General Discussion

Yes, Thune may get to "win" on his "no negotiation on subsidies until the shutdown is ended" but there may be some very meaningful concessions in the minibus the Republicans had to yield on to get a few Democrats on board.

Do I think they should hold out and kept hammering on how unreasonable the Republicans are being and keep pushing Shumer's one year extension as an incredibly reasonable compromise.

Absolutely YES. I think there was (and may still be) a good chance of prevailing. Republicans certainly wouldn't relish families getting together and getting REALLY pissed at them as they talk over the holidays.

The "imminent deal" could still fall apart.

Herding Democrats isn't easy. It's actually kind of amazing that Shumer has held them together this long. The last cloture vote on 11/4 was 54-44 so a couple people were out. The vote 9/30 was 55/45, so it would only take 5 defections.

One thing that strikes me as sort of interesting is that Thune's "deal" reportedly calls for at least 8 Democrats to agree to vote for cloture on the CR, so either he is expecting defections of his own, or he really, really, wants Democrats to look complicit in the bad things in the minibus (the vote wasn't even that close in the end, we only needed 60 to end debate and got 63).

It's also not clear to me if the defecting Dems are agreeing to Vote Yea only on cloture, or are they agreeing to vote Yea on the bills too?