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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25652 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025

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Senate ends shutdown.

With no provision to extend COVID-era ACA subsidies, merely a vote, it has the appearance and character of a Democrat loss. The usual suspects on Reddit are crying foul of cowardice.

But could it have ended any other way? The Democrats are obliged to government unions, who weren't being paid: and to the urban poor, who weren't getting SNAP. Two massive interests within their base were being sacrificed for the benefit of... four million recipients? The math never added up.

You could say that the Republicans were heartless, but they have come out of it looking like fighters and winners, while the Democrats have capitulated to 'fascists'. The midterms will still probably be a Dem victory, but this act by Schumer and the moderates will not be something the #resistance will be likely to forget anytime soon.

I’m think that extending the shutdown any longer would have been extremely risky, since we were getting to the point where things actually would start breaking. The most obvious example here is air traffic control. If this had broken down during thanksgiving, wrecking everyone’s travel plans, the backlash would have been immense and contrary to current polling, I believe the democrats would have been largely blamed for it.

Nate Silver makes a good argument no one played the game well

Silver seems to be unaware that the MAGA coalition had enough votes to pass the CR on a straight vote, what they didn't have, prior to the Democratic defections, was the 60+ votes required to overrule Schumer's Filibuster.

I would argue that Republicans actually played their hand well. They read the room and surmised (correctly) that Schumer did not have the influence or political capital for a protracted fight and that all they had to do was wait for the less progressive Democrats to start feeling the heat.

This wasn't a "Blunder" on the part of Trump, it was a tactical maneuver that paid off.

What about polling blaming the shutdown on the Republicans?

Completely irrelevant, the media was going to try to pin the blame on the Republicans regardless of who was actually responsible so polling was never going to be a useful signal.

Ezra Klein made the point that, in the end, the whole thing holding the shutdown coalition together was Trumps "tyranny". Which along with being a nebulous concept, I doubt Ezra and many Democrats even get close to believing their own rhetoric on that particular point. Faced with several of their core constituencies poised to violently riot again over losing government handouts I think the continued shut down was simply far too risky for the Dem defectors to continue to justify to themselves.

As Hunter S Thompson once said, if you're about to get your ass kicked and you're outnumbered, don't curl up and become a soccer ball. That just makes kicking your ass fun and will greatly deepen the beating you will take. At least become a soccer ball with teeth, so that there's some small risk to them.

The Democrats, lacking any real power in Congress, need not utterly just take whatever the Republicans want to hand down. They don't have to make it fun for them. At the minimum they can make the process so miserable for everyone that perhaps the Republicans will go easier next time.

It's not a great strategy, but it's all they have.

If you're Thune, what do you lose from pressing on this again in January? The main groups hurt by a shutdown are core dem voters (I'd bet fed employees vote D by a 40+ margin, donations do).

Fliers are probably closer to 50/50 but if the administration can keep EAS payments that's easier to do. Keeping a bonus pool available for key essential employees could allow these to last a very long time.

If the Republicans benefited from shutting the government down they don't need the Democrats to do it. It has costs for them too.

Let's presume you are a Fed employee and have several weeks or even months of savings. A shut down happens. You dont go to work until it's over. Once it is over, you receive backpay for the time you didnt have to go to work. Since you work for the government, you dont really put in overtime to catch back up (at least I think this part is true).

Why should federal employees be a big source of shutdown opposition?

It's not cost free. There's a lot of anxiety wrapped up in it. They believe Trump is Fascist Dictator and This Time they won't have jobs to come back to, or he'll use one weird trick to deny them their back pay. Either way, they may feel apprehensive about spending their savings so they debt finance a lot of living expenses.

If I were a federal employee my reaction to this would be ayy lmfao but I think this is hell for normies, if /r/fednews is any indicator.

It's not the ones who get furloughed, it's the ones who have to get up early, do more, because not everyone is essential, and deal with all the headaches and costs of going to work and still not getting paid.

Also, a healthy number don't have savings (or enough savings) based on media reports.

In my extensive experience living among them, most federal employees are less than mid-wits, chasing good boy points in the form of the asinine federal employee leveling system. Many of them possess no other skill than jumping into meetings, filling out time sheets, and taking training courses. Every person you've ever suspected is too stupid for any productive work what so ever has a spot waiting for them in the federal government. All the most useless people I've ever been forced to work with hide behind a .gov email address. Literally every scrap of productive work is pushed off onto an endless series of contractors. And that's not even to claim all contractors are above board either. See my previous rants.

Not only do they not have any savings, but they likely have so much debt from keeping up with the Jonses that missing a months pay is what pushes them over into default.

What fraction of federal employees keep months of savings around? I know a few that do, but I suspect that a non-trivial fraction, like a lot of Americans, live close enough to paycheck-to-paycheck that a few months is asking a lot.

But I'm sure at least some basically got a free month of unplanned vacation.

I think it is a Democratic loss, though a few more victories like this and the Republicans are undone.

My impression is that the usual way government shutdowns end is the Republicans get all the blame and eventually give in, for complete Democratic victory. Here the Republicans still got the blame, but managed not to give the Democrats what they wanted -- which basically was that their over-40 seat minority in the Senate, along with their control of the media (and thus the blame) let them get their legislative priorities accomplished (while the Republicans still can't get theirs done with majorities... which, admittedly, is not entirely the Democrat's doing)

I think it is a Democratic loss, though a few more victories like this and the Republicans are undone.

I think Democrats are looking at the polling and recent elections and figure there's no need to risk themselves. Trump is and will continue screwing himself in their eyes, the subsidies will expire anyway and he'll be blamed and they'll win the midterms.

So, the critical part here is that the GOP promised a vote on a healthcare bill of the Democrats’ choosing. That’s actually a big, big deal. Usually, the minority party is victim to “gotcha votes”, where bills are written so voting no looks bad and generates material for campaign mailers. This lets the Dems pull a rare Uno Reverse and get one of their own. It means that the Democrats are banking heavily on a blue wave midterm, where the shutdown will be old news and not as impactful, but putting the GOP in a vise could pay lasting dividends - they can point to a more recent, perfectly set up vote where the GOP allows healthcare premiums to spike massively with a no vote, not just inaction. (Yes, this vote is only promised in the Senate, but that’s the biggest juice the Dems want, and the House margins are thin enough that it could theoretically still pass there)

Don't read too much into big potential-candidate name panning the deal. They have to do that. It’s free for them. It allows face saving. And if a shutdown created even more holiday travel chaos, all incumbents would have suffered.

Also health care costs going up is still ultimately going to be attributed to the party in charge. We are already seeing this in action - Trump is out there claiming that costs are down for average Americans, and people aren’t buying it. He’s sounding more and more like a traditional politician and that will hurt him.

Also, the Dems got promises for back pay and rehiring of fired workers. That wasn’t at all a given! Even more, certain specific agencies will shut down again potentially in January - well, most honestly. All but the FDA, Ag, VA, part military, that’s not many. So most will shut down again and that will happen closer to midterm primaries.

This is definitely a tactical win for Democrats.

Key word a vote. No one is obligated to vote yes, they just have to hold a vote.

I think GP is concerned that if the Democrats get to exclusively control timing and content of the bill. Having to vote down the free healthcare sunshine and rainbows that CBO says will pay off the debt right before midterms sucks too.

There are two possibilities for the bill- one which does literally nothing but make abortions free, and one which is a series of 90/10 bipartisan bad ideas that passes with flying colors, gets labeled 'Trumpcare', and nobody blames when the price controls cause insulin shortages.

Ok, but democrats will infight to the point that republicans have a lot of influence on that bill. There'll be a faction that settles for nothing less than abolishing private insurance and a faction that really doesn't want to do that and it'll wind up with a republican-ish bill that everyone but Thomas Massie, MTG, and Rand Paul votes for. Probably some giant omnibus that actually succeeds in driving down drug prices over the short term and republicans present as 'Trumpcare'.

Not guaranteed, but I think the manner in which the Dem response bill comes together is going to be highly informative about how the Dem dynamics are going to look for the next year or so.

Because Dems don’t truly believe the bill will pass, they won’t feel as much a need to write a perfect bill, because its purpose is not to become law, but to be a PR cudgel. It’s a paradigm shift that matters. At least in theory. Some Dems still feel burned by the “Green New Deal” bill, so precedent exists, I’ll grant you that (that was a House effort though, and those congressmen are much less realists than senators). There’s also the weird but technically-possible scenario that the bill actually passes with the centrist Dems in the driver’s seat, but I don’t think Schumer has the leverage to pull it off.

So we’re left with the most likely scenario that I outlined above. Again, it’s a canny move and you can’t take current denunciations about it at face value. It won’t cause true infighting. Just a bit of jockeying.

Feel like this is where I run into the limits of my government research ability and it is frustrating. As best I can tell the legislation being referenced here is H.R. 5371. At least, the last listed action is that the Senate agreed to cloture 60-40 and the breakdown of Senators matches those described. However this bill, per section 106, seems like it only funds the government through November 21st except for specifically named operations. This is in contrast to the Politico article saying it funds most programs for the rest of the year and some only into January. There are limited references to January in that bill and only one to January 31st. Is there some further piece of legislation I need to reference? I also don't see any amendments in the bill history so it's not clear to me why it would need to go back to the House.

ETA:

I think this is the text of the amended HR 5371 that was passed, which does seem to fund through January 2026. Apparently there is also a companion bill.

On the politics side I think this was dumb. The polling I'm aware of seemed to show Democrats winning this fight in the popular consciousness. "It's bad when people's healthcare premiums go up hundreds of dollars" is a very straightforward message. Republicans nuking the filibuster also would have been a great outcome. If not immediately, then in the future. Feels like the closest thing to a concession is the entirely-symbolic later vote on extending the subsidies. Bad political instincts all around.

The parliamentary maneuver was voting to limit debate on the house bill as written and then using the limited required time left to amend it.

It’s not just the urban poor who are on SNAP. The Democrats had a chance to make gibs into a real bread-and-butter issue, not just a culture-war distraction.

This was also a great opportunity to bait the Republicans into abolishing the filibuster, which would have helped Democrats in the long run. Zero Machiavellian instincts from these people. No wonder the base is angry.

Completely agreed. The filibuster is idiotic and not well suited to a political system that has just two major parties which means effectively both parties position themselves to capture around 50%+epsilon of the seats. In the long run getting rid of it helps the dems so much more than the reps because the dems at least have some sort of positive vision for how society should be rather than trying to go back to the 1960s.

It’s worth noting that a full Christmas SNAP crisis would be a major escalation. I realize some think the Dems should abandon “traditional politics”, but others think that the alienation and loss of trust that big of a move would cause could created some terrible effects. Like another Trump could rise, just as easily as the Dems could get a Trump of their own. A lot aren’t willing to risk that brave new world.

Like another Trump could rise, just as easily as the Dems could get a Trump of their own.

Could? I think you're being a bit pessimistic there. Trump arose because he channeled the frustrations of his base and promised opposition to the policies that were hurting them. Since then, all the conditions that lead to his rise have gotten significantly worse - none of the zoomers who are realising that a six figure income isn't enough to let them start a family or live in the area they grew up are going to vote for another boring swamp creature promising business as usual ever again. A Trump-like figure on the left would be able to get a truly massive share of the vote, including a lot of people on the right wing who expected actual economic relief and instead got 50 year mortgages.

A lot aren’t willing to risk that brave new world.

Au contraire! Those people are doing everything they possibly can to make sure that a brand new Trump-like figure arises. If they ACTUALLY didn't want to risk that brave new world, they'd have to improve the material conditions of the electorate - but they'd prefer to spend that money on more wars in the middle east, more bailouts for the rich and their own personal enrichment. Maybe the growing angry mobs will be appeased by just banning Nick Fuentes from public discourse, but I really don't think so.

If they ACTUALLY didn't want to risk that brave new world

There is always the possibility that they're not that smart, or think their voters aren't that smart. After all, the voters did vote for them in the past.

I am entirely open to the possibility that my enemies are dumb, evil or both.

What is your mental model of this "full Chrismas SNAP crisis", because I think its probably a load of crap. At least with regards to actual people being hungry. I'd expect people would loot and steal and riot because they can't get their Dr. Pepper, but no actual amount of people would be starving. There are too many school lunches, shelters, food banks, etc. And even outside private charities, states can also always easily step up in this sort of situation by simply being less generous in their dispensations. Restrict the eligible product pool to vegetables, fruits, grains, beans, and dairy and you save like 90%, while avoiding the issue of people spending all their cash on day 1 on waygu steak or orange crush, or selling them for spending money.

The French and Russian revolutions both started as what were essentially bread riots. I think a lot of the Motte falls into let-them-eat-cake-ism and doesn’t realize how serious a problem a SNAP/EBT shutdown could be. Most of the lower enlisted rungs of the US military are on food stamps. Most Walmart employees are on food stamps. It’s not just 300 pound welfare queens spending EBT on hair extensions.

Most of the lower enlisted rungs of the US military are on food stamps.

Seriously, source? That's major "foreseeable downfall of empire" levels of blunder, and the USA only just ended its 20 year long invasion of Afghanistan...

Most of the lower enlisted rungs of the US military are on food stamps.

Source? Big, if true.

Yes, the sheer scale of the program is part of the problem. Its almost certainly making food 20%+ more expensive!

ts almost certainly making food 20%+ more expensive!

How did you come to this conclusion?

Total US grocery spending is projected to be $900 billion or so, food stamps are $100 billion give or take, so 11% of the market. Supply is not highly elastic, demand, particularly on superior food goods (beef) is highly elastic. 20% seems like a reasonable ballpark number.

What formula did you use for estimating the effect, though?

Did even a single, solitary person die from starvation due to the recent SNAP suspension? People just seem to be pissed at the inconvenience of having to go to a pantry that has a worse selection of items.

Just curious, when was the last documented case of someone dying of starvation due to poverty in United States?

Pure starvation for economic reason, as "cannot afford enough calories to stay alive", not mentally ill people, drug addicts who forgot to eat, children starved by their parents, people stuck in place with no exit or lost in the wild etc.

No, but it was only a few days long. I think ending the shutdown over fear of what a prolonged suspension might lead to is not unreasonable.

Restrict the eligible product pool to vegetables, fruits, grains, beans, and dairy and you save like 90%, while avoiding the issue of people spending all their cash on day 1 on waygu steak or orange crush, or selling them for spending money.

This simply isn't feasible. Even assuming it's legal for states to deviate from Federal SNAP guidelines (and I doubt that it is), and that eligible items could be agreed on politically, there's simply no way to implement such a system without giving significant advance notice. Grocery stores rely on internal codes to determine what is food stampable and what isn't. If such a change required them to go into their computer systems and change the status of thousands of items, it would be a tall enough order, but it gets worse than than. To avoid having to code each individual item as being eligible or ineligible, they rely on an item's categorization in the relevant department. So in a typical grocery store items categorized as produce, meat, dairy, edible grocery, frozen, bakery, and deli would be eligible for food stamps, while items categorized as HBC, inedible grocery, and prepared foods would not. When you decide to start changing the eligible items you're requiring grocery stores to upend their entire department systems to accommodate the change. What you propose wouldn't affect some departments, but something like edible grocery would be entirely screwed up, and even things like deli would get complicated (what you propose would include cheese but not meat, and some stores categorize certain bread items as deli, but not others).

Conservatives in general like to excoriate poor people for the perception that they spend their food stamps on items they shouldn't be spending them on, creating a sort of triangle with the following three categories being the points:\

  1. Items that are objectionable because they're inherently unhealthy (fruit roll up, pop tarts, cheese curls, Dr. Pepper, etc.)
  2. Convenience items that resemble unobjectionable items or are composed of items that would individually be unobjectionable, but are prepared or processed to a degree that makes them both more unhealthy and more expensive than unobjectionable items (Hungry Man Dinners, frozen pizza, etc.)
  3. Luxury items that would be unobjectionable but for the cost (Waygu steak, most seafood, artisanal cheese, etc.)

There are certain staple items like the ones you probably have in mind that fit right in the center of the triangle that aren't objectionable to anybody. But when you move closer to the edges it becomes extremely difficult to draw the line. For example, you suggest restricting the product pool to grains. But what do you actually mean by that? Let's look at some items:

  • Rice, oatmeal, flour: These are more or less pure grains that would presumably fit any definition you want to use.
  • Bread, pasta: Processed, premade items, but such basic staples that it would be ridiculous to not include them.
  • Prepackaged cookies, cakes, donuts, etc.: Obviously in the snack food category, but they're really just basic grain items with more sugar and fat content
  • Boxed crackers: Still firmly in the snack food category, but without the added sugar and fat
  • Breakfast cereals: Run the gamut from Cheerios and Kix up to Fruity Pebbles and Count Chocula. I guess you could propose a sugar limit like my mother did?
  • Granola bars, breakfast bars, energy bars: Usually found in the cereal aisle. Like cereal, they run the gamut from so healthy as to be inedible up to Pop Tarts, the poster child for oversweetened convenience foods.
  • Hamburger Helper, Rice-a-Roni, Kraft Mac-n-Cheese, boxed stuffing mix, ramen: Unobjectional staple items plus flavorings that may or may not make the product significantly less healthy
  • Pancake mix: Unobjectionable on its own, except the intended purpose (and only purpose the vast majority will ever use it for) is to drench it in a sauce made of pure sugar, which is sold separately but conveniently located right next to it
  • Frozen garlic bread, frozen ravioli, frozen pierogies: Unobjectionable items made slightly less healthy and sold in a form that is typically associated with objectionable convenience foods.
  • Specialty breads: An unobjectionable item made in a way that may or may not make it more expensive. Bakery Italian is among the least expensive and best-tasting options at the store I shop at, but you can also get more expensive stuff pretty easily.

I don't doubt that you have your opinions on this and could draw a line somewhere that's both logical and reasonable. That's not the issue. The issue is that disentangling all of this would result in regulations so byzantine that you couldn't possibly expect the average person to have an intuitive sense for it.

Totally with you here. Of course every grocery checkout clerk has had to scan through huge packages of crab legs and Hi-C through EBT, but the difference isn't that big. Adding a bunch of complexity and power to a federal program is almost always a bad move.

The right one is to restructure SNAP as a whole to just serve fewer people.

I mean, you made a list including 10 bullet points and I am perfectly comfortable saying only the first two should be SNAP eligible and the rest is for people using their own money.

The issue is that disentangling all of this would result in regulations so byzantine that you couldn't possibly expect the average person to have an intuitive sense for it.

I can't wait to read the 50-page regulation in the Federal Register explaining exactly what kinds of "rice, oatmeal, flour", "bread, and pasta" are eligible.

Doesn't this already necessarily exist? You cant use snap to buy Budweiser or Cough Medicine from the grocery store.

The grocery store sells different kinds of rice, oatmeal, flour, bread, and pasta, which have different nutritional values. If you try to promulgate a simple definition, companies eager for government money will soon manufacture new products designed to fit within your simple definition while still being unhealthily delicious, forcing you to issue a more complicated definition.

For example: Chapter 19 of the US Harmonized Tariff Schedule lists 19 different types of bread. A government must pick which ones it wants to make eligible for government handouts, and it must define those types as well. (I don't see any definitions in this document, but I assume that they exist somewhere. You may be aware of tariff shenanigans like coating sneakers in a layer of felt so that they count as slippers, adding flimsy temporary seats to cargo vans so that they count as passenger vans, and calling X-Men action figures nonhuman so that they don't count as dolls.)

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There's no sales tax on core food items in WA. You still get charged sales tax on most of that list.

You can make a good list if you choose to. They already exist, elsewhere. Throwing up your hands at the merest possibility of a list is choosing to quit before you start.

No, you don't get sales tax charged on any of that list, let alone most of it. The only items excluded from the Washington sales tax exemption are prepared foods, soft drinks, and bottled water. And even that takes ten pages to fully flesh out. And sales tax isn't the best example to use because you're talking about an extra charge of what is probably a few cents if you incorrectly select a taxable item over a nontaxable one. What you're proposing is the difference between being able to buy the item at all or not.

I will quote the learned lawyer once again:

The issue is that disentangling all of this would result in regulations so byzantine that you couldn't possibly expect the average person to have an intuitive sense for it.

The existing exemption for "food and food ingredients" in Washington's sales tax takes up three pages of law and seven pages of regulation. Exemptions for specific kinds of food would be much longer.

Tell me how you really feel, Dan /s

No one has to die for it to be a crisis. You’re projecting. Lawmakers are unusually sensitive to grumpy people around Christmas. That’s all that’s required. People usually have semi-short memories when it comes to politics, but if Christmas and Thanksgiving are “ruined”? That sticks. Next year people will remember, and the vibe shift is potent. SNAP affects almost 1 in 8 people - you’re completely correct that blindly accepting that number is an overestimate, but stack it with the 1 in 14 people who fly during Christmas break, a shutdown past December 1st would cause another 1 in 7 adults to go without paychecks… these things stack up, and hit different segments of the population, not purely the poor. Many Americans if they miss a paycheck are OK, but discretionary spending IS sensitive to that stuff. Smaller Christmas gifts potentially (sudden back pay might even more than counterbalance this of course).

And that’s not even going into the vibes. People tend to view shutdowns as Congress not doing its job. That creates bitterness, since they can go “well I am working 50 hour weeks, and they are twiddling their thumbs playing blame games”, and that’s a bit of betrayal - a potent emotion that you have to be sensitive to. (Democrats aren’t immune from this either, of course, it’s possible constituents blame them, even if I think it’s not super likely to be a durable feeling)

I think it's a good example of just how non-typical the average Mottizen is that this isn't immediately obvious to everyone. Giving over 10% of the population a ruined Christmas in a way that can be plausibly blamed on a particular party is basically a political bullet to the brain, especially in a period where the election margins are pretty thin. I mean in the culture we have an entire century-old genre of story that is basically just "people being poor at Christmas/not being able to celebrate Christmas properly is bad and you have to make that not happen." Any government that fails at such a basic task has lost the mandate of heaven, and will be thoroughly destroyed.

People joke about people tolerating/enjoying Fascism for "making the trains run on time," and that's a pretty good example of ordinary day-to-day things that the general public cares more about than things like civil liberties. The Holidays is basically that times ten. People make a lot of promises leading up to the holidays, both implicit and explicit, and keeping those is a 'big deal' to most people. The party that causes family drama, marital strife, sad children, and economic harm right at the time where everyone is the most sensitive those things? They're done.

The only hope for this continuing shutdown would have been somehow successfully fully offloading the blame onto the opposing party, and that wasn't happening.

Republicans have a Senate advantage. It's by no means clear that nuking the filibuster (especially in Trump's term) is a good idea in the long run.

Though I grant it'd allow Democrats to pull more shenanigans like the ACA subsidies and then dare Republicans to take away the gibs.

I'm mostly experience whiplash from the DNC messaging. I wonder at the hypothetical bugman who just uncritically believes all of it. Because in the span of hours, we went from "This is a Republican shutdown" to "Who are the traitorous Democrats who caved and allowed the government to open again?"

Ah well. No helping it.

Believing the Dems are a monolith is a huge error in thinking, and one you should be ashamed of making truth be told. Comment is just pure boo outgroup. There is no universal DNC messaging anyways, even in an ideal world, because that org is currently led by an idiot who thinks internal democracy survival of the fittest will lead automatically to strong electorally-viable ideas. Which is obviously wrong/insufficient.

None of the 8 aisle crossers are up for reelection. As I point out in my comment above, punting to another shutdown in 3 months is also going to be a Republican-blamed shutdown. Polls and history have consistently shown that the party in power always receives more blame, regardless of messaging, so that’s where the inertia lies. And will continue to lie, most likely.

I do not see the contradiction. As an analogy, consider the Ukraine-Russian war. I think it would be fair for Ukrainians to claim that this is Putin's war. However, it seems also likely that if the top eight military officials of Ukraine conspired to unconditionally surrender to Putin, the war would be over in very short order.

Would that make you go "Ha! This shows that it was Zelenskyy's war all along, he could have stopped it any time by surrendering!"?

Now, if the Democrat party line had been that they would never vote for a budget while Trump was president, I think it would be fair to call it a Democrat shutdown. But from what I can tell, they just wanted a few token concessions around the ACA, hardly something completely outlandish. In such cases, it falls to the party which controls the government to negotiate, and their failure to do so reflected very badly on MAGA. In fact, Trump pointed out the very same thing during an Obama shutdown.

I am realist enough not to expect the Dems to watch a million Americans starve to death before they decide to "put the country before partisan politics" or "be the bigger person". But from what I have heard, the number of citizens which died from lack of SNAP benefits is basically zero.

At this point, what MAGA should do is announce that any time a bill of theirs will not pass, Noem will kill another puppy. That should be enough to get the spineless Democrats to vote for it lest they be complicit in puppy killing.

In this metaphor Democrats are Putin: the shutdown / war would not have happened but for… Maybe Zelensky should have negotiated with Russia and they wouldn’t have had to invade. Maybe Trump should have conceded what Chuck Schumer wanted, and then they wouldn’t have had to filibuster.

No democrat believes they are Putin in that scenario, so there's no contradiction there.

Putin doesnt believe he is the Putin in the analogy either. He believes NATO forced his hand.

AIUI, there are several 'foodstamps' programs, and the ones people might actually starve from not getting are funded- it's possible that a lengthy pause in foodstamps would cause issues for people, but private charity can bridge over it for a month or two- especially these two.

How do you, personally, decide who is to blame for the government shutdown? If Republicans had made concessions to Democrats, would you then be here arguing that it was a 'Republican shutdown?'

There is no contradiction between those two. Republicans could have, at any time, used their Senate majority to end the shutdown by over-ruling the parliamentarian and invoking cloture with less than 60 votes. What actually happened is that eight Democrats voted for cloture so that Republicans didn't have to do that.

We're supposed to pretend that such moves done in the past by Republicans weren't seen as massively norm breaking and a violation of normal politics?

It is literally called "the nuclear option".

Hell, Democrats cried bloody murder (and still bring it up with no small amount of bitterness*) about simply not holding a vote for Garland.

* Understandably. I'd be mad too if I allowed myself to be so outplayed.

Who is pretending? I am sure Democrats would have sought to make hay out of it. It's still a thing Republicans could have done. Both Republicans and Democrats have done it in the past. My preference would be to just remove it altogether and have a majority vote for everything. The filibuster is a cancer on US politics.

Based and true. Remove the filibuster so congress haas to actually legislate instead of passing the buck. Stack the supreme court every election so there's no point being an activist judge. Make the house of representatives 25x bigger to match constituency ratios in the early republic. (Optionally) Return the senate to selection by state assemblies. RETVRN to tradition.

I've always wanted to see a reversion to the pre-procedural filibuster, where if you want to filibuster, you actually have to keep talking, and when you stop it's over. None of this 'well, you say you're going to talk forever, so we'll just stop there and save us both the effort.'

Nah. If people want to filibuster, let their vocal cords bleed.

Aren't they allowed to do that still? IIRC it's only a gentleman's agreement that they offer to go do something else. There have been talking filibusters within the last decade, most notably by Ted Cruz, which included reading Dr. Seuss.

There have been talking filibusters within the last decade, most notably by Ted Cruz...

This is Cory Booker erasure!

They're allowed, his point is that it should be the only option, if you want to do a filibuster.

Republicans could have, at any time, used their Senate majority to end the shutdown by over-ruling the parliamentarian and invoking cloture with less than 60 votes.

But that's the nuclear option, right?

Changing/re-interpreting the Senate rules by majority vote, effectively lowering the cloture threshold permanently for ordinary legislation, would change the entire game. And it would certainly come back to bite the Republicans the very next time the Democrats gain power.

That's fascinating. So your contention is that Democrats are mad that Republicans didn't end the filibuster?

Huh? Democrats (assuming this means voters) are mad that eight Senators voted to end the government shutdown with what seem like no material concessions.

Indeed, /r/fednews (the premier subreddit for federal employees) seems pretty outraged. They went through all that suffering and got nothing for it.

Though, I don't think they got nothing. They can shut down the government again after Christmas without SNAP being affected (since it will be funded for the next year). That's a D win, I suppose.

For selfish reasons, I hope the democrats unseat them in bloody primaries which nominate #resistance dems instead of some of their highest value over replacement senators.

None of them are up for reelection in 2026, and no one will remember this in 2028.

Its precisely the timing calculus that let them defect. You can mathematically model this out as the penalty curve flattening out by the time its their turn on the ballot box, and the converse applies to the other democrats that held the line: their constituents wanted to win SOMETHING out of this fight but the politicians realized they had few victories achievable.

it just goes back to the fundamental composition incoherence the democrats find in themselves: overpoliticized liberals who dont need government services want the party to hold the line against evil trumplanders, while democrat politicians know their offices are getting drowned by calls for help from constituents. Ironically there is a simultaneous moral incoherence at the same time, where progressives insist on doubling down on cultural positions to keep coalitional discipline and liberals want to take the L and move on to winnable fights. There is little overlap between all these tactical and motivational principles, and within this incoherent mess an absolute spineless weakling like Schumer can continue plodding along.

with what seem like no material concessions

That's WhiningCoil's original point; how can you claim that it's the other side shutting down the government, while also asking concessions to allow it to open?

I'm not saying the Republicans necessarily had more consistent messaging, but come on, it's clearly double-speak.

While there exists at least one non-Republican senator who is not willing to blindly vote for any Republican proposal, a shutdown is obviously never 100% the Republicans fault in a very technical sense.

Still, the general rule in parliaments is that if you need someone's votes, you have to make them some concessions in exchange.

One might as well claim that on a technical level, both a rapist and (sober, adult) rape victim could stop a rape from happening by either stopping the act or just giving consent (at which point it would no longer be rape).

However, I am about as inclined to buy "it is the evil Democrats fault because they wanted some material concessions for their vote" as I am to buy "she is to blame because she did not give me consent", because the social expectation is neither that you vote for your opponent's budget out of the goodness of your heart nor that you must consent to any sex act others might afflict on you.

What concessions did Republicans get for their votes for the Continuing Resolutions during the Biden years?

I mean, what does it mean to be responsible for shutting down the government? There was a procedural path for Democrats to end the shutdown (by voting with Republicans). There was a procedural path for Republicans to end the shutdown (without any Democrat votes). There is no path for Democrats to unilaterally end the shutdown (being the minority party). What is the sense in which Democrats are responsible that does not also apply to Republicans?

What is the sense in which Democrats are responsible that does not also apply to Republicans?

This is about the messaging around who's responsible, not about who's actually responsible. Which would be Congress in general or, upstream of that, american voters who failed to elect a filibuster proof majority. But that's not going to make the party who says it very popular.

But the messaging "they're the one doing it" followed by (essentially) "why did we allow it to reopen without getting anything?" makes obvious that the narrative is bullshit.

I guess I do not think (and do not think voters think) assignment of blame like "Republicans are responsible for the shutdown" entails "there is literally nothing Democrats could do to end the shutdown." By this logic no party could ever be responsible for the shutdown, since after all some of its members could vote for a bill to end the shutdown!

So what your saying is, making Trump our king to keep the government from shutting down again is just as viable a political strategy as demanding infinity dollars for special interest groups?

I exaggerate, but that's the directionality here. Republicans could have ended the shutdown by fundamentally changing how the senate conducts business. Trump even wanted them to, because then they could ram through whatever he wanted. I'm all for it! I just never thought I'd hear those same words out of someone arguing the Democrat's case about why Republicans should own the shutdown.

Glad to hear we're united in our aspirations for Trump's agenda to be completely unimpeded. Too bad Republicans didn't own the shutdown like you say they should have and done it.

This is a very strange response. I think, and have long thought, ending the filibuster would be a good thing. I think it is singularly responsible for the erosion of Congress's role in our politics and has been a boon to the growth of presidential power. Even if the Senate did abolish the filibuster that would not come close to making Trump a king. The filibuster was not a significant impediment to Congress for the first 200+ years of our nations history. It's only in the last ~20 or so that it's seriously become a problem.

the DNC messaging

You linked to a Democrat celebrity, not to the DNC. It does not appear that the DNC has issued a post-capitulation statement.

I linked to a Democrat celebrity, who then embeds numerous Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, complain about the traitors who reopened the government.

Here it is on it's own.

https://x.com/SenSanders/status/1987718655736528939

I know the first clip was a whopping minute and 19 seconds, so it was hard to watch the entire thing. This one is even longer, a minute 39 seconds. Good luck.

You claimed that the DNC changed its position, and when challenged on that claim, you couldn’t substantiate it. At best you’ve established is different people (not all of whom are Democrats--Bernie Sanders is an independent--and none of whom claim to be speaking on behalf of the DNC) have different views on the shutdown. If you think posting snarky comments will prevent people from noticing your failure to support your claim, you are mistaken.

Sanders definitely doesn't represent the DNC.

On the other hand, Schumer possibly could be taken as representing the DNC, since he's listed on its "Leadership" webpage (though not as having any particular role in the organization). He has issued a speech in opposition to the capitulation.

Sanders definitely doesn't represent the DNC.

Yeah, he just almost won the Democratic primary, twice, and was an appointee in the Biden Administration. Not a Democrat at all really.

Sanders did not come anywhere near winning the Democratic primary.

You specifically said "DNC"—the Democratic National Committee—not Democrats in general. It is my understanding that the DNC expended significant effort on preventing Sanders from winning those primaries. Therefore, Sanders definitely does not represent the DNC.

If you want to move the goalpost past "Is a long standing and high profile member of the Democratic caucus" be my guest. At that point the DNC doesn't even exist anymore. It's like Antifa, it's just an idea.

You're the one who put the goalpost at "DNC" in the first place. If you had said "Democrat messaging" rather than "DNC messaging" in your original comment, it would have been accurate.

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If Schumer didn't like it so much then he could have whipped the senators into not voting for it. Trivial parliamentary politics doesn't deceive anyway - he's clearly the leader of the moderates! That he didn't have the courage to vote on it himself and is hiding behind his fellows makes him more wicked imo.

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