This is 100% political malpractice and thanks Nate for being so honest about it and saying you were getting ready to eat crow. The Democrats’ approval should plummet after this. If yesterday’s offer was all they needed to keep the government open, then they should have just done that from day one. Now the shutdown IS the Dems fault because they were going to cave for next to nothing but shut it down anyway. The base and the Dem voters are reeling right now.
In a normal GOP administration (if such a thing is still possible) I would agree with you. But here, Trump overplays every hand to such an extreme level of callousness, that extending the shutdown only serves to hurt Trump more than Dems.
Trump opts to bailout Argentina and remodel the East Wing instead of paying SNAP is such a gift to Dems.
Why stop? Why not keep going until Trump is utterly decimated by his own lack of care? The only way that happens, sadly, is people feel Trump's callousness directly. Where it's not abstract / theoretical thing Dems whine about. But it's instead something Trump does to them every day.
Dems need more Realpolitik here to overcome Trump. Not just about the issue at hand (ACA), but fully neuter him politically. You might get to a point where GOP finds ways to "manage" Trump to save their skins and lessen the impact.
You talk about "callous" when the Democrats were willing to scare the hell out of poor people about not getting food. Don't try to tell me about callousness. The Democratic Party couldn't care less about the poor. It is full of rich "progressives" who are just as happy as the wingnuttiest wingnut to use starvation as a political tool. Go to hell.
I'm not seeing the "happy about Trump" part. This was a battle between two teams who both care about winning and nothing else; for one reason or another, this only counts as callousness on one side.
I have never voted for Trump. By the way, I thought the "progressives" were against "whataboutism." Guess not. My question is this: Do you have a single principle other than wanting power?
You are perfectly fine with taking food away from the poor, because you are a rich "progressive" who doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone but your rich friends who run the Democratic Party and hate the poor and the working middle class.
I’m convinced more people will starve longer term by an empowered Trump than will be saved by this temporary extension. Why are you so willing to starve those people? Why are you taking away their health care? How callous of you!
If the GOP had its way, SNAP would simply cease to exist on a permanent basis, no shutdown needed. The more Dems refuse to recognize the fight they’re in, the closer they get to a world where the GOP gets that desired outcome, among many others.
Oh, sure. People already were blaming the Dems: the flights shut down? In America?? The air traffic controllers working for over a month without being paid? I call it slavery and I want that changed. I don't think people much cared about the Food Stamps -- I've read the recipients often trade those for drugs anyway, using them as a form of currency -- but the military not getting paid unless Elon gave the pay period money to the soldiers is a bad look. (I'm assuming it was Elon who gave the $125 million: nothing to him, pocket change. He's worth half a trillion right now as we speak.)
There is a trade in EBT cards for drugs. This could be easily quashed by putting a name on the card, and even the name of a caregiver too, and then requiring a photo I.D. to use it.
You'd need a nationally issued ID card that would replace a driver's license for such a scheme to work. Otherwise you're letting most recipients starve because for an edge case.
I think the Dems accomplished pretty much everything they could from this shutdown. What else was going to happen if they didn't cave?
Keep a few things in mind. First off, the election last week made it pretty damn clear to everyone that the Dems are very likely to retake the House. Trump and his advisors know this also. So Trump is feeling a time pressure...he basically has until January 2027 to pass his agenda. After that, nothing is getting through the House. Further, he's busy pressuring his own senators to kill the filibuster.
Plus we all know how Trump feels about compromise.
Short answer: Trump would never have given in, not at least until the country was effed. So the Dems basically were looking at killing the economy and making millions suffer...and he still wasn't going to give in and agree.
One can argue that they never should have done the shutdown at all. I think it turned out to be a positive for the party, weakening Trump and the Pubs. But it was time to end it. Sometimes you have to realize that you got what you could get. They scored on a couple of combinations, now it's time to back away before the other guy hits you back.
If they don't cave, Trump continues to make optional moves that causes direct pain to the electorate. Trump continues to damage himself politically overplaying his hands.
Why leave that situation?
Trump won't compromise. But people will feel the pain directly from Trump to such an extreme that they will massively turn on Trump.
Now that they DID cave, the pain becomes yet another abstract thing Dems whine about.
I don’t think you’re exactly correct on this. This was incredibly badly-timed. The FAA shutdown was going to stop people going to their families for Thanksgiving…and the Democrats would have lost any goodwill for that. The Dems stopping people get food - seen by anyone watching the GOP machine - is another massive loss of PR.
I don’t like Schumer, but there’s a golden rule in strikes: Don’t do them during Thanksgiving or the 2 days before Christmas.
An ongoing crisis where Trump doesn’t give in is a political gift for Dems. It highlights his incompetency and lack of caring. You have to keep that going as long as possible.
If you believe the upside of a neutered Trump admin is better than a short term govt reopening, you absolutely need short term suffering for the long term benefit.
Yes, it may have been political malpractice, but continuing the shutdown was governance malpractice. The interests of the 300 million people outside the Beltway count for something, even if the Congressional leadership sometimes loses track of that.
I think bluesky liberals were too flippant about the consequences of a prolonged shutdown but I totally understand the frustration and agree about wondering what the point of this all was if they were just gonna fold like this
The ACA subsidies were all about rich liberals making 4x the poverty rate. With Democrats, it's all about the rich, just as much as it is with the Republicans if not more.
It's a continuation of the same problem the Democrats have had going up against Trump since 2016. Not only are the Democrats a big tent party with a bunch of competing coalitions with different long term goals, but they can't even all agree on the rules of the game. Party leadership is stuck in a very 90s political mindset. They don't understand how angry working class voters are at the entire political establishment, including Democratic leadership. Trump is a fool with basic, reptilian political instincts and no real strategy (as you have pointed out in the past), but when the status quo is as unpopular as it is, a lot of voters will flock to anyone they perceive as an outsider or not part of the bureaucracy they hate.
The Democratic Party needs a top to bottom image update with a new, younger generation of leadership with a message that doesn't reek of 60 year old career political consultants. It will be framed as a progressive vs establishment battle, but it really isn't. There are compelling, charismatic, non-status quo Democrats on both sides of that divide (Warnock, Ossoff, Shapiro, etc on the moderate side, AOC, Pritzker, etc on the progressive side).
The ageism argument is honestly so dumb it's not even really worth validating by treating it as a good faith topic to debate. I do think there should be term and age limits for almost all public positions, but even if I didn't, age isn't an excuse for Schumer. Both Bernie Sanders and Trump himself are older than Chuck is but more in tune with the sentiments of the actual working class.
Trump is a liar and a conman and a fool and deep into the decline phase of his mental capacity, but even he had the sense to frame his campaign as something different and a breath of fresh air into Washington that was going to drain the swamp and cut red tape and run it like a business. Sure, people who paid attention knew it was a grift, but at least grifters understand what people want to hear.
Dem leadership does not. They're so deep in this political consultant, Ivy League graduate social circle that they have no idea what messages actually win election. The most high profile, publicized social welfare push of the Biden and Harris campaigns was student debt forgiveness, which exacerbates income inequality and rewards the people already voting D (expensive private college graduates) while doing nothing for the voters they urgently need to do better with (non-college educated working class). The messaging was unbelievably incompetent and did not land with anyone outside the Bluesky crowd. It's no wonder young male voters of color (the demographic group with the highest percentage of non-college graduates) feel left behind by the party. They basically have been!
An alternative POV is that the shutdown for healthcare made some sense, even if imperfectly executed, but, being part of a process that takes food right off people’s tables today does not seem smart for Dems. Alternatively, both loss of health care, and SNAP is now fully in the R’s court, and they will most certainly fail to fix it. Of course this will require some smart messaging, and there is….Schumer….sigh.
Curious , why are you more concerned about "authoritarianism" relative to "seizing the means of production" , the bedrock of the Democratic Party, as evidenced by Mamdani, Sanders etal?
What is actually more destructive? And why would you believe that Mamdanism would be no less "authoritarian"?
See Russian and Chinese history over the last 125 years.
My real point is why can't Silver care about that prospect than an administration that has actually restored borders and integrity to an immigration processs.
But it won't be because he establishes a Soviet style government in NYC.
Biden deported more people than Trump. He would have deported even more but the Republicans wouldn't fund the judicial system to process the asylum claims. And those claims were legal be US and international law.
Eh.... I think saying Senators are priviledged and fly alot utterly ignores the amout of Americans who are about to fly for Thanksgiving and the strong potential the hand turns heavily against them (every bit as much as it turned against Trump contra your initial read).
Overall the Democrats getting some cover and letting Trump cause more inflation via health insurance isn't probably a bad political deal.
on the other hand Schumer is yes a Muddler and a weak leader so while I don't per se see this as a Dem error (however much Lefty partisans want to fight fight fight resist resist resit), it's certainly objectively true he's not up to the job, a Muddler.
You might be over-blaming Schumer. His options were grossly limited by the R majority. While I hate the caving in, I'm not sure waiting much longer would have produced a much different result....and D's were starting to lose any tiny advantages they had. Plus, depending on what happens in Jan., no one in October '26 will remember a word of this.
The problem the Dems had is between the SNAP benefits and the flight issues (with Thanksgiving approaching in particular) there was about to be alot of impact and actual people hurt because of the shutdown. Now I think Trump probably gets the blame for that and it would have been good the Dems politically. But it still doesn't lead to getting anything on the ACA subsidies or anything else. The R Senators didn't want to get rid of the filibuster but they would have folded on that before they ever folded on the ACA subsidies. And while Democrats want to get rid of the filibuster when they have power if it happens now there's alot of bad things that could happen from their perspective.
So if you play things out you would have had a scenario where 1) real harms on Americans, 2) political benefits to the Democrats, 3) no deal on ACA subsidies but rollback of the filibuster, and 4) Rs passing bills that are problematic with filibuster gone. And folding now seemed like the least bad option.
In terms of Dems saying Schumer wasn't part of the negotiations to reopen the government my sense is that just cover for Schumer. It's almost certain he was very involved behind the scenes even if they are trying to pretend now that he wasn't.
Do we have another Biden situation on our hands with Schumer? What about the grace Pelosi is showing and has been showing for the last several years, yet managed to remain at the table?
Bad strategy aside, which everything you said is right about that, this also shows weakness. And there’s one thing that people despise more than incompetence or malice: weakness.
When was the last time a shutdown worked for the minority party? It’s an unwise tactic/strategy from ANY perspective. Actually let’s say it loud and clear. It’s Stupid.
This is 100% political malpractice and thanks Nate for being so honest about it and saying you were getting ready to eat crow. The Democrats’ approval should plummet after this. If yesterday’s offer was all they needed to keep the government open, then they should have just done that from day one. Now the shutdown IS the Dems fault because they were going to cave for next to nothing but shut it down anyway. The base and the Dem voters are reeling right now.
What do you think they should have done?
I am not qualified enough to say, but I feel like the longer this dragged on the more the public might have started to turn on Democrats.
In a normal GOP administration (if such a thing is still possible) I would agree with you. But here, Trump overplays every hand to such an extreme level of callousness, that extending the shutdown only serves to hurt Trump more than Dems.
Trump opts to bailout Argentina and remodel the East Wing instead of paying SNAP is such a gift to Dems.
Why stop? Why not keep going until Trump is utterly decimated by his own lack of care? The only way that happens, sadly, is people feel Trump's callousness directly. Where it's not abstract / theoretical thing Dems whine about. But it's instead something Trump does to them every day.
Dems need more Realpolitik here to overcome Trump. Not just about the issue at hand (ACA), but fully neuter him politically. You might get to a point where GOP finds ways to "manage" Trump to save their skins and lessen the impact.
You talk about "callous" when the Democrats were willing to scare the hell out of poor people about not getting food. Don't try to tell me about callousness. The Democratic Party couldn't care less about the poor. It is full of rich "progressives" who are just as happy as the wingnuttiest wingnut to use starvation as a political tool. Go to hell.
Hahah.
Always good to hear from the people who are happy about Trump because the Dems are bad.
The facts are not on your side.
I'm not seeing the "happy about Trump" part. This was a battle between two teams who both care about winning and nothing else; for one reason or another, this only counts as callousness on one side.
The rabid anti-Democratic messaging is intrinsically pro-Trump.
I have never voted for Trump. By the way, I thought the "progressives" were against "whataboutism." Guess not. My question is this: Do you have a single principle other than wanting power?
There is the principle that Trump is an existential threat that outweighs short term shutdown pain. Do you believe in that?
And apparently the Shutdown is the biggest thing that’s hurt Trump.
Add those together and continuing the shutdown is the most principled thing you could do.
I’d argue more will suffer due to Dems lack of brinksmanship than are spared by reopening the govt till January.
You are perfectly fine with taking food away from the poor, because you are a rich "progressive" who doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone but your rich friends who run the Democratic Party and hate the poor and the working middle class.
This isn’t actually a counter argument.
I’m convinced more people will starve longer term by an empowered Trump than will be saved by this temporary extension. Why are you so willing to starve those people? Why are you taking away their health care? How callous of you!
If the GOP had its way, SNAP would simply cease to exist on a permanent basis, no shutdown needed. The more Dems refuse to recognize the fight they’re in, the closer they get to a world where the GOP gets that desired outcome, among many others.
Oh, sure. People already were blaming the Dems: the flights shut down? In America?? The air traffic controllers working for over a month without being paid? I call it slavery and I want that changed. I don't think people much cared about the Food Stamps -- I've read the recipients often trade those for drugs anyway, using them as a form of currency -- but the military not getting paid unless Elon gave the pay period money to the soldiers is a bad look. (I'm assuming it was Elon who gave the $125 million: nothing to him, pocket change. He's worth half a trillion right now as we speak.)
There is a trade in EBT cards for drugs. This could be easily quashed by putting a name on the card, and even the name of a caregiver too, and then requiring a photo I.D. to use it.
You'd need a nationally issued ID card that would replace a driver's license for such a scheme to work. Otherwise you're letting most recipients starve because for an edge case.
So you've never heard of a driver's license? LOL
Not everyone who is SNAP-eligible has a license nor can they necessarily afford a car.
Use that brain next time.
Timing this now, right after elections, is such that I don't think it will impact midterms. We will forget about this in a month, if not sooner.
It might only confirm people's dissatisfaction with the spinelessness of the Dem party. I don't think it will increase it.
If you're uniting Nate Silver and Brian Beutler in opposition to your political moves....well its a bad political move.
I disagree here Nate.
I think the Dems accomplished pretty much everything they could from this shutdown. What else was going to happen if they didn't cave?
Keep a few things in mind. First off, the election last week made it pretty damn clear to everyone that the Dems are very likely to retake the House. Trump and his advisors know this also. So Trump is feeling a time pressure...he basically has until January 2027 to pass his agenda. After that, nothing is getting through the House. Further, he's busy pressuring his own senators to kill the filibuster.
Plus we all know how Trump feels about compromise.
Short answer: Trump would never have given in, not at least until the country was effed. So the Dems basically were looking at killing the economy and making millions suffer...and he still wasn't going to give in and agree.
One can argue that they never should have done the shutdown at all. I think it turned out to be a positive for the party, weakening Trump and the Pubs. But it was time to end it. Sometimes you have to realize that you got what you could get. They scored on a couple of combinations, now it's time to back away before the other guy hits you back.
If they don't cave, Trump continues to make optional moves that causes direct pain to the electorate. Trump continues to damage himself politically overplaying his hands.
Why leave that situation?
Trump won't compromise. But people will feel the pain directly from Trump to such an extreme that they will massively turn on Trump.
Now that they DID cave, the pain becomes yet another abstract thing Dems whine about.
The Dems caved because the actual pain of prolonging the shutdown was far worse than the political benefit.
I don’t think you’re exactly correct on this. This was incredibly badly-timed. The FAA shutdown was going to stop people going to their families for Thanksgiving…and the Democrats would have lost any goodwill for that. The Dems stopping people get food - seen by anyone watching the GOP machine - is another massive loss of PR.
I don’t like Schumer, but there’s a golden rule in strikes: Don’t do them during Thanksgiving or the 2 days before Christmas.
An ongoing crisis where Trump doesn’t give in is a political gift for Dems. It highlights his incompetency and lack of caring. You have to keep that going as long as possible.
Some people need to eat and get paid.
You’re right, but tell that to the people who need planes to go home for [everything and including hospital visits and holidays]
Unfortunately, the only way to get attention outside the usual political divides is to disrupt people's lives.
Plenty of lack of caring to go around, it seems.
If you believe the upside of a neutered Trump admin is better than a short term govt reopening, you absolutely need short term suffering for the long term benefit.
At least you make it clear that you don't care about anyone's lives. You are the face of the rich Democratic Party.
Bunk.
The Dems just voted to move forward.
The Democrats are run by the rich, and they couldn't care less about poor people who need to eat.
There’s disrupt, and there’s stopping food payments, get thousands fired, and stop people flying to get life-saving operations.
Sure. Once November really got going I assumed the Dems would give up. BAD optics if people couldn't fly or get paid at Thx and Xmas.
I notice that you didn't mention SNAP. Typical rich Democrat. Poor people's food gets endangered? Not even on your suburban liberal city radar screen.
You got that right!!! Well, except for the "Democrat" part.
I think it was perfect.
The headlines about ACA subsidies just before open enrollment made it clear that the R's were at fault.
The SNAP fight was indeed a bonus point.
So the shutdown locked in perceptions of the R's during the election.
Now is the right time to take the win and move on.
Yes, it may have been political malpractice, but continuing the shutdown was governance malpractice. The interests of the 300 million people outside the Beltway count for something, even if the Congressional leadership sometimes loses track of that.
100% This
I think bluesky liberals were too flippant about the consequences of a prolonged shutdown but I totally understand the frustration and agree about wondering what the point of this all was if they were just gonna fold like this
It is a massive PR win.
The ACA cost increases are now owned by the Republicans.
The refusal to use appropriated emergency funds for SNAP is now owned by the Republicans.
The unwillingness to even participate in governance is owned by the Republicans.
It could have gone better, but it could have gone much worse for the Dems.
The ACA subsidies were all about rich liberals making 4x the poverty rate. With Democrats, it's all about the rich, just as much as it is with the Republicans if not more.
It's a continuation of the same problem the Democrats have had going up against Trump since 2016. Not only are the Democrats a big tent party with a bunch of competing coalitions with different long term goals, but they can't even all agree on the rules of the game. Party leadership is stuck in a very 90s political mindset. They don't understand how angry working class voters are at the entire political establishment, including Democratic leadership. Trump is a fool with basic, reptilian political instincts and no real strategy (as you have pointed out in the past), but when the status quo is as unpopular as it is, a lot of voters will flock to anyone they perceive as an outsider or not part of the bureaucracy they hate.
The Democratic Party needs a top to bottom image update with a new, younger generation of leadership with a message that doesn't reek of 60 year old career political consultants. It will be framed as a progressive vs establishment battle, but it really isn't. There are compelling, charismatic, non-status quo Democrats on both sides of that divide (Warnock, Ossoff, Shapiro, etc on the moderate side, AOC, Pritzker, etc on the progressive side).
Some would claim ageism about Schumer, but how would we feel if our child’s teacher was 82 would that be ageism?
The ageism argument is honestly so dumb it's not even really worth validating by treating it as a good faith topic to debate. I do think there should be term and age limits for almost all public positions, but even if I didn't, age isn't an excuse for Schumer. Both Bernie Sanders and Trump himself are older than Chuck is but more in tune with the sentiments of the actual working class.
Trump is a liar and a conman and a fool and deep into the decline phase of his mental capacity, but even he had the sense to frame his campaign as something different and a breath of fresh air into Washington that was going to drain the swamp and cut red tape and run it like a business. Sure, people who paid attention knew it was a grift, but at least grifters understand what people want to hear.
Dem leadership does not. They're so deep in this political consultant, Ivy League graduate social circle that they have no idea what messages actually win election. The most high profile, publicized social welfare push of the Biden and Harris campaigns was student debt forgiveness, which exacerbates income inequality and rewards the people already voting D (expensive private college graduates) while doing nothing for the voters they urgently need to do better with (non-college educated working class). The messaging was unbelievably incompetent and did not land with anyone outside the Bluesky crowd. It's no wonder young male voters of color (the demographic group with the highest percentage of non-college graduates) feel left behind by the party. They basically have been!
An alternative POV is that the shutdown for healthcare made some sense, even if imperfectly executed, but, being part of a process that takes food right off people’s tables today does not seem smart for Dems. Alternatively, both loss of health care, and SNAP is now fully in the R’s court, and they will most certainly fail to fix it. Of course this will require some smart messaging, and there is….Schumer….sigh.
Curious , why are you more concerned about "authoritarianism" relative to "seizing the means of production" , the bedrock of the Democratic Party, as evidenced by Mamdani, Sanders etal?
What is actually more destructive? And why would you believe that Mamdanism would be no less "authoritarian"?
See Russian and Chinese history over the last 125 years.
You are confusing a Mayor with a central government that controls an army.
It's OK - lots of people don't understand the difference.
Many journeys to hell start in unexpected places.
Mamdani as mayor will be hell.
My real point is why can't Silver care about that prospect than an administration that has actually restored borders and integrity to an immigration processs.
Perhaps Mamdani will be a failure.
But it won't be because he establishes a Soviet style government in NYC.
Biden deported more people than Trump. He would have deported even more but the Republicans wouldn't fund the judicial system to process the asylum claims. And those claims were legal be US and international law.
Eh.... I think saying Senators are priviledged and fly alot utterly ignores the amout of Americans who are about to fly for Thanksgiving and the strong potential the hand turns heavily against them (every bit as much as it turned against Trump contra your initial read).
Overall the Democrats getting some cover and letting Trump cause more inflation via health insurance isn't probably a bad political deal.
on the other hand Schumer is yes a Muddler and a weak leader so while I don't per se see this as a Dem error (however much Lefty partisans want to fight fight fight resist resist resit), it's certainly objectively true he's not up to the job, a Muddler.
You might be over-blaming Schumer. His options were grossly limited by the R majority. While I hate the caving in, I'm not sure waiting much longer would have produced a much different result....and D's were starting to lose any tiny advantages they had. Plus, depending on what happens in Jan., no one in October '26 will remember a word of this.
What is going to happen in January??
Forecast for January: political theater, with a lingering aftertaste during primaries.
Potentially another shutdown
Thank you! Yow, let's not do this again.
The problem the Dems had is between the SNAP benefits and the flight issues (with Thanksgiving approaching in particular) there was about to be alot of impact and actual people hurt because of the shutdown. Now I think Trump probably gets the blame for that and it would have been good the Dems politically. But it still doesn't lead to getting anything on the ACA subsidies or anything else. The R Senators didn't want to get rid of the filibuster but they would have folded on that before they ever folded on the ACA subsidies. And while Democrats want to get rid of the filibuster when they have power if it happens now there's alot of bad things that could happen from their perspective.
So if you play things out you would have had a scenario where 1) real harms on Americans, 2) political benefits to the Democrats, 3) no deal on ACA subsidies but rollback of the filibuster, and 4) Rs passing bills that are problematic with filibuster gone. And folding now seemed like the least bad option.
In terms of Dems saying Schumer wasn't part of the negotiations to reopen the government my sense is that just cover for Schumer. It's almost certain he was very involved behind the scenes even if they are trying to pretend now that he wasn't.
Do we have another Biden situation on our hands with Schumer? What about the grace Pelosi is showing and has been showing for the last several years, yet managed to remain at the table?
That she is!
To be fair, Pelosi is a freaking genius, and Schumer is a well dressed schlub.
It isn't that he is old and off his game.
cause a small handful of moderate Sentors fear the filibuster actually going away….
The filibuster wasn't at risk.
The moderates were picked intentionally because they are likely immune to the progressive backlash.
Bad strategy aside, which everything you said is right about that, this also shows weakness. And there’s one thing that people despise more than incompetence or malice: weakness.
When was the last time a shutdown worked for the minority party? It’s an unwise tactic/strategy from ANY perspective. Actually let’s say it loud and clear. It’s Stupid.