The D.C. provision is so outrageous - taking away $1 billion D.C.'s money from its already balanced budget, money that is like 8% of the total budget - that if this did not merit the filibuster I do not know what would.
The good news is that if the Senate Democrats are nice to Republicans maybe Susan Collins will sponsor some legislation reversing it at some undetermined point down the line (that will die in committee).
Also I don't think a shutdown would hurt Democrats in 2026. Most would blame Republicans for it (https://wapo.st/3R7K2nr - gift link).
Absolutely spineless showing by Schumer. Primary him.
Why sink the party and help destroy the federal government and impose huge costs on already beleaguered federal workers to help out DC? Even if that worked (wouldn’t) how does that pencil out?
Taking on helping DC while shutting down the government will be used to beat the Dems over the head on social media, using race and urban versus rural issues to convince their electorate they are on the right track while at the same time continuing their federal deconstruction. If the Dem’s had an effective unified party centric media message and implementation of the same it would help. I’d like to see a “fight” but a winnable one and this is not it. Patience is not fun exercise .
Yeah anybody who thinks Republicans would give in on this for any reason is delusional. Why do they think they put it in there in the first place? It was to either get their toy (screwing a mostly-black urban population center) or get a shutdown. They got their toy, for now.
I understand—the ask is to take huge political risks and, if you don’t get your demand met (likely), impose huge nationwide costs for the sake of the DC budget. It should not surprise you that people who have priorities other than DC say “no”.
I’m not surprised, no. But DC Home Rule is something that the Democratic Party has said is very important to them. This is about teachers, firefighters, police, etc. in a city that has a larger population than two states. It’s frankly unconscionable to allow republicans to cut $1 billion (again roughly 8 percent) of the budget for no good reason other than to own the libs. By not even trying to negotiate this piece with the Republican senate, Senate Dems are sending the message that DC and its residents don’t matter.
There are political risks to forcing a shutdown, no one is denying that, certainly not me anyway. But the poll I shared suggests republicans would shoulder much more blame than democrats. I also think that most people won’t remember either way in November 2026. The January 2019 shutdown was not a large campaign issue in the 2020 elections.
There are also political risks to ignoring what a majority of the party seems to want. The progressive often have bad instincts on how to win elections; on that point, I could not agree with Matt more. But just because they’re often wrong doesn’t mean they’re wrong about this.
I mean “having a postal service” and “the existence of the department of education and the CFPB” and “not having Russia conquer Eastern Europe” are ALSO things that are pretty important to Democrats! There is a lot going on right now!
The move here would be to pick a fight over tariffs + DC budget, talk about tariffs on TV while the government is shut down, then capitulate on tariffs (because the GOP Congress is not going to reel in Trump's tariff actions anyway) in exchange for removing the DC budget provision which everyone agrees is absurd. This gives donors the fight they want, keeps the focus on tariffs, gives high-edu / high-info voters a win on the DC provision, and removes a bad law.
Yes, I’m with Matt on this. Although i also think it’s not super consequential. This might be a good time for the party to test pushing back against the left and holding firm. So AOC and the left say JUMP and the moderate Dems say not this time. Let’s see how that plays out. Some meltdowns here - ignoring them is an option.
If you genuinely think this was not super consequential, you're completely out of touch. This was an existential failure of moderate Democrats, and it's going to lead to the left's very own Tea Party moment. If you care about moderation *AT ALL*, this was a calamity for you.
You're lying about being "a moderate Democrat who wants to win elections" if you want Democrats to waste time and money primarying someone for not going along with progressive activists.
I’m not lying at all. Feel free to go read my stack and decide if I’m focused on winning enough for you.
This isn’t about appeasing “the progressives,” it’s about challenging the republicans when they put forward an untenable policy when the democrats have leverage to do so. It doesn’t make sense to highlight how insane and damaging a cut of $1 billion to DC’s budget is and then turn your back on the one tactics that could defeat it.
Maybe “the progressives” are against letting this budget slide through, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong, electorally or otherwise.
What leverage? The GOP control the presidency, House, Senate, and Supreme Court and they ultimately don't care that much if the federal government is or isn't running.
And I read your stack and you argued that Democrats don't need to change much, despite the fact that Democrats need to be competitive in Senate races in states like Iowa, Ohio, and Alaska that Harris all lost by double digits if they want to flip the Senate in 2026. So yeah, I'm not sure I'm convinced you're that focused on winning.
You may be moderate but you also clearly live in DC and are too close to this issue. “No no this isn’t like the climate groups or trans activities or Palestinians—this time it is MY ox getting hired!”
It sucks and I feel bad for DC and for you but if you previously opposed this kind of thing 1B in local government cuts should not change your mind. It’s, like, the least of the bad ideas the administration is currently doing.
I don’t know what to say except that I believe that the Senate (and House) Dems have a special obligation to protect D.C. home rule, and not even trying to negotiate this issue means that they basically don’t care about this.
On many trans and climate issues and Israel issues, I (again agreeing with Matt Y) think the progressives staked out positions that were substantively wrong on the merits, in addition to politically bad for winning elections. That’s not the case with DC funding, and I therefore reject the analogy.
Bad outcome, agreed. But the council and mayor would have more of a leg to stand on if they ever devoted even one second to judicious governance that included targeted reductions in spending. Our smallish statelet has been floating on a river of tax receipts from well compensated federal knowledge workers and appreciating home values. Even bright blue MD is talking about a middle class tax cut while they raise revenue from other sources. The day the DC Council offers to return any DC resident's taxes is the day I'll know we're living in a simulation. It may be tough medicine, but forcing Bowser and Mendelson to balance competing priorities and actually save a buck could be worth the pain. I'm certain there is fat to trim.
If you don't like Bowser and Mendelson, vote against them. Most of us voted for them, and think they run the city pretty decently.
I personally would like to see my city run by my elected representatives, and not have my school and police budget used as a political football for no discernible reason.
I wonder if it's possible for Maryland to take back most of the land it ceded to DC (except for a core area including the Capitol, White House, Supreme Court, National Mall, Federal Triangle, and parts of town where the dominant land use is federal offices).
Virginia took back its part long ago. I can see why we want the core areas to be under the direct control of Congress and not give one state disproportionate power over the immediate environs of the federal government; but there is also no particular reason for that to extend to residential areas in the northern corner or east of the Anacostia River. Turning a big chunk of the District of Columbia into Columbia County, Maryland would be a good way to End Taxation Without Representation.
Yep, but progressives insist on DC statehood despite the fact that it’s unconstitutional and Texas v. White exists. They want those sweet senators and EC votes, but they forget that Texas is the only state that can split itself into up to 5 states unilaterally because Congress preapproved it in the bill that admitted Texas to the union.
I’m not clear why they need to be forced to do this if they are running a surplus. Congress, not the DC Council, needs to learn to spend within its means.
I don't get it. You're saying the district is financially healthy, and therefore Bowser and Mendelson need to cut spending as "medicine"? Medicine for what?
Hostage taking is bad! -signed, an American citizen who wants the government to continue to function instead of constantly shutting down and/or almost defaulting on its debts because of minority opposition to majority policy efforts.
If there was a reliable way to hang this around republican's necks, I'd be more inclined to suffer the short-term pain for long-term benefit. But since they (republicans) are essentially unified in opposition to a shutdown, I think public opinion would quickly turn on democrats.
Well, you have to be smart about it! You can't be like "welp, they were opposed to a shutdown and we made them do it, so that makes us the bad guys." You have to be like, "look, the GOP gave us the choice between shutdown and a crappy plan that would have hurt you, the regular American, so we told them, no, we don't want your crappy plan, give us something better for our constituents or we won't support you. If that means a shutdown, that's on you! You have the majority and elections have consequences, as you delight in telling us, along with 'cry harder, libs'!"
I swear to God, I hate this self-fulfilling prophecy of "only Republicans are good at politics, and all Democrats can do is roll over and play dead."
But the crappy plan won't hurt (most) Americans. For most, it will be business as usual, which indeed is the point of a CR (a very targeted "poison pill" or two notwithstanding). Whereas all the people going to DC museums and parks for spring break would just hear that the democrats ruined their trip for very boring and technical reasons that they don't care about (for example).
So far the courts are making a dent in the administration's antics*. It's slow and frustrating and still painful in the interim. But I'm inclined to let it play out a little while longer at least and see if the GOP can continue stepping on rakes.
*Relevant to us, I recently served on an NSF panel that went without a hitch (the staff that got DOGED practically all got their jobs back, for now at least). NIH study sections have been rescheduled. Again, I'm not excusing the nonsense that's happening, but some guardrails are kicking in.
It shows a lack of creativity when people on one side try to co-opt the tactics of the other. Shutting down the government is what Republicans do. It's a bad look for Dems. It's the strategic equivalent of when, after 2008, the Republicans imitated Shepard Fairey's "hope" poster by plastering their own folks and slogans on similar signage.
Congress is responsible for DC, unfortunately. Is the DC government going to continue to function with an 8 percent across the board cut? Not very well I’d wager.
I just don't see how shutting down the government for an 8% cut in the DC budget is worth it, especially when one of your primary national fights is over validating the value of the federal workforce. Maybe you can shift the blame, but given the uneven agenda setting power between Trump and the opposition congress, it seems unlikely.
Where I do have sympathy for the "do something" crowd is that communications mismatch. The Dems just completely lack any rallying point leader. There's no one who can confidently and coherently make the case for the Democrats. Theoretically the Dems have a decent bench, but everyone running for 2028 is focused on 2028, not right now.
1: Polling seems to indicate pretty strongly that people would blame Republicans for a shutdown.
2: If Trump really wanted a shutdown, he could just do it. He didn't have to whip the house personally to pass the CR.
3: In terms of political consequences, this seems like it will trigger a massive swing against moderates from normal Dems (like me!) That will probably push the party way further left than you think is optimal to win, in a way that will probably impact the election more than a shutdown would.
Trump plainly doesn’t want a shutdown resulting from chaos in the Republican controlled House. Which makes sense.
Does he want a shutdown that he can paint as a minority of Blue State Senators holding the country hostage because they don’t want to cut grants for Trans activist immigrants? Would he prefer that as an alternative explanation for (looks around) all this? I’m not convinced he doesn’t. He’s stuck in a tariff spiral but can’t admit he was wrong and he’s addicted to being the story again. To me that signals he’s ready to move to the next circus.
I guarantee his aids are whispering in his ear right now “we were trying to gut the federal government and Democrats are offering to do it for us.” Can you imagine the DOGE boys running around with 80% of federal employees home and unable to even check email?
Yeah, this is my take as well. I don't buy that there's any accurate polling of how Americans "would have reacted" to a shutdown. Maybe they would've blamed the GOP, or maybe they wouldn't have. But a shutdown driven by Dems was Trump's only get out of jail free card available.
Now there's no crutch. Trump owns the economy and all of these tariffs he's shooting himself in the foot with. This is far and away the most clear eyed cause-and-effect democrats will ever get to bring to the American people. Of course, being democrats, we/they still might squander the opportunity. But the long play is the best strategy here and I think Schumer played it deftly.
If I've learned one lesson, it's that Americans vote for the party that's out of power when the economy is bad. Full stop. There's no deeper thinking than that.
> I don't buy that there's any accurate polling of how Americans "would have reacted" to a shutdown.
Agreed. A prior question would need to be how many Americans understand that, "GOP holds the House, Senate, and Presidency" isn't a true and complete story; this bill needs 60 Senators. In the event of a shutdown, a non-trivial fraction doesn't know this today and says they will blame Republicans, but will learn it tomorrow and blame Democrats, rightly or not.
A lot of us live in DC and our local government is going to get destroyed by this bill for no reason. We'd rather have a general government shutdown until the House can come back in session and then have Congress pass a sane bill that doesn't wreck our government for fun.
Well, OK, but that’s pretty self interested. “We should shut down the entire federal government for everyone to avoid unwise local budget cuts” may make sense for people in DC, and I don’t blame them for wanting it, but you can’t seriously be pissed of that the rest of us don’t want that outcome.
The federal government "shutting down" does not actually involve meaningful durable changes to how the federal government runs. It means a week or two of administrative inconvenience.
I think the idea that voters would blame Trump for a shutdown we are all acknowledging is a decision to be made by democrats is kinda crazy. The only polling I’ve seen comes from when it wasn’t clear what would be the cause of a shutdown, but a breakdown in the GOP House was a very plausible conclusion. That isn’t true any longer.
I also think that Americans mostly don’t care much about what happens in DC itself (a huge problem with it not being a state!). It sucks. It’s unfair. It’s based on literally false beliefs (most people will assume the federal taxpayers are funding DC). But I don’t know what real leverage it provides.
Shutdown might conceivably push the country into recession. Believe me, as a Democrat, you do not want a recession (now). Far better for the party's fortunes to delay its arrival for another year or two.
We ARE going into a recession. The craziness of every day is going to keep Americans from spending, AND it will keep business leaders from spending because tomorrow the entire tariff picture, or even who are our allies, may change. Beyond an overpriced stock market, it is happening. The passage of this CR, or not, will not make the difference.
I hope it doesn't arrive soon, is all I'm saying. Nobody has a crystal ball, but if does get here in 2025, that's bad for Democrats. AFAIC an at least reasonably good election in 2026 seems baked into the cake for Dems. Never say never, but it would take an astonishingly weird set of circumstances for Democrats not to at least take back the House (they need what, five seats?).
For me the scarier election is the one looming a bit further on the horizon, ie 2028. If we ARE going to have a recession between now and then (and I agree there is surely one headed our way) it's better for Democrats (and for America) that the effects of this event have made the electorate angry toward the GOP. And that means a delayed arrival. By contrast, it's very conceivable that an early recession (ie, one arriving in 2025) results in a 2028 that looks a lot like 1956, 1972, or 1984.
I don't think we know what the recession precipitating (or hastening) event(s) is. A shutdown could be a factor.
I want Musk stopped, too. Which is why it's not a good idea to enhance his power by shutting down the government he is trying to shut down.
The way to actually stop Musk is to stop the GOP, and the only way to do that is to win elections and take power away from them. Unfortunately the first national opportunity to do that isn't for another year and a half. But it will arrive before you know it. And in the meanwhile we've got courts, and protests, and the administration's large numbers of political own goals.
Charles, you are assuming the GOP plays by the rules. Elon & Don do not play by the rules. They break shit. They ruin lives. This is what they do. So, somehow a non-operating government for four days would have given them so much more power? Please explain how because I've heard this from too many other dems today, too.
What are you doing to Trump that Trump wasn’t trying to do anyhow when you shut down the government? You people are acting like somehow Trump is suddenly going to become responsible and discover how essential the people he’s trying to destroy actually are to the country.
There may well be opportunities to take a legislative stand later this year, or next year. The future is hard to predict. But this wasn't the right opportunity. I think Matt's correct about this.
Do you know anyone who has been seriously harmed by the fiasco since Jan 20 - because people are dying & others are having their lives ruined... but maybe later this year we can again give a damn, maybe if it's the right timing.
I don't think it would, though. If push comes shove, Republicans would eliminate the filibuster before offering concessions. But, in practice, they don't enough whether the government is in shutdown or not to do either.
1. The party that votes to shutdown the government always gets the blame - I'm not sure what polling you think suggests otherwise
2. Trump always plays head I win, tails you lose. He'd get the blame for a shutdown if he pushed it, but if Dems get the blame then they can wreak havoc without anyone stopping them - in many ways, probably permanently.
3. Trying to push the Dems further left sounds like a great way to continue losing.
Agreed. Why bother voting in democrats in the midterms if they can’t use the powers they have now? Don’t worry they’re going to wave placards and wear white.
Point 9 which is the crux of the argument would still state that even with a House majority, Democrats should cave because otherwise Trump will just fire 100% of the federal workforce. At some point you have to use your leverage and get ahead of the narrative. I then go back to my comment, what’s the point in voting in democrats who don’t oppose and just cave.
With a House majority, Democrats would (hopefully) be able to pass a bill that represents an actual alternative to measure against the Republican refusal to deal.
What we have presently is no alternative proposal-just a refusal to allow a vote. That’s especially problematic here, where Democrats aren’t entirely clear about their demands. DC budget? Tariffs? Ending DOGE?
Most of what's happening right now (e.g., DOGE destroying agencies and slashing aid budgets) is happening in spite of the fact that money was explicitly appropriated by Congress. The entire GOP strategy right now is to make a D win in the midterms irrelevant.
Democrats need new leadership to stop getting out played. This is just embarrassing. They can’t even call their bluff or show voters how bad elons eventual goal would be or even get rid of the senate filibuster. Leadership knows they’re going to be blamed for the recession regardless right? Do they have a strategy for this?
"Democrats don't have power" is a bizarre thing to say in the context of discussing whether Democrats should use a very specific legislative power that they have.
I remember 2019 when the Democrats won the House. There were some hearings, but relatively few actual changes to policy. The best the Democrats could do was block legislation, but the filibuster already allows them that power (which I would note they are explicitly *not* using.)
All that was back in Trump Term #1 when there was some lip service to the Constitutional order and the Supreme Court wasn't reliably right-wing. There is none of that now. And by the time the Democrats return to Congress (hypothetically), many of the changes that Trump and Musk wish to make will be a fait accompli.
They are absolutely resisting—they do not currently have the power to do much, so you are mad they didn’t do something dumb just to “do something”. Your anger is misplaced and you should be mad at the Republicans and support the people resisting them. Instead you are furious with senate democrats who oppose what is happening! It’s silly.
I would love for you to provide a detailed explanation of how the Ds are resisting. Better yet, present it in a way that actual voters can understand. Because right now the uniform message I'm hearing from (especially my very moderate friends) is "this is bad, but where the fuck are the Democrats?"
OK. They voted against most of his cabinet picks. Schumer voted against all of them and encouraged his peers to do so. During the confirmation hearings, they expressed opposition at length. They didn’t have the votes to block any. When Republicans actually introduce legislation, I suspect Democrats will oppose it—even stuff they kind of agree with. That is the job of opposition Senators, and that is the power they have. I am not sure what else you expect from them (other than, apparently, provoking a government shutdown for which they will be blamed and which wouldn’t likely accomplish much at all).
They voted against people like Pete Hegseth to run the DoD and RFK Jr. to run HHS (and even there, Senator Whitehouse waffled a bit due to his "friendship") and you think that's an excellent example of "resistance"? That's basically just the bare minimum level of competence I would expect from any legislator, not "resistance." On other nominees they split and voted various ways.
(Frankly I don't even know how they voted on most of them, and rather than that being a knock on myself, I think it's incredibly bizarre that the party had no clear messaging strategy about it. "Encouraged his peers to do so" what the fuck kind of weak-kneed party leadership is that?)
The GOP is not a party of broad legislation. The next expected piece of legislation from the Republican party is going to be a disastrous budget that strikes down something like 2/3 of Medicaid. But that will be done through reconciliation so the Democrats will have literally no option other than messaging, which they've been inept at. (Maybe they'll "encourage their peers not to vote for it" or something.) There is also a debt limit fight somewhere in September, which *can* be filibustered but will be much more politically risky than the current fight -- and ironically, becomes *vastly more likely to be the fight Ds get pressured into picking* due to the political blowback from their fuckup today.
I am sympathetic to the leftists whining about Dems being spineless for the first time in years. Matt and Dem leadership have over learned the lessons of the shutdown fights under Obama. We don't need to walk on eggshells with the election so far away -- just shut it down and demand a clean CR. not hard
Yup. We're still more than 18 months away from the damn midterms. Anything the Ds do right now is for their base, and irrelevant to what happens in November 2026.
I think you’re confusing the “base” of the Democratic Party with a political left/right alignment. There are plenty of center-left and center-rightish people who are absolutely determined to see a Democratic victory in 2026. I’m one of them. That’s the “base” of the party.
Then there are plenty of people who are not tightly aligned to the Democratic Party. A very important feature of these folks is that overwhelmingly they are not deep, obsessive followers of political news. The chance that a shutdown fight in March 2025 heavily informs those votes in November 2026 is pretty low, on average. This is the time when the Democrats can do risky things with very little risk that the median low-information voter will remember it.
Overall your comment seems super confused about a bunch of things.
The entire GOP is making it very clear that they want this CR. They have unified their caucus in a way not seen recently to get it done. Giving your opponents what they want is not "avoiding a trap," it's surrendering.
On the second point, the Ds didn't need to win some complicated policy battle. They needed to demonstrate that they have some fight in them, to motivate their base. The downstream effects of this are going to be much worse than anyone realizes (and yes, the most likely effect is to hand power and the microphone to the left, which becomes the leadership of the opposition by default.)
I can accept the bitter pill but this episode highlights that Democratic leadership does not fit the vibes of the moment. It's one thing to make the strategically correct set of actions, but it's another to get your base to feel like their concerns were fought for.
And to me it's largely downstream of the filibuster. What would make everyone happy would be a situation in which Democrats uniformly vote "no" to show they are fighting, but it passes anyway because the GOP is in the majority.
Senate Dems could have just done the exact same thing but done a better job tilting their rhetoric to fit the mood of the base. The base is pissed off. Try to sound like you're pissed off. Moderating your tone doesn't make you sound strategic, it makes you sound apathetic.
I'm less and less into performative grandstanding as I get older, but I could have gotten behind a day-one message of "No matter whether we're in the majority or minority, we think bills* should get an up-or-down vote. We oppose this bill on its merits, and we want every Senator to be on the record of whether they support or oppose every bill brought to the floor".
Yes. But the actual base is fired up on this one. I hate the internet leftists as much as the next guy, but me and my friends who were all Joe Biden's strongest soldiers for the last four years are infuriated. Right now the entire Democratic leadership strategy appears to be becoming invisible and making as little noise as possible, allowing the focus to be on Trump and hoping he steps in it so hard that everything falls apart around him. And who knows, it might work this time since he's the most insane he has ever been, but this strategy has failed every other time we've played it since 2016.
I’m afraid you’ve badly misconstrued the view of the many who oppose cloture and simply want a clean CR. It’s not hard to point out that this CR sneakily allows Trump to extend tariffs for longer. “I won’t vote for tariffs that destroy jobs and causes inflation” isn’t hard to message on.
I agree that a hypothetical tariff fight might have made sense, but Democrats unfortunately are divided among themselves on tariffs which is one reason why legislation to check Trump's power in this regard didn't happen during Biden's presidency.
Are Dems “Really divided” on these tariffs? Honestly asking. IMO the OP is right that Senate Dems didn’t even try and float a message to see if it could gain ground. Matt what’s your take on the whole saga yesterday of everyone pretending they would vote no but not meaning the cloture? It does seem like Senate Dems are totally in a panick and refusing to organize.
Right - it's not like Bernie or AOC or former Senator Brown are out here celebrating these tariffs. It's basically Jared Golden and some think tank guys Matt gets in Twitter fights with.
Not for too long - I basically was just spending $5 to check in on how things were here and they were about what I expected. Expected to lurk but then this incredibly terrible move happened.
Which is why Matt should probably understand if the pushback is bad in this comment section, that has agreed w/ Matt to punch anybody to the left of Joe Manchin for the past four months that among normie Democrat's it'll be even worse and it's probably bad for his grand moderation project for moderates to be seen, to use a non-woke term, Donald and Elon's little bitches who do what they want.
Like, a Dem Tea Party if it happens in 2026 won't be on left/moderate axis, it'll be on the fight/surrender axis.
I'm AOC/Pritzker-Bill Kristol-pilled. Then again, by his recent articles and posts on Bluesky, Bill Kristol is to the left of Matt at this point.
Aw, I wish you’d stick around. I mean it sincerely. Partly because I want viewpoint diversity, partly because, honestly, I feel myself pulled more left by… uhhh… all this. Not far left, mind you, more like I just can’t get fussed about DEI and pronouns when this absolute clusterfuck is going on.
But if you don’t want to stick around, I understand. Be well.
Democrats might be for strategic tarriffs, but arbitrarily tarriffing our allies based on a supposed fentanyl emergency that mostly depends on how much Trump likes your leaders has no constituency whatsoever.
The Democrats could have taken the tariff power away from the President during the Biden Administration. They did not do so. Presumably because they are "divided among themselves" about whether this is a good idea or not.
I'm sorry, John, but the tariff authority granted to the President has not been abused this way, probably ever. This is a patently silly thing to engage in "both sides" recriminations for.
That's missing the point. No one is saying both sides are to blame for tariffs. They're saying Democrats cannot turn the shutdown fight into a fight over Trump's tariffs because Democrats disagree among themselves whether the tariffs are actually bad.
One elected Democrat has come out in favor of these tariffs. There's also simply a scale problem here. Past administrations , including Trump's, kept Tariffs relatively low and targeted since WW2, when not explicitly mandated by legislation. Trump is threatening to create a recession based off of his vastly expansive view of his tariff authority. Presidents have been given an inch before, and that understanding was based on them not taking the several hundred miles that Trump has.
John, we both know why Democrats didn’t do this. They didn’t take Trump as a credible threat. This is why they indulged anti-racism, degrowth, environmental justice, youth gender medicine, student debt forgiveness, etc via executive action rather than addressing inflation and winning.
In the Senate? Who in the Senate is in favor of Trump's unilateral tariffs? I understand there's a small handful of house Dems who are running the strategy of "only someone who is basically less insane Trump can win my district" and God bless but I'm not sure who that would be in the Senate.
Really? I think Dems are pretty uniformly opposed to tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Yeah the UAW has come out in favor but that’s basically it - and even in Michigan all the Dems are speaking out against tariffs. I genuinely don’t think that’s the issue here.
It shouldn’t be. But I think it will be. Republicans will immediately pivot to blaming every bad thing on the shutdown. And people will be confused and probably blame Trump but also blame Democrats and will be wondering as to why all this is happening when the majority of the senators voted to fund the government. It will be a messy bloodbath all around.
And if Democrats aren’t making their case in commercials airing all over the place by tomorrow night, it’s probably going to end up decided by random TikToks reading summaries from Grok.
It's a shame about the D.C. budget (maybe being "balanced" was a threat) but MAGA voters are far more likely to blame Trump for the consequences of his bizarre tariffs (they are a revenue source plus the sum of diplomacy: Who needs to bother with learning any of that hard stuff? if you have hammer...)
This just seems like a bad take? The president and the majority party will eat the political cost of a shutdown, and when the next election comes in two years, you can face them with clean hands and the ability to say “I’ve been against this the whole time.” If your enemies want to self-immolate, hand them the matches.
Yes, this is like being against the Iraq war. It’s that correct act of Political Judgement that Matt is always referencing when he’s getting yelled at for otherwise advocating poll-chasing
Because it was a dirty or not-so-clean CR, the Democrats are on the verge of helping muddy the waters: they have helped approve of the executive authority on tariffs and they also do not have that much of a problem with making a ridiculous cut to a Democratic city, DC services, which also saves barely any money! They have just opened themselves up to being attacked (rightly) for enabling this rather than distinguishing themselves from Republicans.
Right. The GOP handed us a gift by passing such a poisoned CR. if we just stood up and said filibuster until clean CR we would not have suffered any political consequences in the media.
A huge amount of the commentators want to have the argument about what to do with a clean CR. Matt's argument only makes sense if you imagine a clean CR. Matt belatedly realized that it's not a clean CR, but his argument only makes sense if you imagine a clean CR.
Matt- if DC has to cut $1bn from the budget, what is stopping Mayor Bowser from ending police protection for motorcades? How about stopping curbside trash pick up and just have all DC residents bring their trash to the city owned Ellipse in front of the White House?
I have a feeling this is the beginning of a process of it all going to end in a control board for DC, the end of home rule, and Ed Martin blessing it all. The Democratic senators don’t really offer reassurances they will go out of their way, since they think DC autonomy is a losing political issue.
It would be useful to have any reporting on what kind of remedies can be sought for ordinary kids and people in DC (mostly of course not in any way federal employees or contractors!) since they are about to get their limited autonomy (let’s leave anything like aspirations for state level self rule aside) restricted even more in a way that hasn’t happened in decades. All we have read recently is some senators playing dumb like they didn’t know it was a CR provision or didn’t realize the fiscal year or authorization process.
Both of the large federal workers unions were calling for a shutdown this time around. If you disagree with them that's fine, but I think you have to give "your base" a little red meat sometimes, and this was a straightforward opportunity to do so.
Even a fake (weekend) shutdown would be seen as better than this capitulation.
I think it already is a labor issue so that you can have competent and effective public services. You don’t have to turn it into one. We don’t want to wipe out the original Civil Service Reform Act or Civil Service Reform Act of 1979.
Any reference at all to federal employees unions will be toxic. Any suggestion that the priority is the federal employees themselves will be disastrous.
If the Democratic party has to score own goals to keep public sector unions happy, then we deserve to stay out of power.
There's no path where the Democratic party gets anything out of this, other than demonstrating to voters that they are willing to burn political capital on a losing fight.
You can't argue that the government does important stuff and doge is bad, while simultaneously shutting down the entire government over the DC budget or tariffs.
What are you smoking? This is a bad bill. Democrats put forward a reasonable truly-clean 30-day CR so a bipartisan deal could be worked out. You have completely lost touch. The Dems WANT A FIGHT.
Under any GOP budget scenario I am looking at a wage cut or losing my job. I’m sick and tired of this “unpopular but smart” crap. The smart thing is to fight the fascists. Matt, your policy analysis is good but your political instincts are flaming garbage.
You mean the righteous anger that resulted in the Democrats flipping 41 seats and taking control of the House in 2018? Let’s put those pussy hats back on then!
the GOP pretended like it wasn't and I guess some people drank the kool-aid on that, but IMO "with how fucking evil we are you should have flipped 60 seats" is not a super compelling argument to explain away your election loss
And is that best achieved by helping Trump conduct the government he wants, or by doing what a theoretical winning coalition of potential Dem voters want you to do? Let's not pretend that just because Matt says so, that rolling over on this spending bill somehow betters our chances next November.
>Let's not pretend that just because Matt says so, that rolling over on this spending bill somehow betters our chances next November.<
Let's also not pretend that shutting down the government helps our chances next November. The overwhelmingly dominant factors next November will be national conditions and thermostatic effects.
Oh I agree completely. It's a matter of preferred strategy in a dynamic environment, there is no one provable right or wrong answer in a vacuum. My argument is only to say that "sit on your hands for 18 months" is not in any way more guaranteed to win seats in 2026 than a more oppositional course of action.
Describe your plan that results in your preferred outcome. How will you get the Republicans -- who control the House, the Senate and the Presidency -- to do what you want?
Republicans wanted a fighter and got Trump. If Democrats want a fighter too they will not get the next Obama, they will get the next Huey Long. And all the rhetoric about "liberalism," "the rule of law," and "pluralism" would be for naught.
With all of that said, in 18 months neither swing voters nor party line voters will be paying attention to what happened 18 months before. If you don’t realize how much will happen in the intervening 18 months you haven’t been paying attention to the past 12 years of American history.
they could have chosen any one of the poison pills to make their stand on, draw attention to it, make the media play that story constantly. say you can't support increasing the president's tariff power when he is using to crash markets. boom, done. now the media will cover this poison pill the GOP was hoping to sneak in under the cover of darkness.
some people are saying these pills were put there because the GOP wants the Dems to do a shutdown, and the might be true, but just because your opponent is offering a gambit does not mean you are obliged to reject it -- it's often the winning play to accept the gambit and give battle even at the place of your enemy's choosing
It doesn't seem like it, and next year, there are going to be a lot of primary candidates who do not agree with your project, Matt. This is a pennywise-pounfoolish approach.
Are you seriously asking why a CANADIAN, a member of a country our current president has threatened to invade over and over again, a member of the country he has intentionally tried to make worse with his garbage tariff policy, a country he thinks would be better off as a 51st state.... you're asking why they are upset Democrats are too weak to stand up to Trump?
Yes. They should have become a citizen and voted for more Democrats if they wanted the Democrats to have enough seats in the House to stand up to Trump.
Schumer was a major reason we even had a Senate majority despite the best efforts of progressives and Republicans to force out moderates like Joe Manchin.
Let's start with honesty. Manchin was a republican posing as a dem. AND what has Schumer done to show leadership? Is it raising money, or is it moving the party to the right? Either way, I would rather lose with integrity than to be complicit in 47s gutting of D.C. public ed, policing, and fire.
He was also a Republican who voted with the Dems 70+% of the time - and bringing Shelley Moore Capito along on a couple of those votes. What other West Virginia senate candidate would do the same?
Manchin could've had literally crossed the aisle any time he wanted, given Republicans the majority and have an easy path to reelection in 2024. But he didn't.
At least we've established you're about being okay with Republicans winning.
They press the issues their weird groyper staffers and the man himself wants but there’s a hell of a lot going on that next to no one else actually wants
All of this is true and well said. I do just want to add though, part of the big tent in the big tent Democratic party we need is safe seat progressives getting to be cranky about leadership taking strategic dives. Centrists need to just live with being criticized by that part of the coalition as surely as the left needs to live with criticism from the pragmatic center.
Yeah, no, this ain't it. Dems need to stop trying to be "savvy" like their consultants tell them and instead start thinking about what their actual constituents want. Judging by the town halls that have been happening, Dems are about to reap the whirlwind from this decision. They'll have nobody to blame but themselves.
They are doing something. They are making Trump and the Republicans choose how they want to govern, rather than letting them shut down the entire government and blame the Democrats.
Exactly. Taking a chainsaw to Federal departments and randomly applying tariffs is going to blow up on the Republicans. Why would we get in their way and give them an opportunity to blame Democrats when things go south? Give them the rope to hang themselves.
>Judging by the town halls that have been happening, Dems are about to reap the whirlwind from this decision. They'll have nobody to blame but themselves.<
Really? Democrats are going to sit out the next election and forego an opportunity to hand MAGA a major political defeat because, twenty months previously, party leaders declined to shutdown the government?
This doesn't explain why Schumer said he would vote against it, *then* cave and vote for. That does absolutely nobody any good at all. Worst of both worlds?
Yeah exactly this is what I don’t understand. I’m not saying it’s wrong to vote for the CR if you think Musk is going to ratfuck the whole government, but why the fake resistance?
I mean, you are clearly correct. Democrats do want fighters. That's why all but one House Democrat voted no and why most Senate Dems will vote to filibuster. That is absolutely what the base of the party wants. My argument is that doing what they want would be a bad idea.
The problem is your argument is terrible. “It doesn’t matter because Elon can do it anyway and also the Supreme Court, ect.” So what? Typical contrarian BS.
The problem is many people equate policy extremism with procedural extremism. I am completely fine with policy moderation in order to win as long as Democrats are willing to break things and move fast to counter MAGA. That's what Schumer is refusing to do here and it's infuriating. It's not 1998 anymore.
This. I’m still infuriated with Biden for not executive ordering the people to do harm to Trump and other Republican leaders if they are able like to Marc Anthony in Rome, ffs
These comments are so funny because most Americans don’t care, republicans clearly want a shut down and democrats would so obviously be blamed for it. The poison pill for DC terrible, but “Dems shut down the government, stopped your social security to protect DC, and support fraud, waste and abuse” messages write themselves, and more importantly takes the heat off of trump’s economic mishandling and tariffs.
And what will democrats say to defend the shut down? They want to protect the rule of law? They want to protect an unpopular bureaucracy? What makes you think voters give a fuck about the rule of law lol. Like it’s nuts, a waste of time and pointless.
Save the energy for filibustering the cuts to Medicaid
Agreed. Liberals need to truly reckon with the fact that the median American voter doesn't care about 99% of what liberals value like the rule of law, anti-corruption and scientific research. None of these can be the hill we choose to fight on.
I mean the greatest self own was scientist, scientific institutions and universities taking overtly political stances the last decade as if the other shoe wouldn’t drop. It’s wild to me that such organizations that are suppose to be capable of intellectual rigor didn’t see where the logical conclusion would end
I suppose what you mean is that we need a clearer separation between scientific advisory bodies and political actors and perhaps Dems and liberals broadly are guilty of confusing the two, but gutting government funded basic research and refusing to conduct research altogether into societally relevant topics because of dogmatic beliefs is going to end badly in the long run.
To those disagreeing with Matt; I have to ask why you think it’s good strategy for Dems to move government focus from Trump’s impending recession to a government shutdown - whomever they blame. Right now, Trump’s policies are destroying the economy. We shut it down and we’re seen as destroying it. Yes, I’m in the don’t get in the way of him undermining himself camp. Not an easy course to chart, but woe to us if we get lead astray by shiny objects - the delicious and mystical “fight” we’re all jonesing for.
There is some element of "never stop an enemy when they're destroying themselves." It sucks because the things they're breaking are things Democrats care about. But, to some degree, voters sometimes have to feel real pain to learn a lesson. And it has to be crystal clear who caused it.
I think a lot of the criticism is just venting because it sucks being kicked around by cowards and morons. There's probably also some wishful thinking that Dems could affect the outcome if they barricaded the doors or pulled fire alarms or something.
There does seem to be a strong element of "Why do Republicans get to call the shots on this, that, and the other thing, just because they won the Presidency, the House, and the Senate???"
We fucking lost! It sucks and I hate it. But this frustration was priced into my worldview in mid-November of last year (and it was half priced in by July).
Because when the recession happens everyone will blame Trump anyway! We may as well try to stop some of the damage to our people while we can, and make no mistake, the GOP is absolutely playing politics in this way already -- they are deliberately and intentionally targeting our people, our voters, our social class out of nothing more than hatred and spite. They want to hurt us. They want us to suffer. It is pathetic and despicable for Democrats to take that punch and ask for more instead of doing the barest minimum to fight back when they have a huge political runway for 2026.
My husband’s a vaccine researcher (covid vaccines, ty very much). His work life is currently hell. He might lose his job. You think I don’t think every day about Elon and his pubescent dogebags cackling as they blow up my family’s life with the touch of a button? I’m keenly - keenly! - sensitive to what’s going on, and if I see Dems shouting and taking useless principled stands that move the spotlight even a millimeter off Trump and Elon, I’ll stick a nail in my eye.
And which voting bloc cares a fig about DC, again? I bet at least half of Americans don’t even know it’s a real, functioning city with public schools and police and shit. I’m painfully aware of the damage republicans are doing (fwiw, my husband’s in vaccine research), but job number one is to get them out of there, and if that means bending over now, then the right thing to do is bend over.
The D.C. provision is so outrageous - taking away $1 billion D.C.'s money from its already balanced budget, money that is like 8% of the total budget - that if this did not merit the filibuster I do not know what would.
The good news is that if the Senate Democrats are nice to Republicans maybe Susan Collins will sponsor some legislation reversing it at some undetermined point down the line (that will die in committee).
Also I don't think a shutdown would hurt Democrats in 2026. Most would blame Republicans for it (https://wapo.st/3R7K2nr - gift link).
Absolutely spineless showing by Schumer. Primary him.
Signed,
A Moderate Democrat Who wants to Win Elections
Also the strategy is clear. Filibuster until the D.C. provision is removed. That is a very reasonable ask and one that would probably work!!!
Why sink the party and help destroy the federal government and impose huge costs on already beleaguered federal workers to help out DC? Even if that worked (wouldn’t) how does that pencil out?
Taking on helping DC while shutting down the government will be used to beat the Dems over the head on social media, using race and urban versus rural issues to convince their electorate they are on the right track while at the same time continuing their federal deconstruction. If the Dem’s had an effective unified party centric media message and implementation of the same it would help. I’d like to see a “fight” but a winnable one and this is not it. Patience is not fun exercise .
Yeah anybody who thinks Republicans would give in on this for any reason is delusional. Why do they think they put it in there in the first place? It was to either get their toy (screwing a mostly-black urban population center) or get a shutdown. They got their toy, for now.
The idea is that you use the shutdown to get the DC rider removed. That’s a reasonable ask and I believe has a good chance of working.
Guess we’ll never know.
I understand—the ask is to take huge political risks and, if you don’t get your demand met (likely), impose huge nationwide costs for the sake of the DC budget. It should not surprise you that people who have priorities other than DC say “no”.
I’m not surprised, no. But DC Home Rule is something that the Democratic Party has said is very important to them. This is about teachers, firefighters, police, etc. in a city that has a larger population than two states. It’s frankly unconscionable to allow republicans to cut $1 billion (again roughly 8 percent) of the budget for no good reason other than to own the libs. By not even trying to negotiate this piece with the Republican senate, Senate Dems are sending the message that DC and its residents don’t matter.
There are political risks to forcing a shutdown, no one is denying that, certainly not me anyway. But the poll I shared suggests republicans would shoulder much more blame than democrats. I also think that most people won’t remember either way in November 2026. The January 2019 shutdown was not a large campaign issue in the 2020 elections.
There are also political risks to ignoring what a majority of the party seems to want. The progressive often have bad instincts on how to win elections; on that point, I could not agree with Matt more. But just because they’re often wrong doesn’t mean they’re wrong about this.
I mean “having a postal service” and “the existence of the department of education and the CFPB” and “not having Russia conquer Eastern Europe” are ALSO things that are pretty important to Democrats! There is a lot going on right now!
The move here would be to pick a fight over tariffs + DC budget, talk about tariffs on TV while the government is shut down, then capitulate on tariffs (because the GOP Congress is not going to reel in Trump's tariff actions anyway) in exchange for removing the DC budget provision which everyone agrees is absurd. This gives donors the fight they want, keeps the focus on tariffs, gives high-edu / high-info voters a win on the DC provision, and removes a bad law.
You have more of a plan that the entire party in D.C. NOT EVEN KIDDING.
That sounds pretty good to me.
Or maybe Matt would prefer it this way: republicans are defunding the police in our nation’s capital. Schumer could stop them, but chooses not to.
Which elections do you want to win? DC city council?
Edward - as more of a political moderate - do you think the dems played this right?
Yes, I’m with Matt on this. Although i also think it’s not super consequential. This might be a good time for the party to test pushing back against the left and holding firm. So AOC and the left say JUMP and the moderate Dems say not this time. Let’s see how that plays out. Some meltdowns here - ignoring them is an option.
If you genuinely think this was not super consequential, you're completely out of touch. This was an existential failure of moderate Democrats, and it's going to lead to the left's very own Tea Party moment. If you care about moderation *AT ALL*, this was a calamity for you.
You don’t know the meaning of the word existential.
You're lying about being "a moderate Democrat who wants to win elections" if you want Democrats to waste time and money primarying someone for not going along with progressive activists.
I’m not lying at all. Feel free to go read my stack and decide if I’m focused on winning enough for you.
This isn’t about appeasing “the progressives,” it’s about challenging the republicans when they put forward an untenable policy when the democrats have leverage to do so. It doesn’t make sense to highlight how insane and damaging a cut of $1 billion to DC’s budget is and then turn your back on the one tactics that could defeat it.
Maybe “the progressives” are against letting this budget slide through, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong, electorally or otherwise.
What leverage? The GOP control the presidency, House, Senate, and Supreme Court and they ultimately don't care that much if the federal government is or isn't running.
Well they can filibuster this budget resolution with 41 votes my dude that is the whole thing we are arguing about.
And then what?
Shutdown the government
?
Profit
You use the filibuster to negotiate a better resolution!
And I read your stack and you argued that Democrats don't need to change much, despite the fact that Democrats need to be competitive in Senate races in states like Iowa, Ohio, and Alaska that Harris all lost by double digits if they want to flip the Senate in 2026. So yeah, I'm not sure I'm convinced you're that focused on winning.
Haha alright lots of luck calling people liars I guess.
You may be moderate but you also clearly live in DC and are too close to this issue. “No no this isn’t like the climate groups or trans activities or Palestinians—this time it is MY ox getting hired!”
It sucks and I feel bad for DC and for you but if you previously opposed this kind of thing 1B in local government cuts should not change your mind. It’s, like, the least of the bad ideas the administration is currently doing.
I don’t know what to say except that I believe that the Senate (and House) Dems have a special obligation to protect D.C. home rule, and not even trying to negotiate this issue means that they basically don’t care about this.
On many trans and climate issues and Israel issues, I (again agreeing with Matt Y) think the progressives staked out positions that were substantively wrong on the merits, in addition to politically bad for winning elections. That’s not the case with DC funding, and I therefore reject the analogy.
Bad outcome, agreed. But the council and mayor would have more of a leg to stand on if they ever devoted even one second to judicious governance that included targeted reductions in spending. Our smallish statelet has been floating on a river of tax receipts from well compensated federal knowledge workers and appreciating home values. Even bright blue MD is talking about a middle class tax cut while they raise revenue from other sources. The day the DC Council offers to return any DC resident's taxes is the day I'll know we're living in a simulation. It may be tough medicine, but forcing Bowser and Mendelson to balance competing priorities and actually save a buck could be worth the pain. I'm certain there is fat to trim.
If you don't like Bowser and Mendelson, vote against them. Most of us voted for them, and think they run the city pretty decently.
I personally would like to see my city run by my elected representatives, and not have my school and police budget used as a political football for no discernible reason.
I wonder if it's possible for Maryland to take back most of the land it ceded to DC (except for a core area including the Capitol, White House, Supreme Court, National Mall, Federal Triangle, and parts of town where the dominant land use is federal offices).
Virginia took back its part long ago. I can see why we want the core areas to be under the direct control of Congress and not give one state disproportionate power over the immediate environs of the federal government; but there is also no particular reason for that to extend to residential areas in the northern corner or east of the Anacostia River. Turning a big chunk of the District of Columbia into Columbia County, Maryland would be a good way to End Taxation Without Representation.
Yep, but progressives insist on DC statehood despite the fact that it’s unconstitutional and Texas v. White exists. They want those sweet senators and EC votes, but they forget that Texas is the only state that can split itself into up to 5 states unilaterally because Congress preapproved it in the bill that admitted Texas to the union.
I’m not clear why they need to be forced to do this if they are running a surplus. Congress, not the DC Council, needs to learn to spend within its means.
I don't get it. You're saying the district is financially healthy, and therefore Bowser and Mendelson need to cut spending as "medicine"? Medicine for what?
Hostage taking is bad! -signed, an American citizen who wants the government to continue to function instead of constantly shutting down and/or almost defaulting on its debts because of minority opposition to majority policy efforts.
If there was a reliable way to hang this around republican's necks, I'd be more inclined to suffer the short-term pain for long-term benefit. But since they (republicans) are essentially unified in opposition to a shutdown, I think public opinion would quickly turn on democrats.
Well, you have to be smart about it! You can't be like "welp, they were opposed to a shutdown and we made them do it, so that makes us the bad guys." You have to be like, "look, the GOP gave us the choice between shutdown and a crappy plan that would have hurt you, the regular American, so we told them, no, we don't want your crappy plan, give us something better for our constituents or we won't support you. If that means a shutdown, that's on you! You have the majority and elections have consequences, as you delight in telling us, along with 'cry harder, libs'!"
I swear to God, I hate this self-fulfilling prophecy of "only Republicans are good at politics, and all Democrats can do is roll over and play dead."
But the crappy plan won't hurt (most) Americans. For most, it will be business as usual, which indeed is the point of a CR (a very targeted "poison pill" or two notwithstanding). Whereas all the people going to DC museums and parks for spring break would just hear that the democrats ruined their trip for very boring and technical reasons that they don't care about (for example).
So far the courts are making a dent in the administration's antics*. It's slow and frustrating and still painful in the interim. But I'm inclined to let it play out a little while longer at least and see if the GOP can continue stepping on rakes.
*Relevant to us, I recently served on an NSF panel that went without a hitch (the staff that got DOGED practically all got their jobs back, for now at least). NIH study sections have been rescheduled. Again, I'm not excusing the nonsense that's happening, but some guardrails are kicking in.
It shows a lack of creativity when people on one side try to co-opt the tactics of the other. Shutting down the government is what Republicans do. It's a bad look for Dems. It's the strategic equivalent of when, after 2008, the Republicans imitated Shepard Fairey's "hope" poster by plastering their own folks and slogans on similar signage.
Congress is responsible for DC, unfortunately. Is the DC government going to continue to function with an 8 percent across the board cut? Not very well I’d wager.
I agree, it is a dumb short sighted decision by Republicans. I advise voting against them.
Funnily enough, people in DC don't get to vote.
For president they do! You are right that is a funny observation under the circumstances though.
Why are you so confident people would buck history and blame the Republicans?
The poll I posted!!!
I just don't see how shutting down the government for an 8% cut in the DC budget is worth it, especially when one of your primary national fights is over validating the value of the federal workforce. Maybe you can shift the blame, but given the uneven agenda setting power between Trump and the opposition congress, it seems unlikely.
Where I do have sympathy for the "do something" crowd is that communications mismatch. The Dems just completely lack any rallying point leader. There's no one who can confidently and coherently make the case for the Democrats. Theoretically the Dems have a decent bench, but everyone running for 2028 is focused on 2028, not right now.
Part of the problem is that Schumer is a very ineffective communicator!
Also further normalizing shut downs over normal budget fights is, in itself, bad.
The good ship Let's Not Normalize Bad Things has sailed past the horizon, run aground on a reef, and been eaten by sharks.
I don’t disagree generally. But these are extenuating circumstances
I feel like you ignored Matts main point. Also, this far bigger than DC which in the grand scheme of electoral politics matter little to none.
“ Also I don't think a shutdown would hurt Democrats in 2026.”
I doubt it would, but it would hurt, you know, people, in 2025. Including those in DC.
If there was a shutdown Trump would have just misappropriated the entire DC budget.
I'm pretty skeptical of this.
1: Polling seems to indicate pretty strongly that people would blame Republicans for a shutdown.
2: If Trump really wanted a shutdown, he could just do it. He didn't have to whip the house personally to pass the CR.
3: In terms of political consequences, this seems like it will trigger a massive swing against moderates from normal Dems (like me!) That will probably push the party way further left than you think is optimal to win, in a way that will probably impact the election more than a shutdown would.
Trump plainly doesn’t want a shutdown resulting from chaos in the Republican controlled House. Which makes sense.
Does he want a shutdown that he can paint as a minority of Blue State Senators holding the country hostage because they don’t want to cut grants for Trans activist immigrants? Would he prefer that as an alternative explanation for (looks around) all this? I’m not convinced he doesn’t. He’s stuck in a tariff spiral but can’t admit he was wrong and he’s addicted to being the story again. To me that signals he’s ready to move to the next circus.
I guarantee his aids are whispering in his ear right now “we were trying to gut the federal government and Democrats are offering to do it for us.” Can you imagine the DOGE boys running around with 80% of federal employees home and unable to even check email?
Yeah, this is my take as well. I don't buy that there's any accurate polling of how Americans "would have reacted" to a shutdown. Maybe they would've blamed the GOP, or maybe they wouldn't have. But a shutdown driven by Dems was Trump's only get out of jail free card available.
Now there's no crutch. Trump owns the economy and all of these tariffs he's shooting himself in the foot with. This is far and away the most clear eyed cause-and-effect democrats will ever get to bring to the American people. Of course, being democrats, we/they still might squander the opportunity. But the long play is the best strategy here and I think Schumer played it deftly.
I think "deftly" is an overstatement. I think this was the best of a set of bad options.
(these are word quibbles, I think we 98% agree)
If I've learned one lesson, it's that Americans vote for the party that's out of power when the economy is bad. Full stop. There's no deeper thinking than that.
> I don't buy that there's any accurate polling of how Americans "would have reacted" to a shutdown.
Agreed. A prior question would need to be how many Americans understand that, "GOP holds the House, Senate, and Presidency" isn't a true and complete story; this bill needs 60 Senators. In the event of a shutdown, a non-trivial fraction doesn't know this today and says they will blame Republicans, but will learn it tomorrow and blame Democrats, rightly or not.
A backlash? For what? Declining to destroy the government like the Republicans?
Yeah, what is up with the comments tonight? Strong flavor of:
-We have to do something!
-Shutting down the government is something.
-Therefore, we have to shut down the government!
No you don't! Think about it for five minutes, what are the risks (high) and benefits (minimal)?
Sometimes the other team makes a good play. You have to stay on the field and keep playing, you can't go on tilt.
The Republicans made a good play getting their CR through the house, and now the SB comments are completely on tilt.
A lot of us live in DC and our local government is going to get destroyed by this bill for no reason. We'd rather have a general government shutdown until the House can come back in session and then have Congress pass a sane bill that doesn't wreck our government for fun.
Well, OK, but that’s pretty self interested. “We should shut down the entire federal government for everyone to avoid unwise local budget cuts” may make sense for people in DC, and I don’t blame them for wanting it, but you can’t seriously be pissed of that the rest of us don’t want that outcome.
The federal government "shutting down" does not actually involve meaningful durable changes to how the federal government runs. It means a week or two of administrative inconvenience.
So all those times the Republicans did it, you at the time regarded it as a minor inconvenience and well within bounds, right?
And were it just a minor inconvenience, then it isn’t actually much leverage at all, and your agita over it is misplaced.
It's magical thinking to assume this is what would occur.
100 percent.
1: Polling seems to indicate pretty strongly that people would blame Republicans for a shutdown.
Do you mean the Quinnipiac poll? I see a lot of commenters leaning on it, but while it was released today, it was *taken* on February 19.
I wouldn't put much stock in month-old speculations about who would blame whom.
https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3921
I think the idea that voters would blame Trump for a shutdown we are all acknowledging is a decision to be made by democrats is kinda crazy. The only polling I’ve seen comes from when it wasn’t clear what would be the cause of a shutdown, but a breakdown in the GOP House was a very plausible conclusion. That isn’t true any longer.
I also think that Americans mostly don’t care much about what happens in DC itself (a huge problem with it not being a state!). It sucks. It’s unfair. It’s based on literally false beliefs (most people will assume the federal taxpayers are funding DC). But I don’t know what real leverage it provides.
Shutdown might conceivably push the country into recession. Believe me, as a Democrat, you do not want a recession (now). Far better for the party's fortunes to delay its arrival for another year or two.
You do if it forces Trump to make concessions.
You want a recession now that has turned into a strong recovery by 2028?
I sure as hell don't want to help Vance and the GOP brand in that cycle. YMMV.
Longest recession in the postwar period was eighteen months. Average is about eleven months.
We ARE going into a recession. The craziness of every day is going to keep Americans from spending, AND it will keep business leaders from spending because tomorrow the entire tariff picture, or even who are our allies, may change. Beyond an overpriced stock market, it is happening. The passage of this CR, or not, will not make the difference.
>>We ARE going into a recession.<<
Some say that. Others disagree.
I hope it doesn't arrive soon, is all I'm saying. Nobody has a crystal ball, but if does get here in 2025, that's bad for Democrats. AFAIC an at least reasonably good election in 2026 seems baked into the cake for Dems. Never say never, but it would take an astonishingly weird set of circumstances for Democrats not to at least take back the House (they need what, five seats?).
For me the scarier election is the one looming a bit further on the horizon, ie 2028. If we ARE going to have a recession between now and then (and I agree there is surely one headed our way) it's better for Democrats (and for America) that the effects of this event have made the electorate angry toward the GOP. And that means a delayed arrival. By contrast, it's very conceivable that an early recession (ie, one arriving in 2025) results in a 2028 that looks a lot like 1956, 1972, or 1984.
I don't think we know what the recession precipitating (or hastening) event(s) is. A shutdown could be a factor.
I want Musk stopped. If that doesn't happen the 2028 election might not happen either.
I want Musk stopped, too. Which is why it's not a good idea to enhance his power by shutting down the government he is trying to shut down.
The way to actually stop Musk is to stop the GOP, and the only way to do that is to win elections and take power away from them. Unfortunately the first national opportunity to do that isn't for another year and a half. But it will arrive before you know it. And in the meanwhile we've got courts, and protests, and the administration's large numbers of political own goals.
Charles, you are assuming the GOP plays by the rules. Elon & Don do not play by the rules. They break shit. They ruin lives. This is what they do. So, somehow a non-operating government for four days would have given them so much more power? Please explain how because I've heard this from too many other dems today, too.
We also have the power of the filibuster, which is real, unlike the first two things you mentioned.
lol. They will do tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Seriously, there won’t be concessions unless and until Democrats take the House.
But we shouldn’t want a shutdown or a recession simply because both will be bad. That should be enough.
Sometimes you need to do a bad thing to stop a worse thing. And "Trump won't cave" is a prediction that doesn't have a great history.
What are you doing to Trump that Trump wasn’t trying to do anyhow when you shut down the government? You people are acting like somehow Trump is suddenly going to become responsible and discover how essential the people he’s trying to destroy actually are to the country.
Of course not. What we're doing, hopefully, is tanking his poll numbers, which he does care about.
There may well be opportunities to take a legislative stand later this year, or next year. The future is hard to predict. But this wasn't the right opportunity. I think Matt's correct about this.
Do you know anyone who has been seriously harmed by the fiasco since Jan 20 - because people are dying & others are having their lives ruined... but maybe later this year we can again give a damn, maybe if it's the right timing.
The risks only get greater as you move toward the midterms, as does Musk's vandalism.
I don't think it would, though. If push comes shove, Republicans would eliminate the filibuster before offering concessions. But, in practice, they don't enough whether the government is in shutdown or not to do either.
Not gonna happen
Hey guys? Deliberately provoking a recession is bad! People have gone bananas.
1. The party that votes to shutdown the government always gets the blame - I'm not sure what polling you think suggests otherwise
2. Trump always plays head I win, tails you lose. He'd get the blame for a shutdown if he pushed it, but if Dems get the blame then they can wreak havoc without anyone stopping them - in many ways, probably permanently.
3. Trying to push the Dems further left sounds like a great way to continue losing.
If Dems filibustered then they *would* be the ones causing the shutdown. For good reason maybe, but it would be on them.
Agreed. Why bother voting in democrats in the midterms if they can’t use the powers they have now? Don’t worry they’re going to wave placards and wear white.
Point 9 which is the crux of the argument would still state that even with a House majority, Democrats should cave because otherwise Trump will just fire 100% of the federal workforce. At some point you have to use your leverage and get ahead of the narrative. I then go back to my comment, what’s the point in voting in democrats who don’t oppose and just cave.
With a House majority, Democrats would (hopefully) be able to pass a bill that represents an actual alternative to measure against the Republican refusal to deal.
What we have presently is no alternative proposal-just a refusal to allow a vote. That’s especially problematic here, where Democrats aren’t entirely clear about their demands. DC budget? Tariffs? Ending DOGE?
Trump says no. This is my budget. Democrats cave because otherwise he shuts down.
This seems like a very different situation where it would be much easier to blame Trump for a shutdown.
No, I’m gaming out that unless Democrats have control over the Presidency they should cave because otherwise Trump will fire everyone anyway.
Most of what's happening right now (e.g., DOGE destroying agencies and slashing aid budgets) is happening in spite of the fact that money was explicitly appropriated by Congress. The entire GOP strategy right now is to make a D win in the midterms irrelevant.
Democrats need new leadership to stop getting out played. This is just embarrassing. They can’t even call their bluff or show voters how bad elons eventual goal would be or even get rid of the senate filibuster. Leadership knows they’re going to be blamed for the recession regardless right? Do they have a strategy for this?
"Democrats don't have power" is a bizarre thing to say in the context of discussing whether Democrats should use a very specific legislative power that they have.
I remember 2019 when the Democrats won the House. There were some hearings, but relatively few actual changes to policy. The best the Democrats could do was block legislation, but the filibuster already allows them that power (which I would note they are explicitly *not* using.)
All that was back in Trump Term #1 when there was some lip service to the Constitutional order and the Supreme Court wasn't reliably right-wing. There is none of that now. And by the time the Democrats return to Congress (hypothetically), many of the changes that Trump and Musk wish to make will be a fait accompli.
It remains very irritating to me that everyone’s first reaction to be furious at Democrats for things Republicans are doing.
Everyone is furious that the Ds aren't putting up even token resistance to what the Republicans are doing.
They are absolutely resisting—they do not currently have the power to do much, so you are mad they didn’t do something dumb just to “do something”. Your anger is misplaced and you should be mad at the Republicans and support the people resisting them. Instead you are furious with senate democrats who oppose what is happening! It’s silly.
I would love for you to provide a detailed explanation of how the Ds are resisting. Better yet, present it in a way that actual voters can understand. Because right now the uniform message I'm hearing from (especially my very moderate friends) is "this is bad, but where the fuck are the Democrats?"
OK. They voted against most of his cabinet picks. Schumer voted against all of them and encouraged his peers to do so. During the confirmation hearings, they expressed opposition at length. They didn’t have the votes to block any. When Republicans actually introduce legislation, I suspect Democrats will oppose it—even stuff they kind of agree with. That is the job of opposition Senators, and that is the power they have. I am not sure what else you expect from them (other than, apparently, provoking a government shutdown for which they will be blamed and which wouldn’t likely accomplish much at all).
They voted against people like Pete Hegseth to run the DoD and RFK Jr. to run HHS (and even there, Senator Whitehouse waffled a bit due to his "friendship") and you think that's an excellent example of "resistance"? That's basically just the bare minimum level of competence I would expect from any legislator, not "resistance." On other nominees they split and voted various ways.
(Frankly I don't even know how they voted on most of them, and rather than that being a knock on myself, I think it's incredibly bizarre that the party had no clear messaging strategy about it. "Encouraged his peers to do so" what the fuck kind of weak-kneed party leadership is that?)
The GOP is not a party of broad legislation. The next expected piece of legislation from the Republican party is going to be a disastrous budget that strikes down something like 2/3 of Medicaid. But that will be done through reconciliation so the Democrats will have literally no option other than messaging, which they've been inept at. (Maybe they'll "encourage their peers not to vote for it" or something.) There is also a debt limit fight somewhere in September, which *can* be filibustered but will be much more politically risky than the current fight -- and ironically, becomes *vastly more likely to be the fight Ds get pressured into picking* due to the political blowback from their fuckup today.
I am sympathetic to the leftists whining about Dems being spineless for the first time in years. Matt and Dem leadership have over learned the lessons of the shutdown fights under Obama. We don't need to walk on eggshells with the election so far away -- just shut it down and demand a clean CR. not hard
Yup. We're still more than 18 months away from the damn midterms. Anything the Ds do right now is for their base, and irrelevant to what happens in November 2026.
The base will turn out in November, 2026. Hence, the word "base".
The question is how to turn out the center-left and center-right. Forcing a shutdown at this point isn't likely to help.
I think you’re confusing the “base” of the Democratic Party with a political left/right alignment. There are plenty of center-left and center-rightish people who are absolutely determined to see a Democratic victory in 2026. I’m one of them. That’s the “base” of the party.
Then there are plenty of people who are not tightly aligned to the Democratic Party. A very important feature of these folks is that overwhelmingly they are not deep, obsessive followers of political news. The chance that a shutdown fight in March 2025 heavily informs those votes in November 2026 is pretty low, on average. This is the time when the Democrats can do risky things with very little risk that the median low-information voter will remember it.
Overall your comment seems super confused about a bunch of things.
The entire GOP is making it very clear that they want this CR. They have unified their caucus in a way not seen recently to get it done. Giving your opponents what they want is not "avoiding a trap," it's surrendering.
On the second point, the Ds didn't need to win some complicated policy battle. They needed to demonstrate that they have some fight in them, to motivate their base. The downstream effects of this are going to be much worse than anyone realizes (and yes, the most likely effect is to hand power and the microphone to the left, which becomes the leadership of the opposition by default.)
I can accept the bitter pill but this episode highlights that Democratic leadership does not fit the vibes of the moment. It's one thing to make the strategically correct set of actions, but it's another to get your base to feel like their concerns were fought for.
This is indeed the dilemma.
And to me it's largely downstream of the filibuster. What would make everyone happy would be a situation in which Democrats uniformly vote "no" to show they are fighting, but it passes anyway because the GOP is in the majority.
Senate Dems could have just done the exact same thing but done a better job tilting their rhetoric to fit the mood of the base. The base is pissed off. Try to sound like you're pissed off. Moderating your tone doesn't make you sound strategic, it makes you sound apathetic.
I'm less and less into performative grandstanding as I get older, but I could have gotten behind a day-one message of "No matter whether we're in the majority or minority, we think bills* should get an up-or-down vote. We oppose this bill on its merits, and we want every Senator to be on the record of whether they support or oppose every bill brought to the floor".
*or resolution, nerds
THIS
This would not make me happy.
The progressive activists on social media are not representative of the base.
Yes. But the actual base is fired up on this one. I hate the internet leftists as much as the next guy, but me and my friends who were all Joe Biden's strongest soldiers for the last four years are infuriated. Right now the entire Democratic leadership strategy appears to be becoming invisible and making as little noise as possible, allowing the focus to be on Trump and hoping he steps in it so hard that everything falls apart around him. And who knows, it might work this time since he's the most insane he has ever been, but this strategy has failed every other time we've played it since 2016.
YEP... there are maybe eight or nine national public voices right now, and only a couple of them seem to even be angry. They are more lost than...
I’m afraid you’ve badly misconstrued the view of the many who oppose cloture and simply want a clean CR. It’s not hard to point out that this CR sneakily allows Trump to extend tariffs for longer. “I won’t vote for tariffs that destroy jobs and causes inflation” isn’t hard to message on.
I agree that a hypothetical tariff fight might have made sense, but Democrats unfortunately are divided among themselves on tariffs which is one reason why legislation to check Trump's power in this regard didn't happen during Biden's presidency.
Are Dems “Really divided” on these tariffs? Honestly asking. IMO the OP is right that Senate Dems didn’t even try and float a message to see if it could gain ground. Matt what’s your take on the whole saga yesterday of everyone pretending they would vote no but not meaning the cloture? It does seem like Senate Dems are totally in a panick and refusing to organize.
Right - it's not like Bernie or AOC or former Senator Brown are out here celebrating these tariffs. It's basically Jared Golden and some think tank guys Matt gets in Twitter fights with.
Hi Jesse! Welcome back!
Not for too long - I basically was just spending $5 to check in on how things were here and they were about what I expected. Expected to lurk but then this incredibly terrible move happened.
Which is why Matt should probably understand if the pushback is bad in this comment section, that has agreed w/ Matt to punch anybody to the left of Joe Manchin for the past four months that among normie Democrat's it'll be even worse and it's probably bad for his grand moderation project for moderates to be seen, to use a non-woke term, Donald and Elon's little bitches who do what they want.
Like, a Dem Tea Party if it happens in 2026 won't be on left/moderate axis, it'll be on the fight/surrender axis.
I'm AOC/Pritzker-Bill Kristol-pilled. Then again, by his recent articles and posts on Bluesky, Bill Kristol is to the left of Matt at this point.
Aw, I wish you’d stick around. I mean it sincerely. Partly because I want viewpoint diversity, partly because, honestly, I feel myself pulled more left by… uhhh… all this. Not far left, mind you, more like I just can’t get fussed about DEI and pronouns when this absolute clusterfuck is going on.
But if you don’t want to stick around, I understand. Be well.
What about Democratic opposition to NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
Yeah, no Democrat is arguing for tariffs on Canada ffs
Democrats might be for strategic tarriffs, but arbitrarily tarriffing our allies based on a supposed fentanyl emergency that mostly depends on how much Trump likes your leaders has no constituency whatsoever.
This is untrue you have slow boring of hard boards’d yourself into pencil shavings bro
Which part is untrue?
The Democrats could have taken the tariff power away from the President during the Biden Administration. They did not do so. Presumably because they are "divided among themselves" about whether this is a good idea or not.
I'm sorry, John, but the tariff authority granted to the President has not been abused this way, probably ever. This is a patently silly thing to engage in "both sides" recriminations for.
That's missing the point. No one is saying both sides are to blame for tariffs. They're saying Democrats cannot turn the shutdown fight into a fight over Trump's tariffs because Democrats disagree among themselves whether the tariffs are actually bad.
One elected Democrat has come out in favor of these tariffs. There's also simply a scale problem here. Past administrations , including Trump's, kept Tariffs relatively low and targeted since WW2, when not explicitly mandated by legislation. Trump is threatening to create a recession based off of his vastly expansive view of his tariff authority. Presidents have been given an inch before, and that understanding was based on them not taking the several hundred miles that Trump has.
I don’t think they do disagree, though. It’s like one guy.
John, we both know why Democrats didn’t do this. They didn’t take Trump as a credible threat. This is why they indulged anti-racism, degrowth, environmental justice, youth gender medicine, student debt forgiveness, etc via executive action rather than addressing inflation and winning.
In the Senate? Who in the Senate is in favor of Trump's unilateral tariffs? I understand there's a small handful of house Dems who are running the strategy of "only someone who is basically less insane Trump can win my district" and God bless but I'm not sure who that would be in the Senate.
Really? I think Dems are pretty uniformly opposed to tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Yeah the UAW has come out in favor but that’s basically it - and even in Michigan all the Dems are speaking out against tariffs. I genuinely don’t think that’s the issue here.
It shouldn’t be. But I think it will be. Republicans will immediately pivot to blaming every bad thing on the shutdown. And people will be confused and probably blame Trump but also blame Democrats and will be wondering as to why all this is happening when the majority of the senators voted to fund the government. It will be a messy bloodbath all around.
And if Democrats aren’t making their case in commercials airing all over the place by tomorrow night, it’s probably going to end up decided by random TikToks reading summaries from Grok.
I guess what I’m saying is that we’re doomed.
Then tell better stories. Why the hell do dems roll over instead of telling better stories? So f'in messed up.
It's a shame about the D.C. budget (maybe being "balanced" was a threat) but MAGA voters are far more likely to blame Trump for the consequences of his bizarre tariffs (they are a revenue source plus the sum of diplomacy: Who needs to bother with learning any of that hard stuff? if you have hammer...)
This just seems like a bad take? The president and the majority party will eat the political cost of a shutdown, and when the next election comes in two years, you can face them with clean hands and the ability to say “I’ve been against this the whole time.” If your enemies want to self-immolate, hand them the matches.
Yes, this is like being against the Iraq war. It’s that correct act of Political Judgement that Matt is always referencing when he’s getting yelled at for otherwise advocating poll-chasing
Because it was a dirty or not-so-clean CR, the Democrats are on the verge of helping muddy the waters: they have helped approve of the executive authority on tariffs and they also do not have that much of a problem with making a ridiculous cut to a Democratic city, DC services, which also saves barely any money! They have just opened themselves up to being attacked (rightly) for enabling this rather than distinguishing themselves from Republicans.
Right. The GOP handed us a gift by passing such a poisoned CR. if we just stood up and said filibuster until clean CR we would not have suffered any political consequences in the media.
This is the key observation that so many miss.
A huge amount of the commentators want to have the argument about what to do with a clean CR. Matt's argument only makes sense if you imagine a clean CR. Matt belatedly realized that it's not a clean CR, but his argument only makes sense if you imagine a clean CR.
Folks, this is a different beast.
“If your enemies want to self-immolate, hand them the matches.”
This is the same logic behind *not* filibustering.
Shutdown is the real self-immolation here.
Matt- if DC has to cut $1bn from the budget, what is stopping Mayor Bowser from ending police protection for motorcades? How about stopping curbside trash pick up and just have all DC residents bring their trash to the city owned Ellipse in front of the White House?
I have a feeling this is the beginning of a process of it all going to end in a control board for DC, the end of home rule, and Ed Martin blessing it all. The Democratic senators don’t really offer reassurances they will go out of their way, since they think DC autonomy is a losing political issue.
Seems the dem senators believe all things are a losing issue... they could all move back home and stop wasting their time, maybe?
It would be useful to have any reporting on what kind of remedies can be sought for ordinary kids and people in DC (mostly of course not in any way federal employees or contractors!) since they are about to get their limited autonomy (let’s leave anything like aspirations for state level self rule aside) restricted even more in a way that hasn’t happened in decades. All we have read recently is some senators playing dumb like they didn’t know it was a CR provision or didn’t realize the fiscal year or authorization process.
Can Maryland take back part of the land it ceded to DC? Virginia took back its part long ago, but the country was very different back then.
Retrocession is a good option except for the fact that neither Maryland or DC claim to want it.
This is spicy and I like it.
She should do that *anyway*
Or doxx known republicans so that people can use their homes and cars as trash receptacles with the tacit support of DC government
Both of the large federal workers unions were calling for a shutdown this time around. If you disagree with them that's fine, but I think you have to give "your base" a little red meat sometimes, and this was a straightforward opportunity to do so.
Even a fake (weekend) shutdown would be seen as better than this capitulation.
It would be a huge mistake for Democrats to turn government cuts into a labor issue. Just disastrous.
I think it already is a labor issue so that you can have competent and effective public services. You don’t have to turn it into one. We don’t want to wipe out the original Civil Service Reform Act or Civil Service Reform Act of 1979.
Any reference at all to federal employees unions will be toxic. Any suggestion that the priority is the federal employees themselves will be disastrous.
Yep, talk about what the federal government does, not the employees who make it run.
No, Democrats need to learn to ignore the demands of union leaders more.
Parts 1, 2, and 3 of point 9 are about federal employees. Seems odd for Matt to have not at least mentioned that perspective.
Sure, but that doesn't mean we have to listen to the union leaders.
If the Democratic party has to score own goals to keep public sector unions happy, then we deserve to stay out of power.
There's no path where the Democratic party gets anything out of this, other than demonstrating to voters that they are willing to burn political capital on a losing fight.
You can't argue that the government does important stuff and doge is bad, while simultaneously shutting down the entire government over the DC budget or tariffs.
What are you smoking? This is a bad bill. Democrats put forward a reasonable truly-clean 30-day CR so a bipartisan deal could be worked out. You have completely lost touch. The Dems WANT A FIGHT.
Under any GOP budget scenario I am looking at a wage cut or losing my job. I’m sick and tired of this “unpopular but smart” crap. The smart thing is to fight the fascists. Matt, your policy analysis is good but your political instincts are flaming garbage.
Fighting for the sake of fighting is what Republicans want
You gotta be righteously angry and put on your pussy hat! If we're mad enough and right enough, that aggregates political power per se! Resist!
I can't believe we're doing this shit again.
You mean the righteous anger that resulted in the Democrats flipping 41 seats and taking control of the House in 2018? Let’s put those pussy hats back on then!
That wasn’t exactly an impressive showing then
It wasn't?
the GOP pretended like it wasn't and I guess some people drank the kool-aid on that, but IMO "with how fucking evil we are you should have flipped 60 seats" is not a super compelling argument to explain away your election loss
Tell me your 65-point plan to play 73-D chess. Until then stfu.
Points 1-65: Win more House seats in 2026.
And is that best achieved by helping Trump conduct the government he wants, or by doing what a theoretical winning coalition of potential Dem voters want you to do? Let's not pretend that just because Matt says so, that rolling over on this spending bill somehow betters our chances next November.
>Let's not pretend that just because Matt says so, that rolling over on this spending bill somehow betters our chances next November.<
Let's also not pretend that shutting down the government helps our chances next November. The overwhelmingly dominant factors next November will be national conditions and thermostatic effects.
Oh I agree completely. It's a matter of preferred strategy in a dynamic environment, there is no one provable right or wrong answer in a vacuum. My argument is only to say that "sit on your hands for 18 months" is not in any way more guaranteed to win seats in 2026 than a more oppositional course of action.
Shut up. I’m literally playing with my job. All you “smarter-than-though” armchair strategists can shove it.
Describe your plan that results in your preferred outcome. How will you get the Republicans -- who control the House, the Senate and the Presidency -- to do what you want?
Make them govern. Don’t roll over and give them what they want. Jfc.
I'll say here whatever the hell I want, and you can read it or report it to the management. Thanks and cheerio!
Step 0: demonstrate that, if you win those seats, they'll actually fight this administration.
It is common throughout history for people to seek out fights which they would obviously lose. The entire American civil war, for instance.
Republicans wanted a fighter and got Trump. If Democrats want a fighter too they will not get the next Obama, they will get the next Huey Long. And all the rhetoric about "liberalism," "the rule of law," and "pluralism" would be for naught.
Yes, if Democratic leadership are seen as weak cowards who kneel to Trump & Elon, you will get a Huey Long.
It's possible for the Republicans to be wrong about what they want.
But then why should Democrats want the same wrong thing?
The idea is that both sides could think they would win a war, even though only one can.
That messaging didn’t work last year. I don’t buy that it would miraculously work now.
The only thing in the entire world of politics that matters is: what do swing voters want?
Nothing else matters.
With all of that said, in 18 months neither swing voters nor party line voters will be paying attention to what happened 18 months before. If you don’t realize how much will happen in the intervening 18 months you haven’t been paying attention to the past 12 years of American history.
Anger is not a strategy.
The senate could have pushed for a clean CR that did not gut 1 billion from D.C. children, fire fighters, and police. That would have been a start.
they could have chosen any one of the poison pills to make their stand on, draw attention to it, make the media play that story constantly. say you can't support increasing the president's tariff power when he is using to crash markets. boom, done. now the media will cover this poison pill the GOP was hoping to sneak in under the cover of darkness.
some people are saying these pills were put there because the GOP wants the Dems to do a shutdown, and the might be true, but just because your opponent is offering a gambit does not mean you are obliged to reject it -- it's often the winning play to accept the gambit and give battle even at the place of your enemy's choosing
This worm-like attitude from democrats must end. It’s not just “progressives” who are going to be out for blood on this.
I’m out
I mean, most Democrats are on your side!
When schumer is deposed I’ll believe them
You obviously are not, however. What would have a weekend shutdown cost? Two days... and maybe your kids get their school back for next year?
What would be the bill that would re-open the government?
A clean CR
There's zero chance of that
It doesn't seem like it, and next year, there are going to be a lot of primary candidates who do not agree with your project, Matt. This is a pennywise-pounfoolish approach.
Your bio says Vancouver...Canadian? If so, why do you care so much?
Immigrants are ruining this comment section
We need them to post the takes Americans won’t because they’re too hot
that's funny ;)
Are you seriously asking why a CANADIAN, a member of a country our current president has threatened to invade over and over again, a member of the country he has intentionally tried to make worse with his garbage tariff policy, a country he thinks would be better off as a 51st state.... you're asking why they are upset Democrats are too weak to stand up to Trump?
Yes. They should have become a citizen and voted for more Democrats if they wanted the Democrats to have enough seats in the House to stand up to Trump.
I am regrettably a citizen of this inane country
There's a Vancouver in Washington State. Just FYI.
No one who isn't some weirdo portland hater would ever say they're from the other Vancouver
It’s nice! They’ve put in a casino!
Look at Canada-US relations over the past 1.5 months and then take a wild guess.
That will surely help solve the problem!
It will not solve the problem, it will avoid these sorts of muggings in the future.
Because we'll get our asses kicked harder while you sit on your pure, clean hands.
I want to make sure I'm not misunderstood here--I have zero respect for you or your political viewpoint here.
If you’re going to post at me at least try to talk to me rather than some stick figure in your head
No it won't? Republicans are too crazy to be threatened
Okay. Then get out of the way for those of us who care more about winning elections than performative outrage.
Schumer does not win elections (see last Nov) & he can't convey a message to save his life -- except to tell 47 that dems will roll over...
Schumer was a major reason we even had a Senate majority despite the best efforts of progressives and Republicans to force out moderates like Joe Manchin.
Let's start with honesty. Manchin was a republican posing as a dem. AND what has Schumer done to show leadership? Is it raising money, or is it moving the party to the right? Either way, I would rather lose with integrity than to be complicit in 47s gutting of D.C. public ed, policing, and fire.
He was also a Republican who voted with the Dems 70+% of the time - and bringing Shelley Moore Capito along on a couple of those votes. What other West Virginia senate candidate would do the same?
And he voted against some serious matters that Biden could have fixed… he gave the R’s tremendous power.
Manchin could've had literally crossed the aisle any time he wanted, given Republicans the majority and have an easy path to reelection in 2024. But he didn't.
At least we've established you're about being okay with Republicans winning.
"lose with integrity"
Truly the modern progressive ethos in a nutshell. All those poor black people are going to be fucked, but at least we kept our cuffs clean!
I’m not keeping anything clean. I fight hard & am not owned by any party people. But if having integrity has no value, we’re no better than 47.
Manchin voted with the Biden administration 88% of the time, per Five thirty-eight.
That is not a "Republican posing as a Democrat". That is a Democrat through and through.
Hey all, ignore this guy, he's Canadian
beat it
You beat it you don't even go here
Dude, he confirmed he’s a citizen. Don’t be weird.
Say what you want about Trump and Co., but at least they press the issues their voters want.
They press the issues their weird groyper staffers and the man himself wants but there’s a hell of a lot going on that next to no one else actually wants
I don't think they do - their voters don't want huge tariffs on everything. They just say they want whatever Trump tells them to say they want.
It’s more that they tell their voters what they should want.
All of this is true and well said. I do just want to add though, part of the big tent in the big tent Democratic party we need is safe seat progressives getting to be cranky about leadership taking strategic dives. Centrists need to just live with being criticized by that part of the coalition as surely as the left needs to live with criticism from the pragmatic center.
I liked this but wanted to comment too just to say great point.
Yeah, no, this ain't it. Dems need to stop trying to be "savvy" like their consultants tell them and instead start thinking about what their actual constituents want. Judging by the town halls that have been happening, Dems are about to reap the whirlwind from this decision. They'll have nobody to blame but themselves.
What do their constituents want that can be delivered?
The opposite of whatever continuing to enjoy fancy dinner parties in D.C. while people back home suffer is.
That isn't an answer.
It would be a start. ANYTHING. Do anything is more than they are currently doing.
They are doing something. They are making Trump and the Republicans choose how they want to govern, rather than letting them shut down the entire government and blame the Democrats.
Exactly. Taking a chainsaw to Federal departments and randomly applying tariffs is going to blow up on the Republicans. Why would we get in their way and give them an opportunity to blame Democrats when things go south? Give them the rope to hang themselves.
Shitting in your shoe and then stepping in it is within the set of {ANYTHING}.
This does not seem serious.
Would those people suffer less of the government shut down?
Heads on pikes
>Judging by the town halls that have been happening, Dems are about to reap the whirlwind from this decision. They'll have nobody to blame but themselves.<
Really? Democrats are going to sit out the next election and forego an opportunity to hand MAGA a major political defeat because, twenty months previously, party leaders declined to shutdown the government?
Color me massively fucking skeptical.
This doesn't explain why Schumer said he would vote against it, *then* cave and vote for. That does absolutely nobody any good at all. Worst of both worlds?
Yeah exactly this is what I don’t understand. I’m not saying it’s wrong to vote for the CR if you think Musk is going to ratfuck the whole government, but why the fake resistance?
Absolutely, just makes him look weak
He is weak. He's the minority leader in a branch of government whose actual leaders have refused to do anything.
He is weak. Period. Gutless old white dude protecting his ass.
Democrats want fighters. This 3D chess bullshit ain’t it. Primaries are going to be widespread in 2026.
I mean, you are clearly correct. Democrats do want fighters. That's why all but one House Democrat voted no and why most Senate Dems will vote to filibuster. That is absolutely what the base of the party wants. My argument is that doing what they want would be a bad idea.
The problem is your argument is terrible. “It doesn’t matter because Elon can do it anyway and also the Supreme Court, ect.” So what? Typical contrarian BS.
(you're right)
I'm just so confused. You're making good arguments if Democrats were opposing a clean CR. But it's not a clean CR.
That's the problem with arguments about whether someone is "weak" or "strong" -- they contribute nada, zero, nichyego to a discussion
As a Democrat, I don't want fighters, I want winners.
I'd absolutely primary someone to push them to get rid of the filibuster though!
People who come across as weak aren’t winner, as various pundits have been telling us ad nauseam since November.
The problem is many people equate policy extremism with procedural extremism. I am completely fine with policy moderation in order to win as long as Democrats are willing to break things and move fast to counter MAGA. That's what Schumer is refusing to do here and it's infuriating. It's not 1998 anymore.
This. I’m still infuriated with Biden for not executive ordering the people to do harm to Trump and other Republican leaders if they are able like to Marc Anthony in Rome, ffs
If I were in Schumer's seat, I'd decline to vote for closure, but offer to support abolishing the filibuster.
These comments are so funny because most Americans don’t care, republicans clearly want a shut down and democrats would so obviously be blamed for it. The poison pill for DC terrible, but “Dems shut down the government, stopped your social security to protect DC, and support fraud, waste and abuse” messages write themselves, and more importantly takes the heat off of trump’s economic mishandling and tariffs.
And what will democrats say to defend the shut down? They want to protect the rule of law? They want to protect an unpopular bureaucracy? What makes you think voters give a fuck about the rule of law lol. Like it’s nuts, a waste of time and pointless.
Save the energy for filibustering the cuts to Medicaid
Agreed. Liberals need to truly reckon with the fact that the median American voter doesn't care about 99% of what liberals value like the rule of law, anti-corruption and scientific research. None of these can be the hill we choose to fight on.
As a scientist, my greatest hope is for science to fade into the background again.
I mean the greatest self own was scientist, scientific institutions and universities taking overtly political stances the last decade as if the other shoe wouldn’t drop. It’s wild to me that such organizations that are suppose to be capable of intellectual rigor didn’t see where the logical conclusion would end
I suppose what you mean is that we need a clearer separation between scientific advisory bodies and political actors and perhaps Dems and liberals broadly are guilty of confusing the two, but gutting government funded basic research and refusing to conduct research altogether into societally relevant topics because of dogmatic beliefs is going to end badly in the long run.
The shutdown would not affect social security.
Fine, pick any other popular policy
And we won't be able to filibuster the cuts to Medicaid because it's under reconciliation!
Republicans won't do a clean CR because the want to screw cops and teachers in DC.
Sure and that sucks but do you think Americans care about DC, enough to support a government shutdown?
To those disagreeing with Matt; I have to ask why you think it’s good strategy for Dems to move government focus from Trump’s impending recession to a government shutdown - whomever they blame. Right now, Trump’s policies are destroying the economy. We shut it down and we’re seen as destroying it. Yes, I’m in the don’t get in the way of him undermining himself camp. Not an easy course to chart, but woe to us if we get lead astray by shiny objects - the delicious and mystical “fight” we’re all jonesing for.
There is some element of "never stop an enemy when they're destroying themselves." It sucks because the things they're breaking are things Democrats care about. But, to some degree, voters sometimes have to feel real pain to learn a lesson. And it has to be crystal clear who caused it.
I think a lot of the criticism is just venting because it sucks being kicked around by cowards and morons. There's probably also some wishful thinking that Dems could affect the outcome if they barricaded the doors or pulled fire alarms or something.
There does seem to be a strong element of "Why do Republicans get to call the shots on this, that, and the other thing, just because they won the Presidency, the House, and the Senate???"
We fucking lost! It sucks and I hate it. But this frustration was priced into my worldview in mid-November of last year (and it was half priced in by July).
Because when the recession happens everyone will blame Trump anyway! We may as well try to stop some of the damage to our people while we can, and make no mistake, the GOP is absolutely playing politics in this way already -- they are deliberately and intentionally targeting our people, our voters, our social class out of nothing more than hatred and spite. They want to hurt us. They want us to suffer. It is pathetic and despicable for Democrats to take that punch and ask for more instead of doing the barest minimum to fight back when they have a huge political runway for 2026.
My husband’s a vaccine researcher (covid vaccines, ty very much). His work life is currently hell. He might lose his job. You think I don’t think every day about Elon and his pubescent dogebags cackling as they blow up my family’s life with the touch of a button? I’m keenly - keenly! - sensitive to what’s going on, and if I see Dems shouting and taking useless principled stands that move the spotlight even a millimeter off Trump and Elon, I’ll stick a nail in my eye.
They're destroying DC for no reason.
Republicans will later say, if it was such a big deal, then why didn't you try to stop it?
And which voting bloc cares a fig about DC, again? I bet at least half of Americans don’t even know it’s a real, functioning city with public schools and police and shit. I’m painfully aware of the damage republicans are doing (fwiw, my husband’s in vaccine research), but job number one is to get them out of there, and if that means bending over now, then the right thing to do is bend over.