I’m not a fan of the filibuster, but I think if it were abolished right now, the GOP would go on a legislative orgy (overturning ACA for starters) that would make FDR’s hundred days look like nap time in a coma recovery unit.
I think most anti-filibuster commentators believe they would never actually do this and they the GOP likes the filibuster largely because it gives them an excuse not to do all the crazy shit they claim they want to do.
The filibuster is like a helpful friend at the bar that will pretend to hold them back from picking a fight with a much bigger guy who spilled their drink. If that friend wasn't there, they would have to show the world that actually they were never going to pick that fight, or that if they did, they'd be leaving the bar on a gurney. The existence of the filibuster allows them to save face and pretend they were always right without having to face the consequences of what they actually claim to support.
Considering the things the GOP HAS done, and let Trump do, over the last 11 months, I think this would be a very big risk to take.
Keep in mind they have to explain to their own base why something all 53 of them said they support isn't passing, and that there is always an even dumber, louder, Trumpier asshole waiting in the wings to primary them. The pressure to use that simple majority will mount quickly, alongside the temptation.
Exactly. This is true for both sides. Trump’s approval bottomed out during the ACA repeal fight. A lot of GOP senators would much rather leave (most of) the ACA intact and stay in power.
There's always some excuse. And then we have another shutdown that harms Americans.
My viewpoint is that shutdowns are a national disgrace, and should not happen, ever. Guess that makes me what passes for a radical, wanting the government to do its job instead of playing a game of chicken that common people pay for.
The filibuster most likely remains because they're hoping they can get away with not having to do things, and blame it on the other party, despite holding all 3 branches of government. After all, doing things means a risk of doing unpopular things. (Oh look, now I'm a radical *conspiracy theorist*.)
Unfortunately for them, Trump is not on the same page, and opened his big mouth and started talking about the "nuclear option" (of being able to pass bills by majority vote, which is of course unheard of and *basically* the same as mass destruction and radiation sickness).
This was a great unpacking of the split between moderate Dem politicians and moderate pundits, but I’d nudge it a bit further. The real rift may not just be practical vs. ideal, or short-term vs. long-term. It’s structural.
Politicians live in a world warped by asymmetric political conditions, Fox-fueled grievance media, a radicalized GOP base immune to policy consequences, a donor imbalance, gerrymandering, and an electorate that often punishes Democrats for using power while rewarding Republicans for breaking things. Democratic elected officials are maneuvering inside that crooked maze. Pundits aren’t.
And here’s the kicker: many of those pundits are, whether they admit it or not, part of that structural asymmetry. Because acknowledging the trap would mean acknowledging that reasoned analysis alone isn’t enough, that institutional reform, political messaging infrastructure, and democratic hardball are all necessary too. That makes punditry feel less like a referee and more like a passive participant.
It’s not just that the filibuster is undemocratic; it’s that Democrats can’t even sustain a public case against it without a megaphone network of their own. That’s the asymmetry. And that’s the silence that’s hardest to break.
"That makes punditry feel less like a referee and more like a passive participant."
It is a big problem for liberals, and this extends beyond our pundits, that we think, you know - that we're better than other people, and much better than our opposition.
So because we're better than other people, we're not INTERESTED in "partisan cheerleading" - we want "intellectual honesty."
Guess what, guys - our voters aren't voting out of reasoned analysis any more than theirs are. Our voters are also mostly voting for us because it's what their parents did and their friends do. And we should accept the vote of any old idiot for whatever dumb reason, when some people seem to want to create lists of positions that make you ineligible to support Democrats. (Scream at John Fetterman more, guys!)
You're right about pundits: they aren't referees, coaches, or even players. They are the nut jobs in the stands that dress in face paint and Road Warrior hand-me-down costumes.
What do you mean about the Democrats not having a megaphone network, though?
The right has built a 24/7 message machine like Fox, talk radio, podcasts, social media influencers, and entire “news” sites all synced up like a choir on amphetamines. They don’t just report; they rally, reinforce, and repeat. Democrats, on the other hand, rely on a fractured ecosystem of mainstream media that still pretends both parties play by the same rules, and that penalizes Democrats for showing the same aggression the GOP is praised for.
It’s not that Democrats don’t speak. It’s that when they do, they’re trying to shout over a stadium sound system blasting “Hunter Biden’s laptop!” on loop.
I will never understand why during the years that Donald Trump was attempting a comeback to power, the Democrats universally decided that women were just going to have to start accepting cock in our gym lockers. This was not the time to be making creepy unpopular demands of American people.
I think Ezra Klein’s take was nuanced and on the same vector as yours - it was a tough call that weighed lots of potential negative outcomes against “winning” the fight (while millions of poor people go without food, air travel becomes more dangerous and the filibuster is eliminated). The Dems are in a better position with the voters than they were before it started. That might be the best you can get out of any shutdown fight.
It should also be noted that the most succinct summary of Ezra's position - "no" to the deal - was also the position of 39 of the 47 Democrats in the Senate. (And we had one more defection than was needed so it's unlikely this was a pure "hall pass" situation intentionally engineered by leadership. If it was they were fantastically stealthy about it.)
But anything in which a small amount of Dems participate immediately becomes the doing of "The Democrats" in online discourse. (Or, "the DNC," if you are dealing with somebody with the right balance of ignorance and self-importance.)
Your fellow Joke Rumplestiltskin (but way Trumpier) colleague Jeff Childers noted the 8 defectors are not so much “moderate” as not up for re-election in ‘28 so they were quietly drafted to carry the white flag for the D caucus. That is the same cover that Senators who don’t want to nuke the filibuster like about it more generally. You can vote against things you favor or for things you oppose as long as the total votes will be between 51 and 59.
Yeah, there is not really any way to know the exact way this unfolded but it's entirely possible that Schumer, who is being labeled as "unable to lead," engineered this exact outcome himself. Personally I think this was an actual defection, but I can't say.
People really draw insanely large conclusions about things they have no friggin' clue about. How many people have acted like they know every detail about negotiations to end the Gaza War in 2023 and 2024, never acknowledging that Biden and Blinken could have been handcuffed in ways we can't and probably will never know about?
"No one really knows how the game is played, the art of the trade, how the sausage gets made... they just assume that it happens. But no one else is in the room where it happens." - Aaron Burr (the Broadway character, not the Vice President on which he is based.)
First, I'm both drunk and stoned (stunk) Second, I don't understand Jeff (May I call you Jeff?) how you pretty goodly follow all these horseshit goings-on without slamming your head into a wall.
Allowing the shutdown was a colossal mistake because Republicans actively enjoy shutting the government down and it gives Trump a pretext to reduce spending on things that Dems like. Somehow this was obvious to people like Schumer back in March but they either forgot or just folded after being scolded by progressives wanting him to "do something" even if that something was completely counterproductive.
You do realize, right, that people would have been absolutely furious at Schumer if they hadn't shut down the government? They were in March. Very nearly approximately as furious as they are now.
Can we stop pretending there are good answers for Schumer? Can we acknowledge that he is staying on as leader because his job right now, which he performs willingly, is basically for all of you to hate him?
Can we stop refusing to accept that we can't get policy concessions when we have no actual power, and are the only party that cares whether poor people can eat or not, meaning we also have no leverage?
(Can we all stop pretending we're not all 100% as fucked in the head as MAGA, just in a totally different way?)
Of course Schumer was going to have a whole lot of idiots mad at him no matter what he did. Welcome to politics. Cry me a river.
The correct response in Schumer's position is to decide what the right thing to do is, do it, and then just put up with the blowback. Reasonable people can disagree on what "the right thing" is, but I have a lot of trouble coming up with a "right thing" which is served both by a) starting a shutdown and b) ending it after a month.
I'm not cry[ing] any rivers on behalf of Schumer because I think he's a super neat guy and want him to be happy, I'm expressing frustration that it's impossible to get anybody in our coalition to speak positively about it, which is worth crying about, because it's the reason the rule of law got flushed down the toilet this year. I don't know what we expect Democratic campaigns to do when their own voters won't stop shit talking them.
What we say MATTERS, and what we tend to say is not going to make persuadable people want to vote for Democrats! Buried in a thousand tons of "weak Dems!!!" comments is the stubborn truth that the Democratic platform is mildly popular, and they take good faith efforts to implement it, with mixed success, and that the Republicans are a cult with no platform except fealty to a cartoon villain. THAT is what we should be talking about.
If you want to talk about a reason why having the shutdown was the right thing - which, fuck if I know if it was, that's why I'm not running for Senate - I can't help but notice that Donald Trump seems to be less popular than he was five or six weeks ago.
If "doing the right thing" causes your party to melt down and self-flagellate instead of focusing on Epstein or shoring up state election infrastructure then it wasn't the right thing. Which means, in this case, there was no right thing.
Who would have been mad, the Progs? It's hard to say how prolific they really are. They are mostly childless, hobbyless losers who can devout a lot of time to posting on Twitter, Reddit, or BlueSky, which gives the mirage of numbers, but clearly if they were as popular as they think they are Repubs wouldn't have a trifecta.
The problem with relentless negativity goes beyond that set, though, well into the domains of liberals and centrists. But yeah, that part of the party has been a drag on us.
And however numerous they are, and whatever percentage of the coalition they are, is hard to know, like you say. But they are UNDOUBTEDLY less than the impression social media will give you. I think it's a classic 80/20 - 20% of the party is making 80% of the chatter.
yes that is basically correct. This was a wet dream for Trump and his clone Voight the Impaler who wanted to do the oligarchs bidding and dismantle the government while they still have the reigns of power! But the democratic base clearly was calling for it and at least some of those people got re-hired. And people will remember how shitty the Republcans were in this little shit show....
Vought wishes he was a Trump clone. If he had Trump's genes then he would currently look like he was 30 years younger than Trump, like 49 year old Trump did, and not like he's ten years younger than Trump like 49 year old Russell Vought does.
If that were the whole story he would have folded back in March too. I think he miscalculated partially due due to self preservation instincts but he obviously had no strategy for how this would end.
Schumer has no self-preservation instincts left, because he is too smart of a guy to "throw good money after bad." He knows what he is - exactly what Jeff says he is, a punching bag, a totem of all our failures - and he deserves a lot of credit for accepting the role, in my opinion. There is no going back to the chipper, breezy Schumer of 2000.
If AOC announces she's running for Senate I bet he retires.
I think he is getting to the point where "self-preservation" starts to mean "retire, get some rest, and take some Ginko, before you have a myocardial infarction on camera."
But you can see with McConnell that a lot of these weirdos will just ride the bull all the way to the end, even when their bodies are falling apart on them. And Schumer seems to at least be in very good health for now, but who knows how long that will last.
He should get out while he has a little bit of spirit left in him, which would have the side benefit of making almost the entire party happy as well. I think the main problem is that right now, nobody wants to replace him, because, well... he's a punching bag! I'd rather be going on TV and saying Resistance-y Stuff all day like Chris Murphy than making hard decisions and trying to wrangle a bunch of panicking Senators.
Is this why Trump announced this weekend that every American is getting a $2,000 rebate check drawn from the "very excellent profits" of the Tariffs? So I will forget his party caused the shutdown?
"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"
No, it really doesn't and never did. As Nate Silver pointed out, those polls also showed that voters didn’t understand why there was a shutdown in the first place, and that the Dem advantage on blame was quickly eroding.
That suggest people were initially mislead about which side was holding the government hostage (87% of news coverage on the matter was favorable to Democrats), but were slowing figuring it out anyway.
I read that column from Nate — he said that he didn’t agree that people were blaming Republicans AT FIRST but came around to that belief. (Also Nate was making an empirical statement about who he thought people were blaming for the shutdown, not who he thought people should blame for the shutdown.)
I didn't mean to imply Nate shared my position here. Just that the polls aren't as rosy for democrats as pundits have been making them sound.
If people understood Dems were filibustering a clean funding bill (regardless of whether to stick it to fascist Trump or make legislative demands from the minority bench) those polls would obviously look very different, but the media did literally everything they could to obscure who was doing what (while breathlessly hyping those polls they helped cook).
Tangential, but I think it's worth pointing out that Durbin is retiring in 2026. My guess is that many Dems wanted the shutdown to end (scoring points against Trump isn't worth the harm caused by flight delays/SNAP payments not going out/etc.) but didn't want to be the one to step up. Durbin has nothing to lose, so was able to take that hit.
Also tangential, how is "Trump goes to court to stop SNAP payments" not a dealbreaker for everyone???
Moderates in swing states like the filibuster because it provides stability. Incumbents win unless things change and get weird.
The republicans gained six senate seats and 63 house seats in 2010. That was the price of Obamacare.
Maybe your Matt Yglesias and you love Obamacare and you thought other people losing heir jobs was a price worth paying. The people losing their jobs are more skeptical.
The other factor is that moderates are moderate. The filibuster helps either side from doing what they want. And while you think 100% of your ideas are correct, there are certainly ideas to at actually aren’t good. Passing bills 51-50 is often a sign they aren’t great. Republicans would have been doing the democrats a favor if they blocked bidens three party line spending bills that promoted huge inflation.
Moderates want moderate politics. A sixty vote threshold basically assures it.
Yglesias wants radical left politics and is only constrained by what he thinks is necessary to get to 51%. He thinks politicians should lie more to get the left more power. He’s not a moderate, he’s a progressive Machiavellian pragmatist.
Perhaps. However, shutdowns and uncertainty over whether things like SNAP benefits go out aren't stability. A better rule would look something like "absent an agreement, a clean Continuing Resolution is automatically passed."
Yeah right. The majority of Americans have supported voterID. If voting without an ID does not impact Democrats, why do they oppose it? If denying mass mail in ballots like all other advanced industrialized countries does not impact Democrats, why do they oppose it?
Because voter fraud effectively doesn't exist and the only purposes of requiring in-person voting with ID is effective voter suppression to those who a have more difficulty obtaining it - generally the poor.
Because America is better than those other countries. Because denying a legitimate voter is orders of magnitude worse than allowing an illegitimate voter, and there just aren't that many illegitimate voters to begin with.
Elitist and hypocritical. “America is better than those other countries” while you participate in ideology that claims the US is racist and a colonizing global parasite. Which is it?
The idea with voterID, again supported by 84%, is to ensure only legitimate voters. That protects democracy. It ensures trust in the system and wipes out this constant claim from both parties that there had been fraud and cheating. All Democrats would need to do is shift their ballot harvesting activities to making sure all their voters established legitimate IDs. Since 99% of legitimate voters already have legitimate ID, and since it is easy to see Democrats being able to ensure maximum voterID, it is clear that those against voterID either know or suspect that Democrats benefit from illegitimate votes today.
America isn't better with its election balloting process. There are many countries that have been at it longer that are better. My assumptions are based on the fact that America loving patriots support voterid.
“When you factor in the legitimate pain a shutdown causes — which seemed to motivate Fetterman…”
Fetterman isn’t motivated by legitimate pain; he is motivated by appeasing his buddy Trump. Fetterman is as useful to his party as a screen door on a submarine.
Did you even look at the graph at the beginning of the article? The man votes with Democrats 80% of the time--and isn't even the least progressive person on there, which distinction goes to Angus King and Mark Warner.
Seriously, that last sentence is utterly disconnected from reality.
Jeff, I wonder what you you think about Noah Rothman's take in this piece. https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/11/how-government-shutdowns-contribute-to-political-radicalization/ It's behind a paywall but you should be able to access a couple articles a month. Basically, his point is that this, like all government shutdowns, was nothing but politicians lying to their constituents/the groups/ pundits to score points without any intention or expectation of success.
I’m not a fan of the filibuster, but I think if it were abolished right now, the GOP would go on a legislative orgy (overturning ACA for starters) that would make FDR’s hundred days look like nap time in a coma recovery unit.
I think most anti-filibuster commentators believe they would never actually do this and they the GOP likes the filibuster largely because it gives them an excuse not to do all the crazy shit they claim they want to do.
The filibuster is like a helpful friend at the bar that will pretend to hold them back from picking a fight with a much bigger guy who spilled their drink. If that friend wasn't there, they would have to show the world that actually they were never going to pick that fight, or that if they did, they'd be leaving the bar on a gurney. The existence of the filibuster allows them to save face and pretend they were always right without having to face the consequences of what they actually claim to support.
Considering the things the GOP HAS done, and let Trump do, over the last 11 months, I think this would be a very big risk to take.
Keep in mind they have to explain to their own base why something all 53 of them said they support isn't passing, and that there is always an even dumber, louder, Trumpier asshole waiting in the wings to primary them. The pressure to use that simple majority will mount quickly, alongside the temptation.
Exactly. This is true for both sides. Trump’s approval bottomed out during the ACA repeal fight. A lot of GOP senators would much rather leave (most of) the ACA intact and stay in power.
There's always some excuse. And then we have another shutdown that harms Americans.
My viewpoint is that shutdowns are a national disgrace, and should not happen, ever. Guess that makes me what passes for a radical, wanting the government to do its job instead of playing a game of chicken that common people pay for.
The filibuster most likely remains because they're hoping they can get away with not having to do things, and blame it on the other party, despite holding all 3 branches of government. After all, doing things means a risk of doing unpopular things. (Oh look, now I'm a radical *conspiracy theorist*.)
Unfortunately for them, Trump is not on the same page, and opened his big mouth and started talking about the "nuclear option" (of being able to pass bills by majority vote, which is of course unheard of and *basically* the same as mass destruction and radiation sickness).
This
That's the real risk and at least they kept it in place... for now!
This was a great unpacking of the split between moderate Dem politicians and moderate pundits, but I’d nudge it a bit further. The real rift may not just be practical vs. ideal, or short-term vs. long-term. It’s structural.
Politicians live in a world warped by asymmetric political conditions, Fox-fueled grievance media, a radicalized GOP base immune to policy consequences, a donor imbalance, gerrymandering, and an electorate that often punishes Democrats for using power while rewarding Republicans for breaking things. Democratic elected officials are maneuvering inside that crooked maze. Pundits aren’t.
And here’s the kicker: many of those pundits are, whether they admit it or not, part of that structural asymmetry. Because acknowledging the trap would mean acknowledging that reasoned analysis alone isn’t enough, that institutional reform, political messaging infrastructure, and democratic hardball are all necessary too. That makes punditry feel less like a referee and more like a passive participant.
It’s not just that the filibuster is undemocratic; it’s that Democrats can’t even sustain a public case against it without a megaphone network of their own. That’s the asymmetry. And that’s the silence that’s hardest to break.
More thoughts: https://www.stewonthis.com/p/moderation-vs-centrism
"That makes punditry feel less like a referee and more like a passive participant."
It is a big problem for liberals, and this extends beyond our pundits, that we think, you know - that we're better than other people, and much better than our opposition.
So because we're better than other people, we're not INTERESTED in "partisan cheerleading" - we want "intellectual honesty."
Guess what, guys - our voters aren't voting out of reasoned analysis any more than theirs are. Our voters are also mostly voting for us because it's what their parents did and their friends do. And we should accept the vote of any old idiot for whatever dumb reason, when some people seem to want to create lists of positions that make you ineligible to support Democrats. (Scream at John Fetterman more, guys!)
You're right about pundits: they aren't referees, coaches, or even players. They are the nut jobs in the stands that dress in face paint and Road Warrior hand-me-down costumes.
What do you mean about the Democrats not having a megaphone network, though?
The right has built a 24/7 message machine like Fox, talk radio, podcasts, social media influencers, and entire “news” sites all synced up like a choir on amphetamines. They don’t just report; they rally, reinforce, and repeat. Democrats, on the other hand, rely on a fractured ecosystem of mainstream media that still pretends both parties play by the same rules, and that penalizes Democrats for showing the same aggression the GOP is praised for.
It’s not that Democrats don’t speak. It’s that when they do, they’re trying to shout over a stadium sound system blasting “Hunter Biden’s laptop!” on loop.
or even worse: they them... yuck!🤬
I will never understand why during the years that Donald Trump was attempting a comeback to power, the Democrats universally decided that women were just going to have to start accepting cock in our gym lockers. This was not the time to be making creepy unpopular demands of American people.
We got too cocky I guess 🤨
That was a very good column, I like the distinction between moderation and centrism. Please consider making it free!
I think Ezra Klein’s take was nuanced and on the same vector as yours - it was a tough call that weighed lots of potential negative outcomes against “winning” the fight (while millions of poor people go without food, air travel becomes more dangerous and the filibuster is eliminated). The Dems are in a better position with the voters than they were before it started. That might be the best you can get out of any shutdown fight.
It should also be noted that the most succinct summary of Ezra's position - "no" to the deal - was also the position of 39 of the 47 Democrats in the Senate. (And we had one more defection than was needed so it's unlikely this was a pure "hall pass" situation intentionally engineered by leadership. If it was they were fantastically stealthy about it.)
But anything in which a small amount of Dems participate immediately becomes the doing of "The Democrats" in online discourse. (Or, "the DNC," if you are dealing with somebody with the right balance of ignorance and self-importance.)
Your fellow Joke Rumplestiltskin (but way Trumpier) colleague Jeff Childers noted the 8 defectors are not so much “moderate” as not up for re-election in ‘28 so they were quietly drafted to carry the white flag for the D caucus. That is the same cover that Senators who don’t want to nuke the filibuster like about it more generally. You can vote against things you favor or for things you oppose as long as the total votes will be between 51 and 59.
Yeah, there is not really any way to know the exact way this unfolded but it's entirely possible that Schumer, who is being labeled as "unable to lead," engineered this exact outcome himself. Personally I think this was an actual defection, but I can't say.
People really draw insanely large conclusions about things they have no friggin' clue about. How many people have acted like they know every detail about negotiations to end the Gaza War in 2023 and 2024, never acknowledging that Biden and Blinken could have been handcuffed in ways we can't and probably will never know about?
"No one really knows how the game is played, the art of the trade, how the sausage gets made... they just assume that it happens. But no one else is in the room where it happens." - Aaron Burr (the Broadway character, not the Vice President on which he is based.)
First, I'm both drunk and stoned (stunk) Second, I don't understand Jeff (May I call you Jeff?) how you pretty goodly follow all these horseshit goings-on without slamming your head into a wall.
Who said I don’t slam my head against the wall?
Just don't do it in the
Champagne Room for Winners. Fragile stuff in there.....
Let me see the blood.
Allowing the shutdown was a colossal mistake because Republicans actively enjoy shutting the government down and it gives Trump a pretext to reduce spending on things that Dems like. Somehow this was obvious to people like Schumer back in March but they either forgot or just folded after being scolded by progressives wanting him to "do something" even if that something was completely counterproductive.
You do realize, right, that people would have been absolutely furious at Schumer if they hadn't shut down the government? They were in March. Very nearly approximately as furious as they are now.
Can we stop pretending there are good answers for Schumer? Can we acknowledge that he is staying on as leader because his job right now, which he performs willingly, is basically for all of you to hate him?
Can we stop refusing to accept that we can't get policy concessions when we have no actual power, and are the only party that cares whether poor people can eat or not, meaning we also have no leverage?
(Can we all stop pretending we're not all 100% as fucked in the head as MAGA, just in a totally different way?)
Of course Schumer was going to have a whole lot of idiots mad at him no matter what he did. Welcome to politics. Cry me a river.
The correct response in Schumer's position is to decide what the right thing to do is, do it, and then just put up with the blowback. Reasonable people can disagree on what "the right thing" is, but I have a lot of trouble coming up with a "right thing" which is served both by a) starting a shutdown and b) ending it after a month.
I'm not cry[ing] any rivers on behalf of Schumer because I think he's a super neat guy and want him to be happy, I'm expressing frustration that it's impossible to get anybody in our coalition to speak positively about it, which is worth crying about, because it's the reason the rule of law got flushed down the toilet this year. I don't know what we expect Democratic campaigns to do when their own voters won't stop shit talking them.
What we say MATTERS, and what we tend to say is not going to make persuadable people want to vote for Democrats! Buried in a thousand tons of "weak Dems!!!" comments is the stubborn truth that the Democratic platform is mildly popular, and they take good faith efforts to implement it, with mixed success, and that the Republicans are a cult with no platform except fealty to a cartoon villain. THAT is what we should be talking about.
If you want to talk about a reason why having the shutdown was the right thing - which, fuck if I know if it was, that's why I'm not running for Senate - I can't help but notice that Donald Trump seems to be less popular than he was five or six weeks ago.
If "doing the right thing" causes your party to melt down and self-flagellate instead of focusing on Epstein or shoring up state election infrastructure then it wasn't the right thing. Which means, in this case, there was no right thing.
Who would have been mad, the Progs? It's hard to say how prolific they really are. They are mostly childless, hobbyless losers who can devout a lot of time to posting on Twitter, Reddit, or BlueSky, which gives the mirage of numbers, but clearly if they were as popular as they think they are Repubs wouldn't have a trifecta.
The problem with relentless negativity goes beyond that set, though, well into the domains of liberals and centrists. But yeah, that part of the party has been a drag on us.
And however numerous they are, and whatever percentage of the coalition they are, is hard to know, like you say. But they are UNDOUBTEDLY less than the impression social media will give you. I think it's a classic 80/20 - 20% of the party is making 80% of the chatter.
yes that is basically correct. This was a wet dream for Trump and his clone Voight the Impaler who wanted to do the oligarchs bidding and dismantle the government while they still have the reigns of power! But the democratic base clearly was calling for it and at least some of those people got re-hired. And people will remember how shitty the Republcans were in this little shit show....
Vought wishes he was a Trump clone. If he had Trump's genes then he would currently look like he was 30 years younger than Trump, like 49 year old Trump did, and not like he's ten years younger than Trump like 49 year old Russell Vought does.
Hopefully … Teflon Don can spin with great skilll …
Schumer folded to the "progressive" know-nothings, because Schumer is weak.
If that were the whole story he would have folded back in March too. I think he miscalculated partially due due to self preservation instincts but he obviously had no strategy for how this would end.
Schumer has no self-preservation instincts left, because he is too smart of a guy to "throw good money after bad." He knows what he is - exactly what Jeff says he is, a punching bag, a totem of all our failures - and he deserves a lot of credit for accepting the role, in my opinion. There is no going back to the chipper, breezy Schumer of 2000.
If AOC announces she's running for Senate I bet he retires.
How is accepting that role different from self-preservation instincts? I think we're saying the same thing but too busy at the moment to parse it.
Maybe.
I think he is getting to the point where "self-preservation" starts to mean "retire, get some rest, and take some Ginko, before you have a myocardial infarction on camera."
But you can see with McConnell that a lot of these weirdos will just ride the bull all the way to the end, even when their bodies are falling apart on them. And Schumer seems to at least be in very good health for now, but who knows how long that will last.
He should get out while he has a little bit of spirit left in him, which would have the side benefit of making almost the entire party happy as well. I think the main problem is that right now, nobody wants to replace him, because, well... he's a punching bag! I'd rather be going on TV and saying Resistance-y Stuff all day like Chris Murphy than making hard decisions and trying to wrangle a bunch of panicking Senators.
Pelosi's out and I think he's not far behind.
Is this why Trump announced this weekend that every American is getting a $2,000 rebate check drawn from the "very excellent profits" of the Tariffs? So I will forget his party caused the shutdown?
Yes.
"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"
No, it really doesn't and never did. As Nate Silver pointed out, those polls also showed that voters didn’t understand why there was a shutdown in the first place, and that the Dem advantage on blame was quickly eroding.
That suggest people were initially mislead about which side was holding the government hostage (87% of news coverage on the matter was favorable to Democrats), but were slowing figuring it out anyway.
https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/bill-dagostino/2025/11/05/study-tv-news-spends-shutdown-playing-defense-democrats
I read that column from Nate — he said that he didn’t agree that people were blaming Republicans AT FIRST but came around to that belief. (Also Nate was making an empirical statement about who he thought people were blaming for the shutdown, not who he thought people should blame for the shutdown.)
I didn't mean to imply Nate shared my position here. Just that the polls aren't as rosy for democrats as pundits have been making them sound.
If people understood Dems were filibustering a clean funding bill (regardless of whether to stick it to fascist Trump or make legislative demands from the minority bench) those polls would obviously look very different, but the media did literally everything they could to obscure who was doing what (while breathlessly hyping those polls they helped cook).
I think that pundits oppose the filibuster because they’re like journalists - they want fights and drama, and the filibuster limits that.
Tangential, but I think it's worth pointing out that Durbin is retiring in 2026. My guess is that many Dems wanted the shutdown to end (scoring points against Trump isn't worth the harm caused by flight delays/SNAP payments not going out/etc.) but didn't want to be the one to step up. Durbin has nothing to lose, so was able to take that hit.
Also tangential, how is "Trump goes to court to stop SNAP payments" not a dealbreaker for everyone???
It's a dealbreaker for any working class person who got suckered by the orange one.😁
Many Nevadans felt shame over their two Senators caving. Their voice mailboxes were full by 8:30 a.m. ( with caustic comments, no doubt!)
well yes and I hope they will be replaced or primaried.
Moderates in swing states like the filibuster because it provides stability. Incumbents win unless things change and get weird.
The republicans gained six senate seats and 63 house seats in 2010. That was the price of Obamacare.
Maybe your Matt Yglesias and you love Obamacare and you thought other people losing heir jobs was a price worth paying. The people losing their jobs are more skeptical.
The other factor is that moderates are moderate. The filibuster helps either side from doing what they want. And while you think 100% of your ideas are correct, there are certainly ideas to at actually aren’t good. Passing bills 51-50 is often a sign they aren’t great. Republicans would have been doing the democrats a favor if they blocked bidens three party line spending bills that promoted huge inflation.
Moderates want moderate politics. A sixty vote threshold basically assures it.
Yglesias wants radical left politics and is only constrained by what he thinks is necessary to get to 51%. He thinks politicians should lie more to get the left more power. He’s not a moderate, he’s a progressive Machiavellian pragmatist.
Perhaps. However, shutdowns and uncertainty over whether things like SNAP benefits go out aren't stability. A better rule would look something like "absent an agreement, a clean Continuing Resolution is automatically passed."
I think the calculus goes that Democrats are probably locked out of the Senate for the next decade and you’d probably want some sort of check.
Yes, the filibuster threat was a big reason the party flipped a few Dems to give in.
It was the likelihood that national voterID and no mail in ballots would pass. And with that Democrats are a dead party.
Except that isn’t true. This myth has been debunked by multiple in -the-weeds analyses
Yeah right. The majority of Americans have supported voterID. If voting without an ID does not impact Democrats, why do they oppose it? If denying mass mail in ballots like all other advanced industrialized countries does not impact Democrats, why do they oppose it?
Because voter fraud effectively doesn't exist and the only purposes of requiring in-person voting with ID is effective voter suppression to those who a have more difficulty obtaining it - generally the poor.
Naw. Everybody needs an ID to live in current society. 70% of voters support it. Only upper class Democrats reject it because they cheat.
The level of delusion required to believe this is astounding.
Sure Zacky boy. I was wrong. 84% want voterID. Now go watch you The View reruns.
Because America is better than those other countries. Because denying a legitimate voter is orders of magnitude worse than allowing an illegitimate voter, and there just aren't that many illegitimate voters to begin with.
Elitist and hypocritical. “America is better than those other countries” while you participate in ideology that claims the US is racist and a colonizing global parasite. Which is it?
The idea with voterID, again supported by 84%, is to ensure only legitimate voters. That protects democracy. It ensures trust in the system and wipes out this constant claim from both parties that there had been fraud and cheating. All Democrats would need to do is shift their ballot harvesting activities to making sure all their voters established legitimate IDs. Since 99% of legitimate voters already have legitimate ID, and since it is easy to see Democrats being able to ensure maximum voterID, it is clear that those against voterID either know or suspect that Democrats benefit from illegitimate votes today.
What illegitimate votes?
Also,
A) Hell yes it's elitist, America is elite.
B) Making a lot of assumptions about someone who started off their reply to you with "America is better"
America isn't better with its election balloting process. There are many countries that have been at it longer that are better. My assumptions are based on the fact that America loving patriots support voterid.
"This myth has been debunked" is not a talking point that has much power anymore. Trust in "debunkers" has cratered.
“When you factor in the legitimate pain a shutdown causes — which seemed to motivate Fetterman…”
Fetterman isn’t motivated by legitimate pain; he is motivated by appeasing his buddy Trump. Fetterman is as useful to his party as a screen door on a submarine.
Did you even look at the graph at the beginning of the article? The man votes with Democrats 80% of the time--and isn't even the least progressive person on there, which distinction goes to Angus King and Mark Warner.
Seriously, that last sentence is utterly disconnected from reality.
Jeff, I wonder what you you think about Noah Rothman's take in this piece. https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/11/how-government-shutdowns-contribute-to-political-radicalization/ It's behind a paywall but you should be able to access a couple articles a month. Basically, his point is that this, like all government shutdowns, was nothing but politicians lying to their constituents/the groups/ pundits to score points without any intention or expectation of success.