The Shutdown Deal Has Triggered a Sensible, Prudent Knife Fight Among Moderates

50 shades of taupe

A weird thing came out of the shutdown-ending bargain: The eight Democratic Senators who broke ranks to strike a deal lean moderate, but moderate liberal pundits hate the deal. What’s that about? A rift has opened between centrist-liberal-moderate-progressive politicians and progressive-moderate-liberal-centrist talking heads.

The eight key Senators — as a group — are more moderate than the typical Democratic Senator. Below is a chart of the lifetime “crucial vote” progressive score for all 47 Democratic Senators¹ from the database Progressive Punch; the eight Senators who broke ranks are highlighted in orange. You can quibble with the methodology here, but: 1) A different database or different selection method² would produce similar results, and 2) Is that how you want to spend your life? Quibbling with statistical methods on a political-comedy blog? Please consider the possibility that you might have a twisted mind. But for the rest of us, here’s the graph:

Centrist liberal pundits were immediately and — as far as I can tell — uniformly against the deal. Matt Yglesias called the decision to cave “dumb”, Jonathan Chait called it “a huge mistake”, and Ezra Klein said he wouldn’t vote for the compromise if he was in the Senate. I’ll include myself on the list of moderate liberals who aren’t thrilled, though I don’t think I count because I’m not really a pundit so much as a Joke Rumpelstiltskin who happens to write about politics. The moderate group Third Way issued a statement opposing the deal, possible ‘28 contenders including Buttigeig, Pritzker, and Newsome were highly critical, and even Chuck Schumer wasn’t on board. The deal is opposed by close to everyone who has ever had a Bluesky Fatwa issued against them.

But I think that the source of the disconnect becomes clear when you drill down on what the people in question actually support.

The shutdown dynamic shifted in the past week. The somewhat-unexpected background noise throughout this episode has been that the public seems to blame Republicans for the shutdown more than Democrats. In retrospect, that makes sense: Republicans control the White House and Congress and have long been on an Inigo Montoya-esque quest to kill the government. Trump’s efforts to ratchet up the pressure by inflicting pain through things like cancelled flights and stalled food stamp payments didn’t work, because duh: He was the one getting blamed for the pain. “Turning the screws” doesn’t work when you’re the one in the vice. Some of the liberal frustration here surely comes from the fact that eight Democrats folded right after Trump spent a week making moves that made it impossible not to think of this clip:

But — as so often happens — Trump flailed his way into a good outcome (for him). The key is that he upped his efforts to get Republicans to scrap the filibuster. There were, of course, two ways for Republicans to reopen the government: 1) Strike some deal on Obamacare subsidies, or 2) Scrap or significantly reform the filibuster and pass the necessary bills with 50 votes. In the past week, Trump focused on option #2. Matt Yglesias thinks that this was key to eight Democrats changing their mind, and Matt has contacts and actually talks to people, as opposed to being some dickweed who just reads the news and tries to figure out how it might relate to a Simpsons clip (hello!).

The rift seems to come from the fact that many of the politicians have a soft spot for the filibuster, while pundits are as hostile to the filibuster as Chuck E Cheese is to single guys in sweatpants. Six of the eight dealmakers (Durbin and Fetterman are the exceptions) have expressed a desire to keep some version of the filibuster.³ Meanwhile, the relevant pundits have denounced the filibuster in the spiciest language their staid publications will allow (calling something “unsound” in The Atlantic is like calling something “shit-ass stupid” anywhere else).

The shutdown math differs depending on your opinion of the filibuster. If you like Obamacare and hate the filibuster, then holding out increases the chances that you’ll get something you want. But if you like Obamacare and like the filibuster, then it’s 50/50 — the shutdown could produce a good outcome or a bad outcome. In the past week, the bad outcome started to look more likely. When you factor in the legitimate pain a shutdown causes — which seemed to motivate Fetterman, one of only two anti-filibuster breakaways — the potential payoff wasn’t worth the pain.

We could speculate about why politicians seem to like the filibuster more than pundits, so…let’s do that. Maybe Senators like rules that increase the power of any one Senator, or maybe writers are pedantic dweebs who are obsessed with rules — I wouldn’t discount either theory. But I think the disconnect might be because a politician’s focus is immediate, whereas pundits think long-term. Politics is a practical business, you either focus on what’s pressing and relevant for your constituents or you lose and have to slink back to the law firm. Pundits, though, get to live in the clouds a bit: You can’t vote us out, so there’s more room to be big-picture and twee. The filibuster bothers us because it violates majoritarian principles and has no Constitutional foundation — its short-term impact matters to us less. The pundits in question also think that scrapping the filibuster would favor Democrat policies in the long term even if it might help Republicans here and there. In contrast, a current Senator doesn’t care about what might happen 20 years from now (even though most of them plan to serve until they’re 160). So, when progressives complain that “moderates” sold them out — which will definitely happen — remember that it depends on what type of moderate you’re talking about. Because it was the centrist-liberal-moderate-progressive politicians who folded here, not the progressive-moderate-liberal-centrist talking heads.

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1. The two independent Senators who caucus with Democrats — Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont — are included.

2. These rankings aren’t gospel — for example, Bernie Sanders is listed as the 15th-most-progressive Senator (probably because of gun stuff). And some Senators’ score for this congressional session is quite a bit different from their lifetime score (looking at you, Chris Murphy). It’s a rough measure, but precise enough to be useful.

3. Here’s my evidence for that characterization:
King: “I have long opposed changes to the filibuster.” (though that was said in the context of explaining why he has come around to supporting limited reforms)
Kaine: Explained to the Washington Post in 2022 that he thinks the “talking filibuster” should remain.
Cortez-Masto: Supports the talking filibuster.
Rosen: Supports the talking filibuster.
Hassan: Supports only limited filibuster reform.
Shaheen: Supported the filibuster in 2017 and later came around to supporting limited reform.
Durbin: Has long opposed the filibuster, calling it “a mockery of American democracy”.
Fetterman: Unequivocal opponent of the filibuster.