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PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   2147 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.

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.

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'.

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 passing the house bill and then amending 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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