To be clear, the handful of Senate Dems who flipped their votes caved. They may have been turncoats to the cause, or they may have been sacrificial lambs, since none are up for re-election in the next cycle, doing the necessary dirty work of the party to get the government up and running after realizing that Trump was pretty happy about being able to do whatever he pleased and didn’t lose a wink of sleep over the hunger of 42 million Americans, or slackers as he preferred to call them.
Did the Dems lose by caving? They certainly didn’t get any of the declared goals relating to health care subsidies. Getting the promise of a Senate vote at some unknown point in the future is about as worthless a promise as it gets, and these senators certainly know it. It was just cover, and bad cover at that.
The great and powerful Trump certainly sees it as a huge win, as he declared during his Veteran’s Day speech.
President Trump said on Tuesday that the apparent near end of the nation’s longest government shutdown amounted to a “very big victory” for Republicans during a Veterans Day speech that mixed the traditional solemnity of the day with a string of bare-knuckle political arguments.
Then again, the public not only saw the fissures where Trump fought to deny SNAP to the needy, which coincidentally included about 25% of the military who have children to feed, but heard over and over about how health insurance premiums were going to skyrocket in the coming months.
But even some of the Democrats most outraged by the outcome are not so certain that their party’s aborted fight was all for naught.
They assert that in hammering away at the extension of health care subsidies that are slated to expire at the end of next month, they managed to thrust Mr. Trump and Republicans onto the defensive, elevating a political issue that has long been a major weakness for them.
That’s entirely on Trump and the Republicans, who claim they have a beautiful new plan for health insurance that will be better and less expensive, but they can’t say what that plan might be because, as has been the case since throughout Trump’s first and second terms, there is no plan.
And in holding out for weeks while Republicans refused to extend the health tax credits and Mr. Trump went to court to deny low-income Americans SNAP food benefits, Democrats also honed their main message going into 2026: that Republicans who control all of government have done nothing to address voters’ concerns that the cost of living is too high.
“The end to this government shutdown does not solve their affordability problem,” said Amy Walter, the publisher and editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “A deal that included an extension of the subsidies would actually have helped.”
Did Trump really win? Sure, the Dems caved, causing yet another a well-deserved rift in the party and proving yet again that the Dems are impotent against the Reps. The Dems may have lost, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Trump won.
The one clear thing is that the American public lost by the government shut down, and our loss may well continue even as the government reopens given the time it will take to get the wheels of government grinding, the ongoing outrageous prices paid for that archaic word, “groceries,” and the incoming costs for health insurance.
So who won?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
Discover more from Simple Justice
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I realize this sounds messed up but by not solving the ACA credits issue it gives the dems a platform for the midterms that affects many people. I think caving almost immediately after the elections is a bad look though, I think they could have made a deal much sooner or hung on for longer. So to the question, I think Rs won the battle but the Dems may be positioned for longer term gains in the midterms.
The Health Insurance industry won. It’s what Charlie wanted. He wants what’s best for us by what’s best for them. The Divine Augustus, through his acolytes in the Senate, now speaks for Charlie, His will be done.
Tim Miller at the Bulwark Podcast had an interesting take. He said anyone who thought the Democrats would get their way on the ACA were kidding themselves, that Trump would never give in. He likened it to playing chicken against a driver who wants to crash. Certainly, now that the Republicans have found a way to kill the ACA (as they see it), they’re not going to waste it.
He thinks the Democrats did well to demonstrate to low income MAGA voters that Trump is bad for them.
I’ve seen it said that Democrats were worried about the bad affect of airplane crash that could be blamed on an overworked ATC.
“I feel like the Democrats really need to own the shutdown. I mean, we’re shutting it down.”
“[T]hat’s actually not a fold. That’s realizing that it’s the kind of chaos that might care more about the kinds of impacts that it’s going to have on 42 million people.”
“Now we are hurting the very people that we fight for, and now we’re getting nothing for them if we continue to keep our government shut down.”
— Sen. John Fetterman
I will stand on principle alongside Sen. Fetterman, a true and courageous American, willing to embrace bipartisanship to act in the interests of ordinary Americans.
Is it Tuesday? I’m confused.
[Ed. Note: I’m flexible.]
Twofer Tuesday.
[Ed. Note: I was thinking CSNY. I forget all about Jefferson Airplane.]
Try Nellie McKay…..haunting
It was a good crisis, and Dems let it go to waste. Reps won. Right as they were ready to allow people to go hungry too. Trump’s indifference to his base was on full display. Now Congress can go back to scheming to not release the Epstein files. Great.
Dems had a rallying cry to get behind. Affordability of the necessities of life. No, we can’t let insurance get even more expensive. Grocery prices, rent, and childcare costs are too damn high. Wages aren’t increasing. Reps are robbing ACA to pay the grossly distended ICE. Seize the moment, dumbshits. Represent those not already bought and paid for.
I don’t care if it wouldn’t make a lick of difference, but can we fire everyone in Congress, bar them from ever running again, and replace them with people who have never before been politicians? That wouldn’t quite slake my anger, but it’d be a start.
I’ve been thinking for awhile you’re the perfect candidate for The New Rent Is Too Damn High Party
I’m confused. Wasn’t ACA always supposed to be about being affordable? If so why does it still need subsidies to attain that? And if so, why didn’t the Dems make them permanent back during the Obama and Biden administrations when they controlled both houses instead of waiting for a Republican administration to attempt to do so? Is it perhaps that they are attempting to game the system and pin the blame for all of it on someone else?
[Ed. Note: Without getting into the thousands of words needed to explain the concepts behind the ACA, suffice it to say that until there is a better plan, the question is whether people can obtain/maintain health insurance or not. Blaming Obama/Biden contributes nothing to the solution. If they were wrong, how does that make anything less wrong now?]
To use the quote attributed to Zhou Enlai re: the success of the French Revolution, “Too early to say.”
“Who won?” will likely show a better answer after the midterm elections.