario would be that they reopen the government without Democratic votes, and we stop having to play this shell game of Democrats being forced to vote for bills they don't support.
It demonstrates that the Dem leadership is capable of doing hard and politically-unpopular things for the people who are supposed to employ them. That’s an excellent signal to send, because there are a lot of hard and politically unpopular fights ahead.
If you lose the game in the fourth quarter, the fact that you were ahead in the first quarter is meaningless.
The point is to win. If you can't win the shutdown then don't go down that road.
If you fight the good fight but have to cave with nothing because people are hurting, you're a loser.
If you fight the good fight and then end the fight because you got a few concessions that don't hurt the Republicans and leave the MAGA effort intact, then you're a fool.
Cave or be caved are the only choices. It’s all about attention, positioning, and messaging towards next year’s election. And the effect of the former on the latter will be small at best.
Caving without any fight is the only worse option.
“If they can kick millions of people off Medicaid without our votes, they can keep the government open without our votes.”
The criticism of this is "people don't understand that congressional procedure stuff about how they could do the Medicaid thing using reconciliation which is exempt from cloture", but Democrats don't have to be the ones trying to explain that weird procedural issue. Republicans need to either tell people why they can't open the government, or just go ahead and open it.
If you’re explaining arcane procedural stuff you’re losing. Dems got roasted for letting the Senate parliamentarian derail one of Biden’s policy objectives (don’t remember what it was offhand).
Yeah exactly. But I think it's Republicans who are gonna have to explain this arcane procedural stuff, in this case.
Hell, they're probably gonna have to explain it to Trump! It's really not hard to imagine him raging, “Why _can't_ we pass a budget without them! Don't give me this arcane procedural bullshit! Just pass the damn bill!”
Yea fair question. My guess is “not zero” but I don’t know what else they are watching. Probably lots of people watching lots of different channels? But it’s also not as simple as they’re all just listening to Joe Rogan.
Yeah I think it's all about word of mouth. If we could just get people asking the questions, Wait why can't Republicans just fund the government? Don't they have the majority?, then that would be good.
I honestly think this is something that _might_ play better with normal voters in a way that's hard for very politically attuned folks to understand. Everyone commenting on twitter about how this is obviously a democratic shutdown implicitly understands the stuff about cloture and why they were able to pass the OBBBA on a party line vote using the budget reconciliation process, but not this much smaller bill.
But most people don't know or care about all that nonsense. I really think, Wait, they're in charge of everything and it seems like they've been doing whatever they want all year, how are they suddenly helpless to fund the government? is a pretty intuitive thing for people to wonder about.
I could totally be wrong here, but it really seems to me that their whole thing about how you can just do things, which has seemed true up to this point, is an important difference between this and past shutdowns. Past administrations have highlighted that the administration is not all powerful and needs to work across the branches and across the aisle sometimes. But this administration has directly rejected that. And now they're saying they need Democrats to help them keep the government open? I think it's dissonant in a way that's totally different than the shutdowns I've seen in the past.
I'm not sure if it will work out the way you're predicting, but I agree that it's possible. To repeat something I said in yesterday's open thread, one of the upsides of the Dems having been mostly invisible all year is that voters may now be predisposed to assume that Trump and the GOP are omnipotent and responsible for driving all major events in America if not the world (which is very unlike how people saw [EDIT: Bill Clinton vs.] the Gingrich Republicans in '95). Also, this is anecdotal but when I talk to people I know who aren't especially political, I sense a vague unease about Trump being too powerful, increasingly out of control, and changing things too drastically - again, very different from how people saw Clinton in '95 or Obama in '13 as both had been on the defensive.
Yeah I'm also pretty uncertain. I just feel like people might be underrating the extent to which “we're unilaterally in charge of everything and we can just do things” might make it harder to shirk blame for shutting down the government. I think they've been successful in convincing people that they're in charge of everything! They want to have it both ways now, I'm just not sure how well that's gonna work out for them.
My thought is that as long as a good number of news sources are repeating the demand the democrats are making, then swing voters will have the same level of awareness of that as basically anything they know about the shutdown.
Agree with Eric. Not zero. Worse, a much >0 number of FOX-watchers would be swing voters if they didn’t watch FOX. Incidentally, Dems’ longtime purity position never to appear on the evil network has been mind-boggling stupid.
Most people don't watch Fox News, not even most conservatives watch Fox News.
But what people do see are the Fox News bullet points:
- Democrats are weak on the border
- Democrats to blame for shutdown
- Democrats never give Trump credit
- Democrats only care about Trans
We see these subliminal messages at the gym and at bars and on the street in urban areas. Fox News knows damn well that only a relatively small group of 67 year old men actively watch their channel. But the bullet points are there to spread the word to the non-active watchers in the tens of millions.
Even I find myself fighting back these thoughts while on the treadmill.
This form of propaganda unfortunately works very well.
Where did you get the stats on FOX viewership? Not challenging, just wondering. My whole MAGA in-law clan watches it constantly, and it continues to be the top-rated cable news network. I guess you’re saying cable news isn’t where younger Trumpers get their info, which is fair enough. It’s maybe not entirely meaningless, though, that some of the most popular internet crap-spewers first developed their followings on FOX.
> And the median news consumption is undoubtedly lower than the average, since many people, particularly retirees, leave the cable news channels on all day.
Sarcasm. Do not listen to ant TV news. Read NYT, WAPO, WSJ, Bloomberg and Houston Chronicle daily. I am the slow boring demographic albeit on the older side. Also live in Texas and relentlessly pull the Dem lever without much effect.
Read the comment below first. If I regularly watched Fox is there any world in which I had a favorable impression of Matty Yglesias, let alone knew he had a substack, let alone read the substack let alone let alone subscribed to the substack lt alone coomented on the substack.
Yeah I agree, even though I really do think a very sensible strategy is available here, if you forced me to give odds of it working out positively, I'd put them under 50%.
I'm very aware of being the Tobias meme. "But maybe it will work for us..."
Edit to add: But I also think it's just a lot harder now to figure out what message is sticking. I don't think it actually matters all that much what Fox News headlines are. But it's not clear what matters instead... I personally use a set of podcasts to get a read on what less politically obsessed people think about things. But it's impossible to get a very broad view from that. Everyone listens to different stuff.
The Democrats - Activists and Political Reps - suffer significantly from the disease that tends to effect the highly educated - Eggheadism in explaining. no single group of coure has monopoly but Democrats have this disease rather badly.
And the fact they seem to constantly want to make Everything Bagel Call Outs plus fan-service to the "Save Democracy' active political junkies
Republicans were quite good at banging a drum on inflation during Biden - and it was not an irrational nor entirely unfounded drum.
Democrats have inflation and health care now as two decent drums to pound... I wish they'd stop trying to do anything but pounding two drums
You are exactly right but Hakeem Jeffries is incapable of making simple and effective arguments, he has a strong preference for turning himself into a pretzel on TV. Schumer is a joke.
The boring, object-level point is correct: Democrats have no reason to vote for a compromise that Trump can unilaterally break in his favor. All the factional gamesmanship and political history just confuses this point, I think, and I appreciate Matt saying he changed his mind here.
Yeah this made me really like Politix. Often in the past I've found that they are unhelpfully talking past each other and making no progress. But in this case, Beutler just cooked, made a very compelling argument, and Matt was eventually kind of like "damn, you're so right". Great stuff.
Vought decided to unilaterally withhold $18 billion in funding from NY as retaliation this morning for the shutdown. I can't believe Democrats don't want to support CRs where Vought gets a giant slush fund to reward friends and punish his enemies.
He and Miller are effectively co-presidents right now while Trump just dabbles in his hobbyhorse issues. The more voters are aware of who those guys are and what they're all about, the worse it will be for the administration politically.
That's the main thing; in the Trump regime you can do whatever the hell you want as long as the big man doesn't notice you and tell you to do otherwise (and even there I think he can be gaslighted until he becomes insistent). There's some combination of big baby getting what it wants and elder abuse going on.
I completely agree as far as it goes, but that's NOT what Democrats are saying this is about. They keep saying it's about extending some healthcare subsidies.
And this is why the Democrats will fail here. They agreed to do a shut down before they agreed on why they were doing it. Their messaging won't work long term, and it'll last only as long as is required to make the marginal Senator sufficiently squeemish.
It's frustrating to watch, but it's just another example of poor strategic leadership from the party and incoherence from the stakeholders within it.
The reason is to keep the train on the tracks as best they can while running down the clock on Trump's time in office and/or political capital. I get that's not a satisfying reason but it's a compelling one in cost-benefit terms. It's not (yet?) time for risky high-variance plays. The clock is on your side.
Yes it's bad that Republicans did a partisan rescission and procedurally dumb that it's possible. But the actual legally executed partisan rescission was a rounding error of the budget, targeting the absolute least-popular government functions among their base. Everything else is threats, trial balloons, probably illegal and tied up in court, or stuff Republican senators have proactively come out against.
That's not yet worth potentially derailing the train over. Matt's philosophical objection to the filibuster is clouding his judgement here.
Why let them boil the frog? If they want to cook the frog, let them break the filibuster. But they use the filibuster to block Dem spending, and recissions are an asymmetric weapon — it’s not like the Democrats have any reason to keep the status quo. And if they ever gain power again, it would be a good thing if the filibuster were already gone.
There are some fairly severe tail risks around how the administration might operate during a lapse in appropriations. They already push boundaries in every direction at all times, and the boundaries are much softer during a shutdown.
It would be interesting to try to force the generation of a future soundbite, Trump giving a thirty second speech that is almost verbatim: "Congress passed a budget that says my administration must spend money in this certain way, and by law, we have to. I promise we will follow the law."
I don't know if that would break through for normies or if anything matters.
My premise is that Democrats say "the condition on which we pass your CR is that you give this speech". Get it on tape so you can hammer it over and over and over when he inevitably welches on the promise.
If Democrats are the only party with any agency, sure. But Republicans have several ways out of this, and they control every branch of government, so I’m not sure why you’d assume that “Democrats capitulate” is the only way forward.
Democrats care a lot more about people being hurt in a shutdown than Republicans do.
If Trump's poll numbers drop five or more points during the shutdown (and more than the Democrats') then I'll acknowledge that I was wrong and too risk-averse.
What is being risked? That Republicans will rescind some of the spending that’s in the bill? They’re already going to do that. If they break the filibuster, that would be a good outcome for Dems in the long run. Are you worried that voters won’t realize that Republicans have full control of government and blame Democrats somehow?
I guess I’d say Democrats have only bad options and we need to consider tradeoffs. If they go along with what Republicans want, will that energize the base somehow? Is that last outcome worse than voters seeing the government running along and assuming everything is fine when Republicans are in control, or will less stuff be cut? Hard to say: it’s far from clear
Well.... I don't think it is Risk Averse to look at this and not see a true coherent risk taking* versus blind reaction - "we must attack" sort of thing that in generalship consistently leads to significant own damage. (I am in watching this reminded of both battle analyses of various WW I idiocies and the Japanese fleet error of Midway where carries chasing after the enemy to show action overrode a rational repositioning)
Most of the Democrat partisans argument seems to be "We Must Oppose Trump" and "do this and ... underpants gnome"
I suppose if the political play is "Get Popular Thing X in the news" (the health care play) that might drive Mid-Term sound-bites while understanding you're doing a probing sally that is going to cost some troops, that's potentially a rational play but the larger overwhelming impression is the Partisans want to do a "Morally Correct" Charge of the Ligth Brigade into the cannons to show oppositional Elan... more Defend Democracy non-strategy emotion
Maybe blowing up the filibuster is equally useful although I have doubts about the long-term wisdom (two edge blades...).
*: Coherent risk taking e.g. illustratively would be in 24 going for a hail mary with a true swing state Gov with real public presence (Shapiro e.g. [not that I was per se a fan but to use as an illustration])
Procedurally I guess the only item that seems to have general coherence to me in terms of a message that can reach outside of the pre-sold is the health insurance gambit (and this not because I personally prioritize that or even care about it, I don't actually either but it does seem to me a subject with potential legs outside the partisans , the pre-sold.
I don't understand how the filibuster survives this new use of rescission power. 60 votes to pass a budget, but then only 50 votes to claw some of the money back after the fact? If the parties start to use the rescission power regularly, there's literally no point at all in having the filibuster- off into the sunset it will go
"There is no scenario here where Democrats humiliate Trump and bring him to heel, even though the base desperately wants that." This is the other part that needs to be in bold.
You want to bring Trump to heel? Win elections. One part of that is making the Republicans own their agenda through party-line votes. But never imagine they won't take those votes or that you can stop them. Except by Winning. Elections.
Failing winning elections, I'd be content with the voters getting exactly what they voted for: burning it all down. We cannot sustain a country where voters are protected from their choices. They need to learn the trade-offs.
Let the ACA premiums skyrocket, as long as Republican fingerprints are all over it. Then when we take the House (and Senate?) we're in a much stronger position to bargain for restoring the subsidies.
My response to the now deleted comment was going to be that higher ACA premiums would not affect me at all. And I want to see those premiums skyrocket.
Let me be blunt: the American people need to suffer. They need to have their hand held against the hot stove. Trump and his minions have run wild since January. They are doing possibly irreparable damage to the US, its democracy, its long-term economic prospects, and its place in the world. And through all that for many, many months, his poll numbers have basically not budged. The American people have in effect shrugged. Their view seems to be, well, it's not affecting me personally right now so I'm not going to get too upset.
Our future as a nation depends on the people turning against this terrible threat. And it seems to me that that will only happen if they experience it personally and forcefully. So, yeah, let those premiums skyrocket. Let prices rise. Let unemployment increase. It's our Obi-Wan Kenobi last hope to be saved.
Painful and expensive, but repairable. Japan and Germany recovered from worse.
But unless people burn their hands very nicely, I do fear US is about to become Neo-Peronist (with Trumpism as a stupid and more idiotic version of Peronism [which in some fashion is a strange achievement])
I’m in total agreement with you. The only way this descent stops is if a critical mass of people decide it needs to end.
So far, they haven’t cared about the actual principles involved, they only care about their short-term self interest. They need to learn how this destruction will eventually come for them in full force.
My only thing to add is: this situation sucks. I wish people didn’t have to suffer to decide what is happening isn’t right.
1) Let them cut healthcare subsidies, feeling pain appears to be the only way to motivate people now
2) Why not make the demand be “Release all the Epstein files”? This talking point only has positive upside for Dems irrespective of whether any files actually exist and it’s popular with most Americans and it’s “taking a stand”!
#2, at the end of the day I don't think anyone gives a damn. Because the American people will find out that Trump is a bad person? Be still my beating heart.
I’m increasingly convinced you are right. Sad face. Nonetheless, at least everyone *nominally* agrees “pedos are bad”, so it’s still a winning thing to talk about.
I don't have any idea. Why defend them if they do care? Hypothetical pain from policy change is one of the few weapons we have why are we fighting to bail out Trump on this? The logic of making the shutdown about health care doesn't make any sense to me, especially if you win the fight.
There was a simple fix a few months ago when republicans were voting to cut taxes for the rich. Instead they decided to cut smaller amounts of spending for the poor so that we could only go a few trillion into extra debt to help rich people.
If only the masses could see the obvious fact that Republicans lost any shred of credibility they had on debt reduction when they passed the BBB. Every cut to programs that help the working and middle class should be seen by them in the context of that $3 trillion addition to the debt on behalf of the rich. (Bonus if they can see it as the teeing up of a future pretext for more cuts to the programs that help them and their kids live a slightly decent life.)
From a practical standpoint, I'm fully with you...
From an emotional standpoint most of the people who receive those subsidies want to hurt me and my family so fuck them. I'm done having my pocket picked to support people who continually spit in my eye.
Liberals will complain that they're perceived as elite and out-of-touch but then turn around and actively root for them to "feel pain", even those who voted Democrat.
I think Democrats should do whatever they think will get them the best deal possible. I think liberals online should stop gleefully hoping that poor people suffer.
Many, possibly most, voters who rely on healthcare subsidies already vote Democrat so people like you want them to "feel pain" for something they didn't do.
If that's not sociopathy, then it's irrational unhinged anger.
I think anything that you ask for has to be “worth” asking the American people to feel pain. And I don’t think the Epstein files really passes that bar
Ignoring whether it works politically or not, *on the substance*, does maintaining these enhanced ACA subsidies even make sense? They are a fairly recent phenomenon, passed in 2021 as a pandemic-era aid, which in aggregate contributed to inflation (some of us pointed out at the time that the government was too generous but alas). Why should they just continue indefinitely?
I agree, and that's basically my main complaint with the Democrats' strategy here -- the expanded healthcare subsidies they say they're fighting for probably should expire. Why not fight for something more meaningful, both symbolically and from a legit policy perspective?
Just throwing ideas out there, but I'd be much more excited if they were doing something like trying to get Trump to withdraw the National Guard from DC. I actually don't know if that's a goal that can be achieved through legislation negotiations, or if it falls completely under POTUS' executive power, but something like that which has emotional resonance and directly plays into legitimate fears of Trump embracing authoritarianism would make more sense to me as grounds for a shutdown.
We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to ensure that poor Republicans in South Dakota get cheap health insurance.
Just as Captain Raymond Holt could only understand the dramatis personae of The Godfather by having everyone described in terms of their relationship to Diane Keaton’s character, I do much better understanding the political mechanics of the shutdown with a couple of deeply nerdy classic space opera analogies.
Including both Star Wars and Star Trek references is the kind of big tent approach we need right now. I also enjoyed hurling "Captain Ahab" as an insult at Patrick Stewart only two years before he went on to star as Captain Ahab.
#17 sums it up well. The whole procedure is indeed dumb. Don't let them get away with Murc's Law again, they have all the power, they can either choose to not pass a bad bill, pass a bad bill on a party line vote with the nuclear option, or shut down the government. It's the Republicans' choice to make.
I wish Democrats would make the other obvious point: Trump is not a reliable negotiating partner. Even if he claims he's made a deal, he'll change it later. The details of rescission aren't even relevant when you consider he'll just lie and break laws when he wants. The whole thing is a farce.
The most important point is 16. All the gnashing of teeth about "opposing" Trump in mostly performative ways means jack shit unless you win the next election, and so all tactical moves ought to be made with that strategic goal in mind.
Hey I don't mean to be petty about this- and you're a great commenter here on SB- but didn't you and I have a knockdown dragout argument like 2 years ago when I proposed Biden cut SpaceX out of federal contracts? And you (and someone else who I forget on here) argued up and down that this was illegal, impossible, federal contracting doesn't work that way, SpaceX would immediately sue & win in court, we're a rule of law country, etc. etc. Do you remember that lengthy argument?
Have you updated on this at all, given that Trump is canceling every federal contract he wants to left and right, and the courts haven't pushed back even a bit? I read this morning that he's threatening to cancel Microsoft's federal cloud contracts if they don't give him whatever it is he wants this week. Shouldn't that be impossible given your previous stance.....?
I think what Trump is doing is bad. Yes, the courts haven't pushed back yet, but I think part of that is that the legal system works very slowly (so this is still unfolding), and part of it is that, unfortunately, many organizations are afraid to actively oppose Trump and defend their rights in court. This extends beyond just contracting, as we've seen lots of powerful companies and organizations fold to Trump's demands. That was surprising to me, and I didn't think so many would fold so easily.
I want to be clear that I think that is all bad. Contracts should only be abrogated consistent with the terms of the agreement and not for political reasons. And I think that's consistent with my previous position, which was also against the idea of Biden punishing SpaceX for things other than contractual terms and performance.
Like most bullies, Trump picks fights with firms and organizations he's confident he can successfully bully.
Which brings me to one other thing I'd point out: In terms of practical necessity, the US government needs SpaceX in ways it doesn't need some of these other contractors. SpaceX can accomplish things that no one else on the planet can do, which are also essential. SpaceX is like Lockheed Martin - too important for Trump to try that shit with. And Biden was smart enough to know that attempting that with SpaceX would be dumb.
In the specific case of SpaceX, I think Musk's dalliances with foreign powers, heavy commercial reliance on China for Tesla sales, and drug use (some of it extremely open!) warrant the guy losing his security clearance. Despite what his most fervent fans believe, I don't think the company would collapse without him, and Shotwell is absolutely capable of running it in his absence.
(Also, he could come back later, sober and rather chastened, which I also think would be good for literally everyone involved- including Musk!)
As a former intel analyst and security manager in the intel community, I agree Musk's foreign contacts and drug use are problematic, but it's also the case that clearances for contractors are handled differently than those for people like me who have/had wide/deep access to classified info. The clearance and need-to-know requirements for a contractor are tied to the contract and its associated need-to-know information, which is limited to the contract itself. So the only access Musk has is directly related to fulfilling the relevant SpaceX contracts with the government. That's mostly about understanding the government's requirements. Musk's clearance doesn't extend to access to any other kind of information. And even there, Musk is not read-in (ie. he doesn't have access) to all the classified stuff that SpaceX does because of this need-to-know. Details reported in the press can be found here:
For foreign contacts, it's not uncommon to see a different standard for contractors, because almost every major company with classified government contracts has foreign contacts. Again, look at Lockheed Martin or any major defense contractor, which has many lines of business outside the US and can't avoid foreign contacts. CEOs are, for practical reasons, treated differently than someone like me, who isn't required to have foreign contacts and is also much more dangerous from a counter-intel perspective due to the much greater level of access someone like me has compared to a contractor. It's for the same reason that State Department personnel can have high-level clearances despite having lots of foreign contacts and even friends.
And the irony is that Musk being open about his drug use mitigates one of the factors that clearance adjudicators are most worried about when it comes to drug use - blackmail.
Finally, clearances can't be revoked without cause and process. Musk is no different. His clearance and level of access are managed by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) under the National Industrial Security Program (NISP). While that agency doesn't publicly comment on individual clearance adjudication decisions, it's certain they've looked at and investigated Musk and determined the appropriate level of access he should have. I have no reason or evidence to doubt their decision, especially since I am not aware of the precise access limits Musk has beyond the limited press reporting (see the WSJ link above). I have no reason not to trust that the DCSA is doing its job correctly, and I disagree that a President or politician should insert themselves into the process to overrule their decision for political reasons.
Musk's companies succeed at a *technical, operational* level despite his involvement, not because of it.
Now, as a meme stonk, Tesla would obviously collapse if the board came to its senses and forced his ouster. But the company's future as a car manufacturer would be rosier, and its products would be better.
Sounds like Democrats need to respond in kind of they want to get any of their priorities pushed through. If people don't like that, they should vote for Congress/Judiciary that actively opposes executive authority on principle otherwise people should get the government they vote for.
I strongly agree with this, but I've come around to the view that suing everyone that worked in the Trump administration starting in 2029- and disbarring some of their attorneys- is a lot more feasible and plays to Dems' current strengths. All that money the Trump family is making in bribes, crypto deals, cash from foreign governments, etc.? All of that can be clawed back, legally, post-facto. Any attorney found to have disobeyed a court order, or maybe targeted a Trump foe for prosecution for malicious prosecution? They can all be disbarred in the future (as Giuliani and Eastman found out), and then maybe personally sued by anyone harmed.
The left is, for better or worse, the establishment party. Going through the courts to enact legal revenge is slower, but could be seen as more legitimate
I try to be a man of principles, so I would not support Democrats responding in kind. In my view, that just creates a ratcheting race to the bottom.
But even if one has an eye-for-an-eye view and thinks Democrats ought to weaponize norm-breaking like the GoP, the historical record is that it doesn't work as well for them, for a variety of reasons.
Whether or not the courts agree that it’s illegal, I think most of us want to live in a country where it’s illegal to do that, and it’s not a good thing to start doing that.
I think that if you always pivot to the same issue, healthcare, on literally every government dispute it becomes obvious to even disengaged voters that you're trying to distract them and they start tuning you out.
I wish someone would lay out a believable endgame that is good for the Democrats here. At best it's, what, we get ACA subsidies extended in a grand bipartisan compromise? In other words, we sand off some of the rough edges of Republican viciousness and protect people from some of their worst outrages so that voters are less inclined to punish Republicans? Yay?
The problem for the Democrats is that they're seen as having a simulacrum of power which makes people think they have leverage when they really don't. The filibuster is just hurting the Democrats here.
The best strategy would have been to have no filibuster invoked and have all (or nearly all, cough cough John Fetterman) vote against a punishing Republican bill and take the resulting awfulness to the voters.
Too late for that now. I can only cross my fingers and hope. Especially that voters just won't care who "lost" the shutdown a year before the midterms.
They could actually fix the rescissions thing. That would be a good outcome. Require 60 votes for rescission, fix the pocket rescission thing, get Trump to stop saying he'll renege on any budget deals whenever he wants.
I think it would actually be better to align the votes required for rescission vs. appropriations in the opposite direction, and only require 50 votes for appropriations. But aligning it in the reverse direction would still be a real improvement.
But yeah, unfortunately they don't seem to be running this playbook. I'm not sure what a good outcome for the playbook they are running is.
Ah, I see your point. That would just be for a short CR. For a longer CR or a proper budget, they would then be in a position to have a real negotiation, without the rescissions issue making it all pointless.
I still don’t fully get the logic. Sure, maybe it doesn’t “make sense” to vote for an agreement that the other side can unilaterally renege on. (Is it so clear that they’re going to renege? Why would they not just give Dems everything they want at this stage and then renege after?)
But the way I see it is:
Option 1: Do a deal, Republicans maybe renege, life goes on.
Option 2: Shutdown, no deal, encourage Republicans to break out the nuclear option. And then do a bunch of other stuff they want to do, presumably. (Is there some assumption that going nuclear will somehow be bad for Republicans?)
Not entirely clear that 1 is worse than 2. I get the urge to fight, but sometimes fighting rather than surrendering puts you in a worse position.
The reason why 2 is better than 1 is because nuking the filibuster has always been a good idea. Yes, the Republicans will do bad things without the filibuster, and then they will get blamed for those bad things in the next election. If Democrats capitalize on that and win majorities, they will be able to do good things without having to work around the filibuster because it will be gone.
I've come around on this. I don't particularly want either of our parties to govern with a free hand either, but wouldn't mind as much if they were more sensible.
I think the filibuster enables extremism by obscuring accountability, and may even encourage it. (This is in addition to the way it's an obstacle to any legislation, driving too much power to the executive branch.)
We have a mechanism for laws which need a supermajority to change: the constitution. As long as democracy still reigns, let the people get what they voted for. The inability for congress to react to the will of the people has directly lead to both extremism and the acceptance of centralizing executive authority.
"Big changes in this country should be bipartisan"
There won't be any durable big changes if the other party can reverse single party legislations in 2-4 years so I don't think this is a valid argument.
High variance is generally better when you're losing. Option 2 is much higher variance. Not universally a good idea, of course - I thought a shutdown in March was a terrible idea - but I do think it makes sense for Democrats to be looking for the right high variance play to make at the right time. I'm not confident this is the right thing at the right time, but it seems like the best option so far, to me. And I see the existence of a real honest to god underlying rationale to be a very big point in its favor. The rescission thing really does attack the core of all bipartisan deal making.
This doesn't really make news, but Vought is doing all sorts of stuff around the apportionment/allotment process at OMB that is really fucking with the ability of agencies to spend funding that was appropriated for specific purposes.
I think this is really good, but I have seen a lot of discussion over the degree to which Democratic primary voters are generally pragmatic and motivated by wanting to win, versus if they are feeling pushed so far they are now ready for their version of the Tea Party.
I think the far-left of the party is ready for the Democratic Tea Party, but if the party goes down that path we are going to be in for a rude awakening about the fundamental asymmetry of American politics. The 2013 shutdown didn't hurt the GOP in 2014 for a variety of reasons, but remember the 2014 House maps were drawn following the GOP wave of 2010, and the Senate map was brutal for Dems. Republicans are hard at work to maximize the House maps for 2026 and the Senate map is again brutal for Dems for structural reasons that a lot of folks have tried to bring up, but keep getting attacked for doing so (Ezra recently).
Democrats saw the 2013 Tea Party-Cruz shutdown, the escalation of GOP rhetoric and demands, and the culmination of Trump 2016, and the result was ... a GOP trifecta in 2017 that got to stack the Supreme Court. Too many Democratic activists and politicians seem convinced if the party goes down the same pathway we can somehow chart a similar course back in 2028/2029. Instead I worry we're going to hand the White House to Vance, Hegseth, or Trump 3.0.
The Atlantic: "How Democrats Backed Themselves Into a Shutdown"
Hey guys at The Atlantic, did you notice that there's one party in control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, and it's NOT THE DEMOCRATS? How about titling your piece "how the REPUBLICANS caused the shutdown," hmmm?
(Yes, Murc's Law is a thing, doesn't mean I have to like it!)
At least the NYT changed the title of their opinion piece from "These 6 Charts Show Why the Democrats Shut Down the Government" to "These 6 Charts Show Why the Government Shut Down," yay NYT, good for you.
Once Trump decided he could cancel any Congressional appropriations he wanted and the courts let him get away with that, it became pointless to try to negotiate with Trump over spending at all.
> This is emotionally unsatisfying among thought-leaders and too boring for swing voters to care about.
I actually think Democrats currently occupy the winning side of this for people who are bored by congressional procedure.
A very simple message is: "Republicans control the presidency and both houses of Congress, if they want to fund the government, they can do that, they don't need us."
It's the counterargument to that that requires explaining arcane congressional procedure. Let Republicans try to explain it, while everyone's eyes glaze over.
This is hugely bolstered by everything that has happened in the Trump admin so far. Do people really believe that if they can raise an army of masked thugs to hassle hispanic people everywhere in the country, they can't pass a status quo funding bill? Their whole thing is that you can just do things, and now they can't pass a simple bill? It doesn't pass the smell test. It won't help when they try to explain why, seemingly in only two cases - keeping the government open and releasing the Epstein files - they're totally helpless, whereas in every other case they can just do whatever they want.
Make them explain this!
Yea, I think you can frame this in a way that is pretty simple. I mean, the Darth Vader analogy is pretty spot on. "We can't make a deal when we know they can backtrack on it at any time."
And I think the aim SHOULD be to nuke the filibuster. I agree with MY that it "obscures lines of accountability" and softens the hard edges of a Republican administration and handcuffs a Democratic administration.
I also agree this will almost certainly hurt Dems in the short-term, but people tend to overrate the damage of these things - as MY points out, parties usually bounce back and its long forgotten by midterms time.
I can’t help but think of Trump as Lard Vader and Schumer or Jeffries as Lando
(Trump voice) I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further.
Add in some more heavy breathing. Add something about banning cows.
I'm trying to imagine Trump with a Darth Vader-like breathing apparatus.
Replace the labored mechanical breathing noise with sniffles.
I don’t find that difficult at all. It would not be black, but it would be scarier.
We need more Mon Mothma than Landon right now.
As the end of #6 says!
Lard Vader, lol.
Notably, Lando wins in the end!
It is really dumb to me that Democrats refused to nuke the filibuster and let it it gimp their agenda when they had a trifecta but then they push to have it nuked when Republicans have a trifecta?
Make it make sense!
You get to clutch your pearls when the other side does it. And you protect your vulnerable moderates I guess.. but it was quite bizarre to everyone at that time. I guess good ol Joe Manchin had his principles, and didnt care how extra good for him and WV it would be to be that 50th person on the bill. Also maybe tester and brown thought they'd survive if they held that line too.
They don't have Manchin or Sinema this time around.
Then what was the point of the shutdown? What do the Democrats win? I mean, in a way that redounds to their benefit and hurts Republicans.
The best case scenario end game for this strategy would be "you're right, we'll fix the rescissions problem so that we can actually negotiate". The second best case scenario would be that they reopen the government without Democratic votes, and we stop having to play this shell game of Democrats being forced to vote for bills they don't support.
I think the point was to appease the base. Its hard to see what can be won substantively.
I think you're right. Even I am subject to the desire to fight, fight, fight.
But if it winds up in the end with us caving? Not good, Bob.
It demonstrates that the Dem leadership is capable of doing hard and politically-unpopular things for the people who are supposed to employ them. That’s an excellent signal to send, because there are a lot of hard and politically unpopular fights ahead.
If you lose the game in the fourth quarter, the fact that you were ahead in the first quarter is meaningless.
The point is to win. If you can't win the shutdown then don't go down that road.
If you fight the good fight but have to cave with nothing because people are hurting, you're a loser.
If you fight the good fight and then end the fight because you got a few concessions that don't hurt the Republicans and leave the MAGA effort intact, then you're a fool.
Cave or be caved are the only choices. It’s all about attention, positioning, and messaging towards next year’s election. And the effect of the former on the latter will be small at best.
Caving without any fight is the only worse option.
I define "the fight" as every Democrat voting against monstrous Republican legislation and letting them own it. That means not using the filibuster.
Obviously, that's too late, but that's what I would have done.
Please tell me this meme has started circulating? This is how you "reach the men" - with stupid, sophomoric short-form video
Yup, the response to every criticism is, "the Republicans have 53 Senate seats. They could fund the government today if they wanted too."
“If they can kick millions of people off Medicaid without our votes, they can keep the government open without our votes.”
The criticism of this is "people don't understand that congressional procedure stuff about how they could do the Medicaid thing using reconciliation which is exempt from cloture", but Democrats don't have to be the ones trying to explain that weird procedural issue. Republicans need to either tell people why they can't open the government, or just go ahead and open it.
If you’re explaining arcane procedural stuff you’re losing. Dems got roasted for letting the Senate parliamentarian derail one of Biden’s policy objectives (don’t remember what it was offhand).
Yeah exactly. But I think it's Republicans who are gonna have to explain this arcane procedural stuff, in this case.
Hell, they're probably gonna have to explain it to Trump! It's really not hard to imagine him raging, “Why _can't_ we pass a budget without them! Don't give me this arcane procedural bullshit! Just pass the damn bill!”
I believe that was raising the minimum wage.
I want you to be right but somehow this won’t work. I’m not exactly sure why, Democrats suck at talking about things?
Here are the current Fox News headlines right now:
* “Federal shutdown begins as Trump warns Democrats of ‘irreversible’ consequences”
* A sub-bullet that reads “Americans overwhelmingly reject Democrats’ strategy in budget standoff: poll”
* “Watch live: Dem leaders blame GOO for ‘crisis’ leading to government shutdown”
* Zero mention of healthcare, so that message is definitely not getting through on its own
Fox is just so good at spinning things to make favor Trump it’s really insane.
How many swing voters watch Fox?
Yea fair question. My guess is “not zero” but I don’t know what else they are watching. Probably lots of people watching lots of different channels? But it’s also not as simple as they’re all just listening to Joe Rogan.
Yeah I think it's all about word of mouth. If we could just get people asking the questions, Wait why can't Republicans just fund the government? Don't they have the majority?, then that would be good.
I honestly think this is something that _might_ play better with normal voters in a way that's hard for very politically attuned folks to understand. Everyone commenting on twitter about how this is obviously a democratic shutdown implicitly understands the stuff about cloture and why they were able to pass the OBBBA on a party line vote using the budget reconciliation process, but not this much smaller bill.
But most people don't know or care about all that nonsense. I really think, Wait, they're in charge of everything and it seems like they've been doing whatever they want all year, how are they suddenly helpless to fund the government? is a pretty intuitive thing for people to wonder about.
I could totally be wrong here, but it really seems to me that their whole thing about how you can just do things, which has seemed true up to this point, is an important difference between this and past shutdowns. Past administrations have highlighted that the administration is not all powerful and needs to work across the branches and across the aisle sometimes. But this administration has directly rejected that. And now they're saying they need Democrats to help them keep the government open? I think it's dissonant in a way that's totally different than the shutdowns I've seen in the past.
I'm not sure if it will work out the way you're predicting, but I agree that it's possible. To repeat something I said in yesterday's open thread, one of the upsides of the Dems having been mostly invisible all year is that voters may now be predisposed to assume that Trump and the GOP are omnipotent and responsible for driving all major events in America if not the world (which is very unlike how people saw [EDIT: Bill Clinton vs.] the Gingrich Republicans in '95). Also, this is anecdotal but when I talk to people I know who aren't especially political, I sense a vague unease about Trump being too powerful, increasingly out of control, and changing things too drastically - again, very different from how people saw Clinton in '95 or Obama in '13 as both had been on the defensive.
Yeah I'm also pretty uncertain. I just feel like people might be underrating the extent to which “we're unilaterally in charge of everything and we can just do things” might make it harder to shirk blame for shutting down the government. I think they've been successful in convincing people that they're in charge of everything! They want to have it both ways now, I'm just not sure how well that's gonna work out for them.
My thought is that as long as a good number of news sources are repeating the demand the democrats are making, then swing voters will have the same level of awareness of that as basically anything they know about the shutdown.
One suspects a goodly number - for values of Swing = "persons who in the past two decades did vote Democratic"
Plenty of blue collar bar watchers in my experience, not hard core Fox heads necessarily.
If the Democrats manage to reduce their bleed out and regain in key geographies mere 5% of the demographic it's already a major undercut of Trumpies.
Its on in a lot of dentist and car repair waiting rooms!
And probably also airports, but I basically never see any patrons actually watching.
Agree with Eric. Not zero. Worse, a much >0 number of FOX-watchers would be swing voters if they didn’t watch FOX. Incidentally, Dems’ longtime purity position never to appear on the evil network has been mind-boggling stupid.
Most people don't watch Fox News, not even most conservatives watch Fox News.
But what people do see are the Fox News bullet points:
- Democrats are weak on the border
- Democrats to blame for shutdown
- Democrats never give Trump credit
- Democrats only care about Trans
We see these subliminal messages at the gym and at bars and on the street in urban areas. Fox News knows damn well that only a relatively small group of 67 year old men actively watch their channel. But the bullet points are there to spread the word to the non-active watchers in the tens of millions.
Even I find myself fighting back these thoughts while on the treadmill.
This form of propaganda unfortunately works very well.
Where did you get the stats on FOX viewership? Not challenging, just wondering. My whole MAGA in-law clan watches it constantly, and it continues to be the top-rated cable news network. I guess you’re saying cable news isn’t where younger Trumpers get their info, which is fair enough. It’s maybe not entirely meaningless, though, that some of the most popular internet crap-spewers first developed their followings on FOX.
I have no stats, but the gist of my take is what you already stated.
So what are the rest of them watching? Curious.
Netflix and TikTok.
Nate Silver estimated the average American reads or watches 27 minutes of news a day: https://www.natesilver.net/i/161855652/minutes-per-day
> And the median news consumption is undoubtedly lower than the average, since many people, particularly retirees, leave the cable news channels on all day.
Thank goodness I am 68!
No offense meant, but you are the demographic.
Sarcasm. Do not listen to ant TV news. Read NYT, WAPO, WSJ, Bloomberg and Houston Chronicle daily. I am the slow boring demographic albeit on the older side. Also live in Texas and relentlessly pull the Dem lever without much effect.
Read the comment below first. If I regularly watched Fox is there any world in which I had a favorable impression of Matty Yglesias, let alone knew he had a substack, let alone read the substack let alone let alone subscribed to the substack lt alone coomented on the substack.
Yeah I agree, even though I really do think a very sensible strategy is available here, if you forced me to give odds of it working out positively, I'd put them under 50%.
I'm very aware of being the Tobias meme. "But maybe it will work for us..."
Edit to add: But I also think it's just a lot harder now to figure out what message is sticking. I don't think it actually matters all that much what Fox News headlines are. But it's not clear what matters instead... I personally use a set of podcasts to get a read on what less politically obsessed people think about things. But it's impossible to get a very broad view from that. Everyone listens to different stuff.
The Democrats - Activists and Political Reps - suffer significantly from the disease that tends to effect the highly educated - Eggheadism in explaining. no single group of coure has monopoly but Democrats have this disease rather badly.
And the fact they seem to constantly want to make Everything Bagel Call Outs plus fan-service to the "Save Democracy' active political junkies
Republicans were quite good at banging a drum on inflation during Biden - and it was not an irrational nor entirely unfounded drum.
Democrats have inflation and health care now as two decent drums to pound... I wish they'd stop trying to do anything but pounding two drums
Fox news probably pays their pro Republican strategists more than the party itself does, and therefore does an even better job of it than the party.
You are exactly right but Hakeem Jeffries is incapable of making simple and effective arguments, he has a strong preference for turning himself into a pretzel on TV. Schumer is a joke.
Exactly! It’s mind-boggling to me that people argue as if this isn’t true in every way!
Democrats can talk about why they won’t vote for the bill after saying that Republicans have the power to pass the bill at any time.
The boring, object-level point is correct: Democrats have no reason to vote for a compromise that Trump can unilaterally break in his favor. All the factional gamesmanship and political history just confuses this point, I think, and I appreciate Matt saying he changed his mind here.
Yeah this made me really like Politix. Often in the past I've found that they are unhelpfully talking past each other and making no progress. But in this case, Beutler just cooked, made a very compelling argument, and Matt was eventually kind of like "damn, you're so right". Great stuff.
Vought decided to unilaterally withhold $18 billion in funding from NY as retaliation this morning for the shutdown. I can't believe Democrats don't want to support CRs where Vought gets a giant slush fund to reward friends and punish his enemies.
He and Miller are effectively co-presidents right now while Trump just dabbles in his hobbyhorse issues. The more voters are aware of who those guys are and what they're all about, the worse it will be for the administration politically.
That's the main thing; in the Trump regime you can do whatever the hell you want as long as the big man doesn't notice you and tell you to do otherwise (and even there I think he can be gaslighted until he becomes insistent). There's some combination of big baby getting what it wants and elder abuse going on.
I completely agree as far as it goes, but that's NOT what Democrats are saying this is about. They keep saying it's about extending some healthcare subsidies.
And this is why the Democrats will fail here. They agreed to do a shut down before they agreed on why they were doing it. Their messaging won't work long term, and it'll last only as long as is required to make the marginal Senator sufficiently squeemish.
It's frustrating to watch, but it's just another example of poor strategic leadership from the party and incoherence from the stakeholders within it.
Do you or do you know anyone who gets their health insurance from the marketplace?
The premiums are coming out on November 1st.
The Yglesias family, for one.
The reason is to keep the train on the tracks as best they can while running down the clock on Trump's time in office and/or political capital. I get that's not a satisfying reason but it's a compelling one in cost-benefit terms. It's not (yet?) time for risky high-variance plays. The clock is on your side.
Yes it's bad that Republicans did a partisan rescission and procedurally dumb that it's possible. But the actual legally executed partisan rescission was a rounding error of the budget, targeting the absolute least-popular government functions among their base. Everything else is threats, trial balloons, probably illegal and tied up in court, or stuff Republican senators have proactively come out against.
That's not yet worth potentially derailing the train over. Matt's philosophical objection to the filibuster is clouding his judgement here.
Why let them boil the frog? If they want to cook the frog, let them break the filibuster. But they use the filibuster to block Dem spending, and recissions are an asymmetric weapon — it’s not like the Democrats have any reason to keep the status quo. And if they ever gain power again, it would be a good thing if the filibuster were already gone.
There are some fairly severe tail risks around how the administration might operate during a lapse in appropriations. They already push boundaries in every direction at all times, and the boundaries are much softer during a shutdown.
Agree 100%
It would be interesting to try to force the generation of a future soundbite, Trump giving a thirty second speech that is almost verbatim: "Congress passed a budget that says my administration must spend money in this certain way, and by law, we have to. I promise we will follow the law."
I don't know if that would break through for normies or if anything matters.
I don’t get it — Trump doesn’t follow the law, and he would never say something like this even if he respected the law
My premise is that Democrats say "the condition on which we pass your CR is that you give this speech". Get it on tape so you can hammer it over and over and over when he inevitably welches on the promise.
Just pondering out loud.
So keep the government closed until 2029?
If Democrats are the only party with any agency, sure. But Republicans have several ways out of this, and they control every branch of government, so I’m not sure why you’d assume that “Democrats capitulate” is the only way forward.
Democrats care a lot more about people being hurt in a shutdown than Republicans do.
If Trump's poll numbers drop five or more points during the shutdown (and more than the Democrats') then I'll acknowledge that I was wrong and too risk-averse.
What is being risked? That Republicans will rescind some of the spending that’s in the bill? They’re already going to do that. If they break the filibuster, that would be a good outcome for Dems in the long run. Are you worried that voters won’t realize that Republicans have full control of government and blame Democrats somehow?
Yes, the last
Plus the demoralization of the base.
I guess I’d say Democrats have only bad options and we need to consider tradeoffs. If they go along with what Republicans want, will that energize the base somehow? Is that last outcome worse than voters seeing the government running along and assuming everything is fine when Republicans are in control, or will less stuff be cut? Hard to say: it’s far from clear
Well.... I don't think it is Risk Averse to look at this and not see a true coherent risk taking* versus blind reaction - "we must attack" sort of thing that in generalship consistently leads to significant own damage. (I am in watching this reminded of both battle analyses of various WW I idiocies and the Japanese fleet error of Midway where carries chasing after the enemy to show action overrode a rational repositioning)
Most of the Democrat partisans argument seems to be "We Must Oppose Trump" and "do this and ... underpants gnome"
I suppose if the political play is "Get Popular Thing X in the news" (the health care play) that might drive Mid-Term sound-bites while understanding you're doing a probing sally that is going to cost some troops, that's potentially a rational play but the larger overwhelming impression is the Partisans want to do a "Morally Correct" Charge of the Ligth Brigade into the cannons to show oppositional Elan... more Defend Democracy non-strategy emotion
Maybe blowing up the filibuster is equally useful although I have doubts about the long-term wisdom (two edge blades...).
*: Coherent risk taking e.g. illustratively would be in 24 going for a hail mary with a true swing state Gov with real public presence (Shapiro e.g. [not that I was per se a fan but to use as an illustration])
Procedurally I guess the only item that seems to have general coherence to me in terms of a message that can reach outside of the pre-sold is the health insurance gambit (and this not because I personally prioritize that or even care about it, I don't actually either but it does seem to me a subject with potential legs outside the partisans , the pre-sold.
I've always heard this error called the politician's fallacy or politician's syllogism:
1. We must do something.
2. This is something.
3. Therefore, we must do this.
I don't understand how the filibuster survives this new use of rescission power. 60 votes to pass a budget, but then only 50 votes to claw some of the money back after the fact? If the parties start to use the rescission power regularly, there's literally no point at all in having the filibuster- off into the sunset it will go
That’s true for funding bills, but keeping the filibuster still gums up the works on other bills.
Realistically, what they'll do is add yet another exception, for this kind of bill.
that is a useful point - it loses anyreal meaning.
"There is no scenario here where Democrats humiliate Trump and bring him to heel, even though the base desperately wants that." This is the other part that needs to be in bold.
You want to bring Trump to heel? Win elections. One part of that is making the Republicans own their agenda through party-line votes. But never imagine they won't take those votes or that you can stop them. Except by Winning. Elections.
Failing winning elections, I'd be content with the voters getting exactly what they voted for: burning it all down. We cannot sustain a country where voters are protected from their choices. They need to learn the trade-offs.
This.
Let the ACA premiums skyrocket, as long as Republican fingerprints are all over it. Then when we take the House (and Senate?) we're in a much stronger position to bargain for restoring the subsidies.
I can see this argument. But as Matt says, the shutdown is a way to *get* more of their fingerprints on it.
This seems too clever by half.
If Democrats wanted the ACA premiums not to expire, why did they make them temporary?
I mean is it immoral that I believed them when they said it was temporary?
At a certain point, things will only get worse unless we let people feel the actual consequences of their choices.
If you always protect your kid from the consequences of their actions you end up with escalating destruction behavior.
Well said.
My response to the now deleted comment was going to be that higher ACA premiums would not affect me at all. And I want to see those premiums skyrocket.
Let me be blunt: the American people need to suffer. They need to have their hand held against the hot stove. Trump and his minions have run wild since January. They are doing possibly irreparable damage to the US, its democracy, its long-term economic prospects, and its place in the world. And through all that for many, many months, his poll numbers have basically not budged. The American people have in effect shrugged. Their view seems to be, well, it's not affecting me personally right now so I'm not going to get too upset.
Our future as a nation depends on the people turning against this terrible threat. And it seems to me that that will only happen if they experience it personally and forcefully. So, yeah, let those premiums skyrocket. Let prices rise. Let unemployment increase. It's our Obi-Wan Kenobi last hope to be saved.
All damage is repairable.
Painful and expensive, but repairable. Japan and Germany recovered from worse.
But unless people burn their hands very nicely, I do fear US is about to become Neo-Peronist (with Trumpism as a stupid and more idiotic version of Peronism [which in some fashion is a strange achievement])
Pocket book pain teaches lessons.
I’m in total agreement with you. The only way this descent stops is if a critical mass of people decide it needs to end.
So far, they haven’t cared about the actual principles involved, they only care about their short-term self interest. They need to learn how this destruction will eventually come for them in full force.
My only thing to add is: this situation sucks. I wish people didn’t have to suffer to decide what is happening isn’t right.
I prefer "Godzilla threshold" but maybe we're not quite there yet...
Yes, this is the key point.
Everything has to be seen through the lens of "helps or hurts us in November 2026."
I haven't seen a good argument that a shutdown helps us. Someone lay out the logic for me.
I’m agreeing, I don’t see a Dem-induced shutdown helping Dems in November
My take:
1) Let them cut healthcare subsidies, feeling pain appears to be the only way to motivate people now
2) Why not make the demand be “Release all the Epstein files”? This talking point only has positive upside for Dems irrespective of whether any files actually exist and it’s popular with most Americans and it’s “taking a stand”!
#1, yup.
#2, at the end of the day I don't think anyone gives a damn. Because the American people will find out that Trump is a bad person? Be still my beating heart.
I’m increasingly convinced you are right. Sad face. Nonetheless, at least everyone *nominally* agrees “pedos are bad”, so it’s still a winning thing to talk about.
Ted Cruz begs to differ
I am not at all convinced feeling pain will change minds, but I'm certain nothing else will
Then that's fine - why defend subsidies people don't care about?
I don't have any idea. Why defend them if they do care? Hypothetical pain from policy change is one of the few weapons we have why are we fighting to bail out Trump on this? The logic of making the shutdown about health care doesn't make any sense to me, especially if you win the fight.
We're out of money.The health care subsidies need to go.They were supposed to be temporary anyway
There was a simple fix a few months ago when republicans were voting to cut taxes for the rich. Instead they decided to cut smaller amounts of spending for the poor so that we could only go a few trillion into extra debt to help rich people.
If only the masses could see the obvious fact that Republicans lost any shred of credibility they had on debt reduction when they passed the BBB. Every cut to programs that help the working and middle class should be seen by them in the context of that $3 trillion addition to the debt on behalf of the rich. (Bonus if they can see it as the teeing up of a future pretext for more cuts to the programs that help them and their kids live a slightly decent life.)
Plenty of money to help Republican donors, but out of money to help regular people. Same as it ever was.
From a practical standpoint, I'm fully with you...
From an emotional standpoint most of the people who receive those subsidies want to hurt me and my family so fuck them. I'm done having my pocket picked to support people who continually spit in my eye.
Liberals will complain that they're perceived as elite and out-of-touch but then turn around and actively root for them to "feel pain", even those who voted Democrat.
Borderline sociopathic behavior.
How is it sociopathic to give Republican voters what they voted for?
Do only Republican voters get these healthcare subsidies?
The poorest voters still vote democratic. These cuts will disproportionately hurt people who didn’t vote for the assholes.
I'm confused - what do you think democrats should do then?
I think Democrats should do whatever they think will get them the best deal possible. I think liberals online should stop gleefully hoping that poor people suffer.
I think poor people should get the government they vote for.
Lots of poor people voted Democrat
They got outvoted.
This is a real Murc's Law comment.
But I'm not blaming Democrats for anything
It's true, you caught me, the real reason I vote for Democrats is that I hope more people suffer
It's literally what you said. Should I not believe your own words?
I confess!
For whatever the sins of the Lefties (I presume that's what you mean by 'liberals') they're hardly being gleeful -that is at best a gross distortion.
There is nothing sociopathic about the position that resolves to "sometimes the kid has to burn his fingers to learn his lesson for real"
Trying to bubblewrap your kids and the kid down the block... not successful
If the supposedly desired position ends up being painful then so be it (if not painful, well then... it was a cock-up)
Many, possibly most, voters who rely on healthcare subsidies already vote Democrat so people like you want them to "feel pain" for something they didn't do.
If that's not sociopathy, then it's irrational unhinged anger.
I think anything that you ask for has to be “worth” asking the American people to feel pain. And I don’t think the Epstein files really passes that bar
Ignoring whether it works politically or not, *on the substance*, does maintaining these enhanced ACA subsidies even make sense? They are a fairly recent phenomenon, passed in 2021 as a pandemic-era aid, which in aggregate contributed to inflation (some of us pointed out at the time that the government was too generous but alas). Why should they just continue indefinitely?
I agree, and that's basically my main complaint with the Democrats' strategy here -- the expanded healthcare subsidies they say they're fighting for probably should expire. Why not fight for something more meaningful, both symbolically and from a legit policy perspective?
Just throwing ideas out there, but I'd be much more excited if they were doing something like trying to get Trump to withdraw the National Guard from DC. I actually don't know if that's a goal that can be achieved through legislation negotiations, or if it falls completely under POTUS' executive power, but something like that which has emotional resonance and directly plays into legitimate fears of Trump embracing authoritarianism would make more sense to me as grounds for a shutdown.
In other words: Go Bigger.
So - Fears of Authoritarism is your play.
That's fan-serrvice - everyone who has your concerns is already anti-Trump. Everyone.
you achieve exactly nothing repeating yet louder yet again the already non-winninng "Democracy in Danger" pitch.
The need is to sell something new to win the votes that do not care about this subject.
We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to ensure that poor Republicans in South Dakota get cheap health insurance.
Just as Captain Raymond Holt could only understand the dramatis personae of The Godfather by having everyone described in terms of their relationship to Diane Keaton’s character, I do much better understanding the political mechanics of the shutdown with a couple of deeply nerdy classic space opera analogies.
Including both Star Wars and Star Trek references is the kind of big tent approach we need right now. I also enjoyed hurling "Captain Ahab" as an insult at Patrick Stewart only two years before he went on to star as Captain Ahab.
More TNG (and Star Trek in general) references please!
Matt's tastes clearly run more toward space opera than more traditional style sci-fi.
True - a subscriber can dream though.
#17 sums it up well. The whole procedure is indeed dumb. Don't let them get away with Murc's Law again, they have all the power, they can either choose to not pass a bad bill, pass a bad bill on a party line vote with the nuclear option, or shut down the government. It's the Republicans' choice to make.
I wish Democrats would make the other obvious point: Trump is not a reliable negotiating partner. Even if he claims he's made a deal, he'll change it later. The details of rescission aren't even relevant when you consider he'll just lie and break laws when he wants. The whole thing is a farce.
The most important point is 16. All the gnashing of teeth about "opposing" Trump in mostly performative ways means jack shit unless you win the next election, and so all tactical moves ought to be made with that strategic goal in mind.
Hey I don't mean to be petty about this- and you're a great commenter here on SB- but didn't you and I have a knockdown dragout argument like 2 years ago when I proposed Biden cut SpaceX out of federal contracts? And you (and someone else who I forget on here) argued up and down that this was illegal, impossible, federal contracting doesn't work that way, SpaceX would immediately sue & win in court, we're a rule of law country, etc. etc. Do you remember that lengthy argument?
Have you updated on this at all, given that Trump is canceling every federal contract he wants to left and right, and the courts haven't pushed back even a bit? I read this morning that he's threatening to cancel Microsoft's federal cloud contracts if they don't give him whatever it is he wants this week. Shouldn't that be impossible given your previous stance.....?
Thanks for bringing this up again (seriously).
I think what Trump is doing is bad. Yes, the courts haven't pushed back yet, but I think part of that is that the legal system works very slowly (so this is still unfolding), and part of it is that, unfortunately, many organizations are afraid to actively oppose Trump and defend their rights in court. This extends beyond just contracting, as we've seen lots of powerful companies and organizations fold to Trump's demands. That was surprising to me, and I didn't think so many would fold so easily.
I want to be clear that I think that is all bad. Contracts should only be abrogated consistent with the terms of the agreement and not for political reasons. And I think that's consistent with my previous position, which was also against the idea of Biden punishing SpaceX for things other than contractual terms and performance.
Like most bullies, Trump picks fights with firms and organizations he's confident he can successfully bully.
Which brings me to one other thing I'd point out: In terms of practical necessity, the US government needs SpaceX in ways it doesn't need some of these other contractors. SpaceX can accomplish things that no one else on the planet can do, which are also essential. SpaceX is like Lockheed Martin - too important for Trump to try that shit with. And Biden was smart enough to know that attempting that with SpaceX would be dumb.
In the specific case of SpaceX, I think Musk's dalliances with foreign powers, heavy commercial reliance on China for Tesla sales, and drug use (some of it extremely open!) warrant the guy losing his security clearance. Despite what his most fervent fans believe, I don't think the company would collapse without him, and Shotwell is absolutely capable of running it in his absence.
(Also, he could come back later, sober and rather chastened, which I also think would be good for literally everyone involved- including Musk!)
Ok, some inside baseball.
As a former intel analyst and security manager in the intel community, I agree Musk's foreign contacts and drug use are problematic, but it's also the case that clearances for contractors are handled differently than those for people like me who have/had wide/deep access to classified info. The clearance and need-to-know requirements for a contractor are tied to the contract and its associated need-to-know information, which is limited to the contract itself. So the only access Musk has is directly related to fulfilling the relevant SpaceX contracts with the government. That's mostly about understanding the government's requirements. Musk's clearance doesn't extend to access to any other kind of information. And even there, Musk is not read-in (ie. he doesn't have access) to all the classified stuff that SpaceX does because of this need-to-know. Details reported in the press can be found here:
https://www.wsj.com/tech/musk-spacex-security-clearance-secrets-b9774346
For foreign contacts, it's not uncommon to see a different standard for contractors, because almost every major company with classified government contracts has foreign contacts. Again, look at Lockheed Martin or any major defense contractor, which has many lines of business outside the US and can't avoid foreign contacts. CEOs are, for practical reasons, treated differently than someone like me, who isn't required to have foreign contacts and is also much more dangerous from a counter-intel perspective due to the much greater level of access someone like me has compared to a contractor. It's for the same reason that State Department personnel can have high-level clearances despite having lots of foreign contacts and even friends.
And the irony is that Musk being open about his drug use mitigates one of the factors that clearance adjudicators are most worried about when it comes to drug use - blackmail.
Finally, clearances can't be revoked without cause and process. Musk is no different. His clearance and level of access are managed by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) under the National Industrial Security Program (NISP). While that agency doesn't publicly comment on individual clearance adjudication decisions, it's certain they've looked at and investigated Musk and determined the appropriate level of access he should have. I have no reason or evidence to doubt their decision, especially since I am not aware of the precise access limits Musk has beyond the limited press reporting (see the WSJ link above). I have no reason not to trust that the DCSA is doing its job correctly, and I disagree that a President or politician should insert themselves into the process to overrule their decision for political reasons.
Musk's companies succeed at a *technical, operational* level despite his involvement, not because of it.
Now, as a meme stonk, Tesla would obviously collapse if the board came to its senses and forced his ouster. But the company's future as a car manufacturer would be rosier, and its products would be better.
Sounds like Democrats need to respond in kind of they want to get any of their priorities pushed through. If people don't like that, they should vote for Congress/Judiciary that actively opposes executive authority on principle otherwise people should get the government they vote for.
I don’t think people entirely appreciate how badly the left would lose an illiberal left vs illiberal right contest in the US.
I strongly agree with this, but I've come around to the view that suing everyone that worked in the Trump administration starting in 2029- and disbarring some of their attorneys- is a lot more feasible and plays to Dems' current strengths. All that money the Trump family is making in bribes, crypto deals, cash from foreign governments, etc.? All of that can be clawed back, legally, post-facto. Any attorney found to have disobeyed a court order, or maybe targeted a Trump foe for prosecution for malicious prosecution? They can all be disbarred in the future (as Giuliani and Eastman found out), and then maybe personally sued by anyone harmed.
The left is, for better or worse, the establishment party. Going through the courts to enact legal revenge is slower, but could be seen as more legitimate
I try to be a man of principles, so I would not support Democrats responding in kind. In my view, that just creates a ratcheting race to the bottom.
But even if one has an eye-for-an-eye view and thinks Democrats ought to weaponize norm-breaking like the GoP, the historical record is that it doesn't work as well for them, for a variety of reasons.
I think Republicans should get the norms they create precedent for.
Whether or not the courts agree that it’s illegal, I think most of us want to live in a country where it’s illegal to do that, and it’s not a good thing to start doing that.
I think that if you always pivot to the same issue, healthcare, on literally every government dispute it becomes obvious to even disengaged voters that you're trying to distract them and they start tuning you out.
Excellent post.
I wish someone would lay out a believable endgame that is good for the Democrats here. At best it's, what, we get ACA subsidies extended in a grand bipartisan compromise? In other words, we sand off some of the rough edges of Republican viciousness and protect people from some of their worst outrages so that voters are less inclined to punish Republicans? Yay?
The problem for the Democrats is that they're seen as having a simulacrum of power which makes people think they have leverage when they really don't. The filibuster is just hurting the Democrats here.
The best strategy would have been to have no filibuster invoked and have all (or nearly all, cough cough John Fetterman) vote against a punishing Republican bill and take the resulting awfulness to the voters.
Too late for that now. I can only cross my fingers and hope. Especially that voters just won't care who "lost" the shutdown a year before the midterms.
They could actually fix the rescissions thing. That would be a good outcome. Require 60 votes for rescission, fix the pocket rescission thing, get Trump to stop saying he'll renege on any budget deals whenever he wants.
I think it would actually be better to align the votes required for rescission vs. appropriations in the opposite direction, and only require 50 votes for appropriations. But aligning it in the reverse direction would still be a real improvement.
But yeah, unfortunately they don't seem to be running this playbook. I'm not sure what a good outcome for the playbook they are running is.
So in order to get a procedural victory, the Democrats vote for a budget that reflects all the Republicans' priorities?
And Trump is forced to accept the spending in a budget that the Republicans put together, with no concessions to the Democrats?
Color me unimpressed.
Ah, I see your point. That would just be for a short CR. For a longer CR or a proper budget, they would then be in a position to have a real negotiation, without the rescissions issue making it all pointless.
We lack power, it sucks. I do believe that technically, after voting on cloture, the Dem won’t actually have to vote for the bill.
In my opinion, once you've voted for cloture, it's too late. You've already signed on for the Republican effort.
I still don’t fully get the logic. Sure, maybe it doesn’t “make sense” to vote for an agreement that the other side can unilaterally renege on. (Is it so clear that they’re going to renege? Why would they not just give Dems everything they want at this stage and then renege after?)
But the way I see it is:
Option 1: Do a deal, Republicans maybe renege, life goes on.
Option 2: Shutdown, no deal, encourage Republicans to break out the nuclear option. And then do a bunch of other stuff they want to do, presumably. (Is there some assumption that going nuclear will somehow be bad for Republicans?)
Not entirely clear that 1 is worse than 2. I get the urge to fight, but sometimes fighting rather than surrendering puts you in a worse position.
The reason why 2 is better than 1 is because nuking the filibuster has always been a good idea. Yes, the Republicans will do bad things without the filibuster, and then they will get blamed for those bad things in the next election. If Democrats capitalize on that and win majorities, they will be able to do good things without having to work around the filibuster because it will be gone.
Who came the filibuster is a horrible idea.
Big changes in this country should be bipartisan
I don't want republicans to govern with free reign.And I certainly don't want democrats to govern with free reign
I've come around on this. I don't particularly want either of our parties to govern with a free hand either, but wouldn't mind as much if they were more sensible.
I think the filibuster enables extremism by obscuring accountability, and may even encourage it. (This is in addition to the way it's an obstacle to any legislation, driving too much power to the executive branch.)
We have a mechanism for laws which need a supermajority to change: the constitution. As long as democracy still reigns, let the people get what they voted for. The inability for congress to react to the will of the people has directly lead to both extremism and the acceptance of centralizing executive authority.
Republicans can already "govern with free reign" if they win the House, Presidency, and 60+ Senate seats. So can Democrats.
"Big changes in this country should be bipartisan"
There won't be any durable big changes if the other party can reverse single party legislations in 2-4 years so I don't think this is a valid argument.
High variance is generally better when you're losing. Option 2 is much higher variance. Not universally a good idea, of course - I thought a shutdown in March was a terrible idea - but I do think it makes sense for Democrats to be looking for the right high variance play to make at the right time. I'm not confident this is the right thing at the right time, but it seems like the best option so far, to me. And I see the existence of a real honest to god underlying rationale to be a very big point in its favor. The rescission thing really does attack the core of all bipartisan deal making.
Or rather than "surrendering" - strategic retreats.
It's not surrendering to reorganise and find better attack salients....
This doesn't really make news, but Vought is doing all sorts of stuff around the apportionment/allotment process at OMB that is really fucking with the ability of agencies to spend funding that was appropriated for specific purposes.
I think this is really good, but I have seen a lot of discussion over the degree to which Democratic primary voters are generally pragmatic and motivated by wanting to win, versus if they are feeling pushed so far they are now ready for their version of the Tea Party.
I think the far-left of the party is ready for the Democratic Tea Party, but if the party goes down that path we are going to be in for a rude awakening about the fundamental asymmetry of American politics. The 2013 shutdown didn't hurt the GOP in 2014 for a variety of reasons, but remember the 2014 House maps were drawn following the GOP wave of 2010, and the Senate map was brutal for Dems. Republicans are hard at work to maximize the House maps for 2026 and the Senate map is again brutal for Dems for structural reasons that a lot of folks have tried to bring up, but keep getting attacked for doing so (Ezra recently).
Democrats saw the 2013 Tea Party-Cruz shutdown, the escalation of GOP rhetoric and demands, and the culmination of Trump 2016, and the result was ... a GOP trifecta in 2017 that got to stack the Supreme Court. Too many Democratic activists and politicians seem convinced if the party goes down the same pathway we can somehow chart a similar course back in 2028/2029. Instead I worry we're going to hand the White House to Vance, Hegseth, or Trump 3.0.
The voters should get what they want. If that's incompetent government, they should get it.
From the department of facepalm meets headdesk:
The Atlantic: "How Democrats Backed Themselves Into a Shutdown"
Hey guys at The Atlantic, did you notice that there's one party in control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, and it's NOT THE DEMOCRATS? How about titling your piece "how the REPUBLICANS caused the shutdown," hmmm?
(Yes, Murc's Law is a thing, doesn't mean I have to like it!)
At least the NYT changed the title of their opinion piece from "These 6 Charts Show Why the Democrats Shut Down the Government" to "These 6 Charts Show Why the Government Shut Down," yay NYT, good for you.
Once Trump decided he could cancel any Congressional appropriations he wanted and the courts let him get away with that, it became pointless to try to negotiate with Trump over spending at all.