General Discussion

... it stops nothing unless you think republicans cared about the people they hurt when government is shut down. For whtever that game was worth, it's been played out, but it hasn't led to a republican victory. It's a two month pause in the political infighting to allow people to get paid and fed. Folks need to grip on that.

Our focus should be on the 'republican health care crisis' which is still contained inside and outside the republican budget that's only advanced another two months.

I don't see why that's something to declare defeat over.

The next flashpoint is when the subsidies expire and we hold the vote right afterward.

No doubt there are many republicans nervous about the cuts and stringing them out into January isn't some advantage for them, it's either rope to reel themselves in or to hang themselves with it.

There was always going to be pressure on lawmakers to end the shutdown the closer the holidays drew near, on the ones who cared about the furloughed workers and other priorities for the people, that is, the Democrats.

Not sure what people are going on who supposed republicans who engineered all of this would somehow become concerned people were being hurt by shutting down the government most republicans don't give a shit about.

Not sure why anyone believed that was good for more than the political positioning we clearly got out of it with republicans clearly in charge of the exploding premiums - and reublicans left without any Democratic vote in the Senate on the shutdown or anything else to point to as an excuse for their own majority party not making those subsidies available.

I mean, what the heck did you think that was all about anyway? Did you not see the politics using health care cuts being exercised in tandem by both Democratic leaders, against a lot of headwind from supposed allies telling them to divert to the troop deployment or some other issue?

I'm not following the internet fantasy pollitics that assumes that Democrats were locked into the media expectations game in which they tried with all of their might to knock our leaders off of their messaging, constantly asking why Democrats were keeping the government shut down and ignoring the simple majority republicans need to advance their own partisan budget and fund their republican majority government themselves.

I was following the actual politics, not the worst interpretations offered up for us to adopt and grouse over by gaslighting journos and internet hacks with monetized youtube pages.