General Discussion

...but these Dems have been signaling for weeks now that they weren't going all the way with the protest.

But look, the actual pressure on republicans to make the ACA subsidy extension is still out there, albeit these Democrats gave them rope.

Remember, these issues existed BEFORE the shutdown. SNAP is already cut mercilessly in the budget, but there wasn't any national discussion or debate until the president blocked it and Democrats stood up and defended the people in need.

Republicans had all year to extend the ACA subsides, but it was the clever pivot from Dem leaders to make the shutdown appear to be about those subsidies.

The effort to block the advancement of the budget was basically this, to keep it from steamrolling to final passage. The politics of demanding this or that hasn't ended, nor the leverage, it's just shifted the fight to after Christmas.

There was actually a demand that ACA subsidy vote take place in December, but the republican leadership balked and shifted that vote to January.

Instead of just assuming that republicans cared enough about the people they were hurting in the shutdown to agree to Dem demands to extend the ACA, maybe take this time to deepen the concern and expectation that Dem leaders generated among Americans that Congress should extend the temporary benefits to address what Jeffries calls the 'republican health care crisis.'

There was never an assurance that republicans would bend to demands over hurting people they have been kicking around for months now. It makes little sense, except in the way Dem leaders used the tension and concern in the public to effectively put the hat on republicans.

Notwithstanding 'deals' which are likely nonstarter with any republican they expect to vote along with Democrats on these benefits, and just a delay before another shutdown fight in January when this resolution expires, this has always been an uphill political fight, not a realistic expectation of bending republicans to our will.

The hope is that we can get voters to do that, so I'm seeing nothing but political opportunity in this present landscape which is increasing, not diminished at all by the vote, and likely enhanced by the removal of the bandaid of pointing at Senate Dems which republicans advantaged (with the cooperation of the press) to obscure the deep gash in actual public support for anything they're doing with the budget.