I too, will wait until I see how this all shakes out. As usual, there is probably more to the story than meets the eye, I'm sure.

If I were an extraterrestrial looking at these eight Senators and only just now studying American politics, I might conclude that most of these are afraid of their base. Maybe they actually think they were elected by republican crossover votes (which I highly doubt could in any way be true)?

Now I also wonder: why would Durbin and Kaine be afraid of their base? Have they had brain damage like Fetterman?

Maybe these Senators think they are being the adults in the room. But honestly, our government has been off the rails for a while now. Personally, I think the Democrats should hold out and force the Republicans to can the filibuster.... Although, it could be quite painful: it leaves us powerless until we can take the Senate again. Maybe that's what they are afraid of...?

Those Senators are not facing re-election in 2026. Some are facing re-election in 2028, others in 2030. Chuck Schumer selected them (including John Fetterman) and asked them to "take one for the team" so to speak.

Like PCIntern says, none of us know what's going on right now. All we can do is wait and see, and hope they know what they're doing.

Their plan is not for us.

I can understand the anger of those posting here, but we don't know everything. The Democrats have a plan I'm sure and we can calm down a bit soon.

Personally I too had an initial visceral reaction.
But I stopped
and counted to two-hundred million and calmly decided to keep my powder dry until all of the cards have played out.
I doubt the results are good for the following reasons.
Durbin seems to have spinal problems.
Fetterman seems to have an issue with his heart.
Kaine seems to have the same spinal issue as Durbin.
Angus is independent from a state that is tough for non Republicans.
NV. and NH are unreadable.
I noticed Chuck did not provide cover this time, curious.

they will be released even if it passes.

Everyone thinks they know how things should transpire, without understanding all the factors involved.

They better have a really good idea how to get out of this jam.

You’re right. we don’t know what they know.
But maybe we could all use a little assurance in the game plan.

I was told, or thought, "there's a game plan we don't know, just wait" only for NOTHING to happen, as there was NO game plan.

I hope this time is different, just like I hoped all those other times, but I'll be far more surprised if it is different this time than all the other times.

The timing was right to take the hit because with election night fading in memories, hard realities were/are coming down that our corrupt media would increasing blame on our side.

It had to be done, I don't know where to go next but allowing the government to remain closed and people to go hungry was going to be worse than giving in.

It's not over, we need to shame them. This is what sort of what happened:

before krusty numb's time, as it was a cover from National Lampoon's magazine in the early 70's: " Buy this magazine, or we shoot this dog!" Even then I thought it was irreverently funny back then, when I was in college

I remember having a big debate with myself about whether to give in and buy the magazine or defy the threat, fairly sure that dog belonged to one of the editors.

KKKristi Numb. I think she actually throttled the pooch with those big mitts, but the ghost-writer insisted on a more “Humane” treatment or he wouldn’t sign off on it. In any case she ’s shown she’s up to the challenge of the Greatification.

Good On You!!!!!

Every stinking time so-called Dems have let us down these past 30+ years. From Clarence Thomas to the Iraq war to Merrick fucking Garland. Cup o’ Cope, anyone?

What do you plan to do? Really? Tell me.

claiming that the guarantee of a Senate vote was some kind of victory. Admitted there was no guarantee of the outcome, just that they would write it and vote on it. I'm pretty sure I know what outcome is actually guaranteed.

So basically, knowingly gave in while getting nothing certain at all.

at as well. I am out of trusting the process. B/c most times we are on the losing end.

the indifference Repukes have towards anyone who is not a rich bastard. We have got to continue this message going into the midterms!

It’s the messaging on the economy, stupid.

Keep on fighting!

way we don't know yet, and it will be nice if that somehow turns out to be true.

But the Dems who caved have really hurt party messaging and unity, and they've encouraged Trump.

Let's see how THAT plays out for them....

Big Awful Bill.

Not sure why you think now it will be different? And even if it is different, you think the House will pass it? That Trump will sign it?

They Don't Read The Bills (tm)

None of them actually have time to READ the bills they vote on (bills written by their master$: Lobbyists).

Emptee G did not Read that big ugly bill and she said if she had read it, she would not have voted for it.

that even if it passes Trump is going to sign it?!?! Just the name ObamaCare alone will make him kill it.

Last edited Mon Nov 10, 2025, 10:52 PM - Edit history (1)

We had a shutdown for healthcare and they made people suffer for 40 days and in the end just gave up and got no resolution on healthcare. In fact it's even worse now.
There is no 7D chess here.
Now the ACA is cooked and literally millions of people will die

Corporate democrats in the senate capitulated to rethugs and corporate health insurance. Millions of us won’t be able to afford health insurance and will lose access to care as a result. Are there things going on behind the scenes? Of course. However, experience tells us that we shouldn’t expect anything but the same old weakness Schumer and friends have shown us countless times through the years.

Senator Wyden has been sounding the alarm about rethugs trying to sneak a national abortion ban into this funding bill. Is Schumer going to roll over for that too? I expect he will. The only question is which of his fellow corporations democrats will go along. They will allow rethugs to destroy the ACA and strip women of any reproductive rights we have left. He’s shown us who he is.

I think the fix was in for a few days.

This was a pretty nasty and cynical move and most people will just look at this as “playing politics” which unfortunately is what it was, because it accomplished nothing.

Im also sure that if all the real files were released it would but Trump will find a way to prevent either all or at least the most damning files from seeing the light of day. He controls so much of the government and has so many smarmy advisors under his sway that we will never see the damning evidence.

The mf is still trying to stop SNAP.

Also bad:

One to a dozen or so Democrats do something and the whole Democratic Party is implicit, it's a secret plot in cahoots with evil forces. If the one to a dozen Democrats are populists, they're The Future of the Democratic Party, Country, World, Universe and Beyond.

Impossibility of just being wrong or mistaken. Democrats know the future, could go back in time to stop something if they wanted to, not having votes or being in the minority without power are just excuses.They cannot pull the wool over MY eyes! I am right, I am always right! I must scold and yell at Democrats at all times or they'll turn into Republicans! I, victim.

for the shutdown last spring. We were told that about the case against the attempted theft of the 2020 election. We are always told that there must be more going on behind the scenes than we are aware of, and the smart people have this in hand.

They have not had it in hand. Not in any of those instances. There's no three dimensional chess going on here.

This is every bit as bad as it seems. In the wealthiest country in the world, they told us we need to choose between killing poor people and killing sick people. That's ridiculous. We should not even engage in such a discussion. But we did. We have chosen to kill our sick people.

Working for a tech company ~twenty years ago, we IT workers were all dismayed by the policies and direction of the CEO. Our director acknowledged our concerns but told us the company leadership had a lot more knowledge than us. They knew things we did not. Have some faith. That got some laughs. The CEO ended up doing a jail term for lying about company profits to jack stock value.

Pass it in the Senate, pass it in the House, and get Trump to sign it?

Seriously, what was the chance of those three things happening?

Destroying the "Welfare State" embodied in Project 2025 has been the long-term goal of Republicans for generations. Trump was practically gleeful when the government shut down, because it advanced that agenda.

If there was essentially zero chance of restoring the ACA subsidies by holding out, what sense did it make to continue the shutdown?

Thinking. Goddamn fucking repukes fought for FIFTY YEARS to get Roe v Wade overturned. Fifty fucking years. Never will the Dems have that kind of determination. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. I’m not even sure Dem leaders even want to be in the game

YES or NO:
Was there any realistic chance that prolonging the shutdown would have resulted in ACA subsidies passing the Senate, passing the House, and getting signed by Trump?

Your answer indicates to me the answer is NO.

We are in a war. This was just one battle. The Democratic fight for affordable healthcare will continue.

If they win because of a tie breaker, it would be far more motivation for them to work with a few more of us. If they lose by one vote it is even more motivation.
We are not wrong in our assessments of the damage to existing norms, and future atrocities at the hands of the GOP.
OUR party needs to hear and understand our fury at their antics.

I'm unsure what "tie breaker" you're referring to. Republicans refuse to even hold a vote on restoring ACA subsidies.

Motivations certainly enter into every political calculation and decision.

Republicans have been highly motivated to destroy the "Welfare State" for generations, and they're finally accomplishing that with Trump and Project 2025.

Each of them are also highly motivated to sustain and advance their political careers. Defying Trump means getting primaried in the next election, and perhaps getting death threats from the crazy MAGA base.

Of course, what's happened in the last 9+ months isn't playing well in public perception. Trump's approval is at 40% or less, and R's got trounced in last week's election.

The above three paragraphs are conflicting motivations. Only the last argues in favor of cooperating with Democrats -- but there has been no sign of that, except the meager concession on government employees to end the shutdown. If the shutdown continued and the unexpected happened with both the Senate & House restoring ACA subsidies (which I highly doubt) would Trump sign it -- even if they defied him by passing the legislation? He doesn't care if people starve or die for lack of healthcare (and neither do the R's for that matter). Everything is about his ego, greed, and whatever impulses go through his increasingly demented skull (or put there by Stephen Miller).

I suppose it's possible Republican strategists will conclude they have a better chance of holding onto the House if they concede some small victories to the Democrats. More likely they will do everything they can at voter suppression, and stealing elections. Trump and Miller, of course, are itching to find any pretext (or make one up) to send in the troops and seize ballots. I have no doubt this authoritarian regime has every intent to render elections as meaningless as in Putin's Russia.

Stopping that has to be the highest priority. Perhaps an indefinite shutdown would have served that purpose better, but a lot more suffering and destruction of government agencies would have been the price.

Oh well football coaches know everything.

We can continue to fool ourselves and that will be pointless. These senators had a caucus some weeks ago and this was decided. Look who voted for this, people who would not be up for election for 4 years. Fetterman, I could understand as he has become nothing more than a Republican in sheep's clothing but the others no. They have destroyed the political mandate the voters gave them, in essence their base, the ones who took to the streets in protests. Look how mainstream democrats were against that wonderful young New York mayor. We must see it for what it is, the Democratic party is beholding to corporations and the wealthy and not the little guy anymore, it has been corrupted. This is exactly why we lost so many working-class people to trump. It started with Clinton. Obama and Biden attempted to change it but to little avail. It will take great suffering of the masses before they realize the power they hold to overturn this. In this day and age, I doubt a revolution is possible. If people take to the streets, our government has weapons that could neutralize the masses instantly, microwave weapons and sound weapons and I am sure things we do not even know about, so much for your guns. What would work would be a general strike and consumer boycotts, but will people do it while it could be effective, I don't know. As time goes by even that will not work if what economists are warning us about, the real condition of this nation, we are probably heading for a depression not a recession and no one will have money for boycotts to work or jobs to strike at. Basic education and critical thinking have been lacking for some time in America. We have been dumbed down. Civics is no longer taught in high school much less the understanding of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Many Americans don't even know the name of the fifty states or where they are located never mind the rest of the world. They don't know the basics of science or math so how in God's name do we expect them to vote properly. Many don't vote and those uneducated ones who do vote, vote against their own self-interest. If you wonder, why the old folks took to the streets more than the young kids, it is because we were better educated in school. I' m afraid time is running out for our democracy, and I am terribly sorry for our younger generations and the rest of the world.

Way more going on behind the scenes than we know blah blah blah. Nope, our instincts were spot fucking on.

I do not know whether the decision was right or wrong. What I do know is that by December, people will be feeling those increased health insurance premiums, the Trump administration will find new methods of dispensing cruelty, Trump will continue to deteriorate mentally and physically, and our overall economic woes will deepen. I'm trying to focus on how we can scream that message to bring more people into the light of rational thinking. Heck, at this point I would be grateful for a sudden outbreak of rudimentary sanity.

You don't think that Gavin Newsom is being apprised of the plans, etc.? And he is publicly calling this move by the Dems "giving in" and "bending the knee". He slammed the decision almost immediately as have other Senators.

The very real option is that Democrats just caved due to pressure from their donors, or whatever the pressure was.

I think the majority of Democrats right now either want an answer that assures us that there is (indeed) an orchestrated and reasonable plan behind the scenes, or we want new leadership and want the party to consider some other directions in dealing with the MAGA's. We are tired of the "winning".

Both are true, but Kieth is dead on the mark.

Not a dime from any Democrat in funding to any of the Quislings. Then when they report their funding we will absolutely know who owns them.

...from the high spirits of the precursor blue tsunami elections last week, to the we are all fucked vibe from yesterday.

This will be good for us, you'll see!

Holding out hope there's a Silver Lining I'm too dumb to know about!

But this latest bunch as ass-fucked that notion all the way to oblivion. The only thing we can trust anymore is the fact that everything they say is a self-serving prevarication, or LIE, as it’s commonly known. Play off with “The Girl And The Terrible Snake” by whatever voice you like. I prefer Al Wilson. I’m listening to it right now. Trust The Devil. His motives are clear. He will ALWAYS be Evil.

your patient wisdom. We should all take a deep breath, release it slowly, and consider what we know and possibilities for what we don't know.

NT

the government shut down put our banking system at risk of crashing because there is less money flowing through the banking system due to the Trump regime’s firing of thousands of workers who are no longer being paid? Was the reason the Ds voted to open the government to prevent a depression that would be bigger than the depression in 1929?

I don’t want to give the Ds credit where no credit is due, but I am trying to wrap my head around why the Ds voted to open the government. I submit this article for discussion purposes and note that the banking problems listed in the article coincide with both times Trump was in office.

The following is the synopsis from an October 31, 2025 article published in The Economic Times News and was written by Piyush Shukla. The article’s title is “Is the Fed quietly signaling trouble ahead? Powell injects $29.4B into the banking system — biggest repo operation since 2020 — as U.S. bank reserves crash to $2.8T”

Synopsis
Federal Reserve just made a huge move — and few noticed. It quietly injected $29.4 billion into the banking system overnight. The largest liquidity boost in more than five years. Official data from FRED confirms it. The operation happened on October 31, 2025, through overnight repos — short-term loans where banks trade Treasuries for cash. It’s a signal the system is under real pressure. U.S. bank reserves have crashed to $2.8 trillion, a four-year low. The sharpest drop since 2020. That’s serious. When reserves fall, liquidity dries up. Funding markets tighten.

*snip*

This kind of repo operation allows banks to swap Treasuries for cash overnight, adding short-term liquidity that keeps the funding market from freezing.

*snip*

The injection temporarily increases cash reserves for banks by lending funds against Treasuries. It comes at a time when U.S. bank reserves have fallen to around $2.8 trillion, the lowest level in more than four years. The Fed’s move signals concern about tightening liquidity conditions that have been mounting across short-term funding markets.

End.

Heating fuel during the cold months, SNAP funds that not only support the individual in need but also the economies of grocery stores and communities.

And the Dems did NOT "cave". They made sure that “fired” federal workers (the ones that Trump fired during the shutdown) would be reinstated. And that all those furloughed workers would get back pay. That makes a huge difference not only to their families, but to the economy of their communities too.

Republicans were going to cede nothing. But Dems held out long enough to force them to cave.

Besides, the public is fickle and their fury could flip on a dime and be aimed at Dems, if…
• a couple of passenger planes collide, killing people
• Thanksgiving travelers can't get to their families and get stuck in airports
• people die for lack of needed meds, heating fuel, or starvation due to the shutdown.

Personally, I think our entire economy was at risk of sliding into a depression.

a "rock and roller" AND a Republican (AND a pot smoker!!!) at the same time!
(in Reagan's first term)

Of course for a while later he limited himself to "Christian rock music"---
but in latter years seemed to enjoy the old secular rock---
when not listening to Faux News propaganda...

The same leadership that birthed ACA and never considered universal healthcare.

The same leadership that bullied POTUS Biden out of office?

Past time for a changing of the guard.

You are less than convincing.

and I am not sure who to credit it to, but one spoke something that made the most sense to me. The every day average person cannot count on heroic politicians to save the day. We the people are going to have to save ourselves. The peaceful protests must get even larger and more boycots organized & sustained. It seems highly doubtful the political calvary is going to ride to the rescue, either way , whether it's ,because they can't because of not enough leverage , or they don't want to, because of corporate donors. As the saying goes, "we can hope for the best, but plan for the worst." I think that's really our only choice now.