The Longest Shutdown Ends Where It Began

Eight Democrats cross the aisle, Trump redeems his disciples, and America mistakes exhaustion for governance.
MARY GEDDRY
NOV 10, 2025

Good morning! The longest government shutdown in American history may end not with principle, but with paperwork. Late Sunday night, eight Democrats joined hands with the Republican caucus and voted to advance the continuing resolution that leaves twenty million Americans staring at higher insurance premiums and fifteen million more at risk of losing Medicaid coverage.
The roll call reads like a cautionary tale: Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jacky Rosen, and Angus King. Each of them crossed the aisle in the name of “responsible governance,” which, translated from Senate-speak, means capitulation before cocktails.

Bernie Sanders, who still believes the word “Democrat” should mean something, called it “a very, very bad vote.” He was being polite. It was a moral pratfall disguised as bipartisanship. Instead of extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies that were the whole reason for the standoff, the Senate produced a deal that could double or triple premiums for working families while handing a trillion dollars in tax relief to the donor class. It’s legislative hostage-taking with better table manners.

To understand why Democrats keep doing this, you have to trace the long arc of compromise that turned a party of organizers into a club of fund-managers.
Once upon a New Deal, Democrats were the party of labor and social justice. Then came the deregulating seventies, the Clintonian “Third Way,” and a parade of consultants promising that free markets would make us free people. The theory was that a rising tide lifts all boats; the practice was that it lifted yachts and drowned the dinghies. By the time Obama and Biden inherited the machinery, “governing responsibly” had become code for don’t spook Wall Street. Every populist impulse was trimmed to fit a spreadsheet.
…. snip .

This latest “compromise” hands Trump two political gifts neatly wrapped in Senate stationery. First,
more at link

https://marygeddry.com/p/the-longest-shutdown-ends-where-it



✌🏻