How quickly the tone of the Democratic Party has changed in the past week. Only a few days ago they were boasting about a “blue wave” after winning a small number of elections that they were guaranteed to win regardless. Some even cited the ongoing government shutdown as a catalyst for their victories in NYC, New Jersey and Virginia. This might have emboldened a number of leftists to carry the shutdown further.
The Democrat strategy has been rather rudimentary: Create chaos, foment instability and mob violence, demand Republicans cave to their demands, rinse, repeat. It has worked many times in the past, so why wouldn’t it work now. Except, Republicans didn’t fold this time.
Ten Senate Dems have realized the folly of their party’s methodology and have decided to work with conservatives to reopen the federal government with, essentially, the same agreement that Republicans put on the table at the very beginning of the shutdown fight.
A clean bill with funding through September 2026. Federal workers fired during the shutdown will be reinstated. Retroactive pay for furloughed workers. No extension of ACA tax credits until a “possible” floor vote in December.
The vote in the Senate has sparked an angry fervor within the Democratic Party with many members realizing that they walked away empty handed. They thought (incorrectly) that they had Donald Trump at their mercy with their election wins, suggesting that Trump would be forced to capitulate before the Thanksgiving holiday. Other Democrats disagreed and set out to strike a deal.
Oddly, shutdown Democrats argue that constituents angry over the lack of a standoff victory should “blame Trump” and not party leaders for the embarrassing outcome. Dem leaders blame Trump for their failures even when Trump isn’t around to cause them to fail.
Party members are calling for a changing of the guard in leadership, with some demanding that Chuck Schumer step down as Senate minority leader. Leftists are raging across social media after the ten breakaway senators agreed to a deal. Party members admit that the far-left progressive (woke) wing is running the Democrats at this time; one does not simply ignore the leftist hive mind and act individually.
Bernie Sanders described the event as “a very bad night” and said the promised December ACA vote was a “meaningless gesture.” He claimed that abandoning demands made a “horrific situation even worse.”
Gavin Newsom called the deal a “Capitulation and betrayal of working Americans”, stating that “The American people need more from their leaders.”
Numerous progressive groups called for Chuck Schumer’s resignation.
It’s true that Republicans got what they wanted, but Democrats are acting like this is a bad thing.
Cuts to ACA for illegal migrants (asylum seekers and non-citizens) start in 2026, which was what the fight was about all along. The point? Loss of government subsidies adds pressure for illegals to leave the US voluntarily as the system becomes increasingly more difficult for them to feed on. Approximately 1.1 million stand to lose ACA subsidies by January of 2027, which is necessary if you want to dissuade future migrants from falsely using asylum claims to get access to US tax dollars.
Again, a majority of Democrats were willing to shut down SNAP and other federally run programs going into the holiday season just to maintain ACA benefits for non-citizens. They also wanted to force Trump to reverse a number of cuts to federal programs implemented a the beginning of his term.
The more general debate over rising health insurance costs can’t really be addressed without bringing the entirety of Obamacare into question. Dems want to blame Trump, but the average worker’s yearly insurance premiums have increased by 40% for individuals and 64% for families since Obamacare was passed. Wasn’t the program supposed to reduce medical care costs for everyone?
By every metric the ACA has made healthcare worse, not better. Yet another Democrat failure that they refuse to acknowledge.
Beyond this issue, the progressive game plan functions very similar to how it did in 2020 – Keeping the nation constantly on edge until elections roll in, and then blaming the tensions on Trump and conservatives. The majority of the populace and the Electoral College voted for Trump’s policies in 2024, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the incessant obstructions by Democrats over the last eleven months.
The shutdown process is not over yet and a number of hurdles remain, but the fact that at least 10 Dems broke from the party in order to end the madness exposes divisions within the progressive guard. Perhaps they are not as hive-minded as they used to be.
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