Cowards.

The only fucking ones, apparently.

one by one.

But you still shouldn't negotiate with terrorists.

The American citizenry (and the Dems) had an advantage after Tuesday. But...

Time again... each time harder and more cruel than before. I was holding my emotions in check til now, thinking surely the democrats got our message this last election.

Now... I weep for the country we no longer have. Democratic PTB simply gift wrapped it for Trump. Its his country now. Let him nuke it it means so little to anyone who counts.

If only I were even 20 years younger I'd get the frack out while we can still cross borfers... before the bombs of war start falling on us. As it is I won't see this country in any shape restored before I die. Trump has made that perfectly clear. We're useless eaters and the next thing to go will be all the money we contributed towards our retirement. No food for us either.

I am so disgusted and disillusioned. Maybe it's time we look critically at what our party has become and act accordingly. These old centrist democrats can no longer appreciate us, IMO.

the point of no return.............we should inundate those dems that voted with emails, phone calls, letters, etc but none of them will care, because evidently two of the eight are retiring, and the other six aren't up for re-election in 2026?????

This further emboldens the Repubs, and will enable them to even a faster pace of trashing America, and all of us lower 99%.
And maybe the Grand Slam, before Christmas, or maybe definitely by Jan one so they can welcome in the new year.......

I'd bet money the next protest will be much smaller. Fucking dems. Fucking Schumer. I don't give a shit if he does vote no.

Won't stand behind us, let alone walk beside us.

Please don't blame everybody and please don't give up.

Schumer was fully on board with this, and picked the eight who would not have to stand for re-election in 2026. It was an engineered cave by Dem leadership.

SCHUMER HAS TO GO

Up until the cave, this was the best week we've had in more than a year. Democrats should've ended this week more unified and determined to thwart Trump than ever. Instead, Trump, in effect, gets handed a bigger victory than he would have if New Jersey had flipped red but Schumer & co. stuck to their guns.

It's nauseating.

Dems lack of leadership support.

...Did you forget your own post?

Seriously?

When you draw a line in the sand, you draw a line in the sand and you don't give an inch. So, next time, Democrats need to just cave at the beginning and save everyone all of the hand wringing.

Last edited Mon Nov 10, 2025, 11:45 AM - Edit history (1)

The only win we took out of it was that, as I heard on NPR this morning, the Republicans now own the rise in healthcare costs if they let the subsidies expire. That was the most we could expect to get out of it. We were never going to get them to capitulate. Those who thought we could were dreaming.

But I don't agree that the Republicans will ever own the rise in healthcare costs. They will just blame that, too, on the Dems and the Dems will say they can't do anything about being blamed for it.

The subsidies were supposed to be temporary. In a way, we're lucky they're expiring during a time when Trump and the Republicans are failing to keep the cost of living affordable overall.

I have high hopes that the Republicans got the message from this last election and will find a way to replace the funding in some way or just extend the subsidies.

You're right, though, I do think they will try to blame Democrats and see if the people will buy it. I just don't think the people will. The shutdown woke everybody up to take a look at the situation. And Dems gave ownership of the problem to Republicans and took more ownership of affordability.

That people take the time to understand. But I don't have a lot of hope myself. Most voters are really becoming more and more disinterested and ill-informed. They are going to listen to what is being fed them immediately before an election. The Republicans will amplify the message that Dems failed, of course, in a timely manner to get the most bang for their buck.

So - let's hope that your thinking is correct and that I am totally off base. I would gladly be that.

You think I'm funny? What's so funny about me?

😉

But... too late for that.

One thing!

it up, because it isn't all that important to our elected representatives, at least those 8.

They voted for this shit and they need to wear it.

Whether accurate or not, Ben Franklin was attributed with the quote "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately."

Senate Democrats just decided we will all hang separately.

millions of Americans will lose their insurance now.

Going without health Insurance/health care is exhausting.

Watching medical bankruptcies erupt everywhere again will be utterly depressing and hoping it’s not you or a loved one next with the fucking begging can.

He knew they were going to begin getting rid of the ACA and more Americans would have medical debt.

Or typical of him?

to foreign investors.

above the people's this whole time.

Leadership is in it for the nice leather chairs.

Watch who you diss.

Being a bunch of fucking sellouts has a price

For the resulting people who have either got into medical bankruptcy or, you know, died.

Though much like with blaming Republicans for the shutdown since they are the majority party, I suspect we'll find some way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory again.

Democrats will find a way to screw up our election wins and squander the sacrifices of the shutdown

It's ALL AMERICANS.

Why don't people understand this?!?
People are going from $300/month to $2300/month

These people will drop their healthcare. Leaving a smaller and higher risk pool of people. Those premiums will go up again until so many people drop that the ACA will collapse and so will employer provided insurance and Medicaid and Medicare.
They are all irrevocably interwoven.

We are fucked.

It was always a false choice and democrats blinked.

The party can’t even defend its own legacy, not sure why this should give its base any confidence. It’s not even an ideological thing. It’s a master lesson in shitty negotiationing.

Fucking pathetic..

A shutdown. Everyone else doesn’t matter at all. Even if they live or die.

I just got laid off. My pittance of a portfolio will be happy tomorrow, but I know that if after COBRA runs out, and I’m still unemployed I’ll be screwed.

We’re facing a brewing unemployment crisis, and the timing for this is going to hurt a lot of people very badly. I’m sure I’ll be better than many others.

Over a year after Trump was elected, I still don’t see a coherent strategy by democratic congressional leaders. Hell, this isn’t even leadership. It’s the opposite of it. The leadership dragged this fight for a few weeks, got nothing out of it, and then gave in, just when it looked like voters were blaming the republicans for the shutdown.

Fuck it, maybe Trump is a better negotiator than we have him credit for. The piece of shit held his ground and has left a nasty orange streak covering many democratic senator’s faces.

The last one ended when the donor class was inconvenienced after 10 controllers called out.

And then repugs would be able to vote in everything and Dems would never be in control of the government ever again

They didn’t have to nuke the filibuster … Dems caved

So we go out not with a bang , not even a whimper

😠





✌🏻

But I’m hurt by my own party.

Many have suffered yet they ask no capitulation. Others, the opposite.

For the first time in my 73 years...I just really don't give a fuck anymore!

After our total surrender, I will now try to figure out a way to just exist in Trump America for the rest of my life.

Fuck you, Schumer and all those who caved with you. I look forward to your unemployment......

But we need Shumer to realize he "needs to spend more time with his family" before that--like today.

It will be interesting to see how much the airlines and travel industry gave to the Dems who caved. My thinking is that once Duffy said that Thanksgiving travel would be impacted, the travel industry looked around for a few Dems who would cave in return for a nice donation to their campaigns.

It’s a political tradition.

Fuckers.

Polls show the country was with us.

The election results proved it.

We were fighting for a signature healthcare initiative.

Did Schumer and his gang workshop the shutdown at all? Why do this if they were going to cave. Now we look weak and ineffectual. And we are. Every old guard Dem has to be primaried. There's no point supporting this party if they are just going to give in to the fascists. And do not start with the old "we need to keep our powder dry" #$%@#. How many millions are going to lose their health care? Will the Dem leadership ever fight to the finish? And they say Trump always chickens out . . . . .

It sucked 20 years ago, and it sucks now.

How much damn powder do they have stocked up now, and when the fuck is it gonna be enough to actually use???

Only the eight who betrayed us.

Just a huge failure

We are the minority party right now. Yes, negotiating as strongly as possible for what we want is expected, but there comes a time when you have to accept the reality of it all and live to fight another day. I think Democrats made the best stand that they could.
I know most people here see this from a single perspective, but that isn't reality in real life. We were taking just as much (if not more) damage as the Republicans over this shutdown, and it was getting very painful for the public.
Look at it this way: Trump has already spent 1/4 of his term, gone. He only has 1 more year left of control in congress when odds say we will likely take it over. That is when we stop the bleeding. 2 years after that, we will most likely take the Presidency again.
I know this is far from an ideal outcome, but we have to face reality sooner or later. We lost control a year ago, and we have to accept that and make corrections moving forward. It'll happen, we just need to get loud about our policy and sell it. "We hate Trump" is not a policy that matters to the 1/3 of voters we need.
Above all, this is not a time to start bashing our leaders. They are handcuffed right now, and we need to support them through this.

Opposing a cave is not the same as ‘bashing our leaders.’ Especially if they are not our leaders.

Republicans are now on record as to how far they're willing to go to deny people health care. And, they're on record promising to talk seriously about the subsidies once the shutdown is over. If they won't keep that promise, well the extension is only until January, right?

Since they caved without any concessions being made - the case will be made that Dems were responsible for the pain "and could end this at any point by just caving to Republican demands".

Which is exactly what just happened.

The American public has an unbelievably poor memory and it won't matter that the republicans went on record about anything. The democrats just caved and that's how it's going to be reported. The conservative media will revel in this and point out over and over that the democrats did this for nothing (which now appears to be true) while the more liberal members of the media are going to be up in arms with the democrats capitulation over this. The republicans, who could have paid a terrible price in the upcoming election as they JUST did in this off year election, were just handed talking points and gift. And you can kiss any January standoff good bye. The public won't stand for this again and the liberal faction will NOT believe that their representatives will fight for them when the going gets tough.

Nothing about this is good.

else do we have right now?
I realize this is serious business, but we can't get in the habit of expecting all-or-nothing positions to actually work, because they never do in this game. We were trying to pull a power move when we had no power. I'm not going to let setbacks get me down, we have a bright future ahead of us. If we survived Reagan, we'll survive this asshat no problem.

And this wasn't "all or nothing," it was trying to preserve ONE thing for the American people.

"Live to fight another day" - see also, "Dry powder". That precious, precious dry powder!!

"Made the Best stand they could" - until it got difficult, so they folded.

Pathetic.

say I'm sorry, but not when I'm right.
Too bad you appear allergic to reality, but that's an issue for you to deal with, not me. hope you get to feeling better soon.

.

for public announcements. I'm here to talk common sense, not kiss butts

I wish I shared your optimism. Unfortunately, most people will not see it your way…….they will just see it as the dems caving in once again. In the long run your perspective may prove right, but most live in the short term and right now the perception will be the Dems caved. That’s the reality.

Negotiating strongly and fighting like your constituents lives depend on it are apparently two different things. They got nothing here..NOTHING! A promise of a vote? Not good enough. You are completely incorrect that democrats were taking just as much damage as republicans on this. Absolutely no polls (or the recent election results) back this up in any way whatsoever. The dems had the upper hand here entirely and what they had to do was keep fighting until Republican lawmakers got to feeling too much pressure back home and caved...some eventually would have. MTG already did.

Between the election that just happened, the town halls that have cast a negative light on republicans all around the country, and the narrative that this was their shutdown (which absolutely was the prevailing narrative), republicans were really going to start feeling it at home. The ONLY way you break MAGA is to show these boot lickers that their devotion to Trump is going to cost them dearly and that comes with inflicting more and more pain on them. Well, that's gone, without a single real concession.

What's worse is we've seen when the republicans are in the minority they still do manage to get real concessions out of the dems. Why can't we do the same. You are arguing from a politics as normal standpoint. This republican party isn't normal and must have it's feet firmly pressed to the fire at all times or they will never see any reason to change what they are doing.

This was a disaster and this is NOT the time to support our leaders. This is the time to demand that they show real, long-lasting fight, and stop triangulating and doing politics like normal. It no longer works.

As countless threads here will attest. But since money == free speech now, research shows time and again that little people have next to zero influence on congress and legislation. Those demanding support from dem leadership simply don’t have a loud enough voice. Or as Christopher Armitage put it, congressional dems are still more afraid of their donors and consultants than they are of their constituents.

It's not the rank and file democrats or progressives I blame here. I think, in general, they were very much in favor of what was going on, and said so. To me, that's what makes this worse. You actually had a base that just got good news in the election, was getting fired up, and were starting to see a reason to vote for dems and not just against Trump. Voting against Trump is great and pretty much always the right thing to do, but having a base fired up to vote for you is much more important and likely to lead to better long-term results. This capitulation is exactly the kind of thing that throws cold water on that kind of base enthusiasm.

Unfortunately the republicans are getting scads of money constantly and enough dems are that they will never want to see anything done about it. But I also can't think of a better way to get Citizen's United on the chopping block than a fired up base. Nothing else is going to do it.

I'm quiet ashamed to see such a total sell out of both the party and the voters that stepped up on Tuesday.

We're gonna need someone who knows how to do the job.
Sadly, being a boyscout doesn't count for much in a fight with unprincipled miscreants.
Wish us luck in the sequel.

Party leadership needs to be made painfully aware of this. Exceedingly painfully. Exquisitely painfully. If you can't defeat Trump, what are you for? What purpose do you serve? None, IMHO.

A winner in Trump.

Worse self inflicted wound in recent history.

For many of them, it sure isn't the people of their state with ACA subsidies (20+ million adults nationwide). So then who is it?

They nevertheless assemble to fight the fascist thugs sent by Trump and Noem.

And what does Durbin do?

They would have kept their congressional healthcare and pensions either way. The only thing different is the donor money. Remember Carville complaining about losing the donor money if dems supported Bernie and the squad? That's the Clinton era blue dog democrats. The donors don't like the fact that Mamdani won in the city that big dem donors saw as the US cultural and finance headquarters. The donors are afraid of the message sent by the election victories when they should be afraid of getting the Mangione Robinson treatment. Either they're not seeing that the numbers demonstrated by the NoKings protests, and the recent election victories are evidence that the public is against the MAGA Republican policies, or they think that they've already won and it's more important to reopen the government now before everything goes to shit, and win later and then fix medical insurance and other problems.

Need to be primaried ‼️‼️😡😡😡😡

Last edited Mon Nov 10, 2025, 11:46 AM - Edit history (1)

Durbin and Shaheen are taking one for the team of those who wanted to end the shutdown: other Dem Senators who would have had to vote for it but also have to face election. So, they could have gotten more votes if push came to shove: Durbin and Shaheen are the shield to more primary-vulnerable Dems.

The rest consider themselves primary proof because they are not up for reelection next year, and they are all (with the exception of Kaine, I suppose) from states where if they don't win, the Republicans do (like Jacky Rosen). One is Angus King who can't be primaried by Dems.

is not culpable/responsible/involved (or whatever word one chooses) because he voted against it personally since the vote pattern bears hallmarks of coordination/choreography/whipping.

Obvious as the day is long.

Schumer has to go, he's not the leader we're looking for.

I'm getting a lot of Facebook messages from friends saying this is the final straw - they are leaving the party and becoming independents.

Damn

We got crumbs with the ACA (instead of Medicare for all or a public option or anything actually resembling universal healthcare) and with this move the party’s leadership has decided, nah you don’t get those either.

Make every Dem that votes with the Republicans wear a MAGA hat. Including YOU Chuck. And alert all media so they televise the final vote. Disgusting.....

And welcome to DU!

It gives weight to their tactics.

lol what will Dem leadership do when they look around and find the only registered Dems left are the donor class and lobbyists? Oh wait.

were registered Dem forever that have left the party to become independent. And tbh, I am not sure I can blame them.

The democrats just threw their victories down the drain. They will get nothing, and I mean nothing for this. Trump will not abide by any agreement in this bill that he does not want. The federal employees may be back but not for long. The bastards are planning to do away with the federal employee system as we know it now and trump will do his best to not back pay the federal employees who were laid off during this shut whether it is illegal or not. Many federal employees are retiring early or are finding new jobs, some even outside this country. SNAP will soon be a thing of the past too. There will be no saving the AOC and we will all pay a price for this. Millions of people without health will cause a cascading ripple through out our healthcare system. It will stress hospital and clinics, raising prices for us all with higher doctor, hospital bills and yes higher health insurance costs. Hospitals will close down, especially when they start dismantling Medicaid and after that Medicare. Eventually our whole healthcare system will collapse just as our economy will soon. The tariffs have already done their damage to small businesses and if the Supreme Court rules the trump tariffs are illegal the only ones getting refunds will be large corporations not the rest of us. Layoffs will become the norm as food, rent and utility prices continue to rise leaving little funds for anything else. The people will need to do what they did in New York, citizen volunteers not wealthy donors running the elections but unfortunately that may not happen if trumps has his way with the next election cycle. The democrats blew it big time and there probably won't be any going back.

while Trump was playing punch them in face.
Oh, the shame.

Bullshit.

These traitorous senators better have gotten rich from surrendering because they just ended their political careers and will have to live their lives in shame ‼️

I will donate to every one who primaries these traitors ‼️

and two are retiring.

Nice show by the Generals, it almost looked like they were trying!

grand ballroom, throwing gala parties after his golf outings and accepting gold crowns from leaders on the other side of the world. He separated himself from the American people big time. Republicans were willing to let the shutdown go on forever because they are spineless assholes. We've shown Trump and the GOP for what they are, and the American people are finally paying attention. It's just beginning and if we slice and dice the party rather than staying unified in the fight, we definitely will lose. That's how we got Trump in the first place. Just enough Democratic voters stayed home or voted third party to swing a few states to Trump. United we win, divided we fall.

they don't give a damn about their constituents and won't be forced to prove it by their votes. The wannabe king is apt to regurgitate a Sharpie edict demolishing it as it is. At least we have a chance. Before we didn't.

shutdown in January. Is it so terrible to want people to be able to fly to grandma's house for the holidays? For federal workers to get a paycheck? At least let people enjoy Thanksgiving. Life is bad enough under Trump as it is.

There could be another shutdown in January, and it'll be predicated on the fact that Democratic leadership, despite being in the minority, positively INSIST on governing. They are playing make believe, and the people are suffering.

Trump won the shutdown.

Any shutdown, moving forward, we know will leave the Democratic party on the defensive because we inevitably insist on filling in the gaps when the Republican party can't whip their votes.

Yes. Yes it is a big problem that we care more about Thanksgiving travel than we do about reigning in the power of a unitary executive. By funding the government we have treated a permission structure that says quite clearly, "This government is legitimate and I support the measures it is taking,".

Prove me wrong.

With the only power being to continue on and hog tie the country’s airline system to a complete halt. They should have limited private aircraft and international flights from the beginning but the deck was stacked against us. People working hard going on two months with no pay in a country where most people don’t have $1000 dollars in an emergency fund. Yet we ask these people to be 100% accurate in their job every day. I imagine fatigue and illness are becoming a huge factor in staffing issues. ‘What the hell democrats’ should be a whisper in comparison to the ‘what the hell republicans’. What the actual hell!

“I guess the question next for both of you is, how will they squander it? How? How will it all go to — how will they piss this away?” this is part of what he meant.

After Tuesday's wins pretty much across the board, Democrats should have been more united in a message that Republicans were on the wrong side of the American people and needed to come to the table--but here we are watching Democrats cede the high ground.

Great....

He remains responsible for the shutdown, and Republicans are on the hot seat for ACA going forward. Democrats prevented Thanksgiving travel chaos and restored SNAP, and escaped blame for the shutdown which was about to bite. Let's see if Republicans have learned anything.

Stop beating up on Democrats.

Democrats conceded.

That is worse.

I don't know if there will be any winners.