I’ve heard some say they think Democrats are implicated/complicit in the whole thing, and that notion is getting easier to consider with each day that passes.
You haven’t sold me on this idea, at all. I’m very open to learning how the Democrat’s could’ve rejected it and avoided the foreseeable consequence, but that learning is not to be had in this post.
The GOP could’ve passed this shit sandwich funding bill if it wanted to, it has the majority. Why didn’t it? Because having a few GOP hold-outs lets Trump put the “power” into Democrat’s hands, turning it into a poison pill buried in that shit sandwich, “This is all the Democrat’s fault!!!” shouts Trump.
You haven’t outlined tangible **actions the Democrat Senators could’ve taken** (given the House went home days ago) that would’ve actually had any effect.
You haven’t explained how a shut-down **doesn’t give Trump & Musk exactly what they want**: the ability to define what’s essential and what’s not, and let the rest wither, not for hours or days like past shut-downs, but weeks or months, hastening Project 2025’s progress to completion.
**Tell me how this wasn’t** a masterful slam-dunk by the Trump machine to not only pass the shit sandwich funding bill, but also sew division in the Democrats (which, let’s face it, is quite obvious anyway).
I'd like to offer some additional insight here. Let's start with your assertion that the GOP could have passed it alone because they have the majority. That's not quite true. They were able to pass it in the House with a simple majority, but over in the Senate, the GOP needed 60 votes to move beyond a procedural rule (cloture) before the bill could proceed to a final vote. That was the point of leverage the Democrats had. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, so - assuming there were no defections - they needed at least 7 Democrats to vote for cloture (with the VP casting a tie-breaking vote). Without that, the bill would have remained stuck in debate indefinitely (a filibuster). So that describes the leverage. It was real, and the Democrats chose not to use it. As things turned out, there was one Republican defection, ten Democrats signed on, and cloture was achieved with 62 'yes' votes. The bill then moved on to final consideration, where it passed 54-46.
Next is the question of what Democrats could have done differently. The most obvious thing, which IMO was Schumer's biggest mistake, was to plan for this possible scenario. Schumer's assumption was that the House Republicans wouldn't be able to pass the bill on a party-line vote - a somewhat reasonable assumption given Republican failures in the past. But this time they pulled it off, and Schumer was caught flat-footed with no backup plan in place. Senate Democrats had a competing 30-day funding proposal ready to submit, but that was viable only if the House measure failed. It did not.
This left Democrats with two admittedly bad choices. Now, one could extrapolate any number of theoretical scenarios as to how an actual shutdown would have played out. But to the claims put forth by Schumer, Whitehouse et al that a shutdown would have given Trump & Musk the ability to define what's essential and allow things to wither for weeks or months, I would counter with this simple proposition:
The funding bill did not take effect upon passage by the Senate. It still required Trump's signature. If Trump & Musk were secretly salivating over "extraordinary powers" that they'd have during a shutdown, Trump could have done that on his own - simply by vetoing the bill. There's certainly no precedent for a president to *cause* a shutdown by such action, but there's no legal requirement for him to avoid one. It's just a bill, like any other piece of legislation, that needs the president's signature (or an override of his/her veto) to become law. It's for that simple reason that I find the ex post facto argument put forth by Senate Democratic leadership to be unconvincing. Trump is drawing public ire for the slash and burn tactics they're already deploying. I see no reason to believe he'd back away from more criticism if it gave him a route to consolidate more power and further escalate Musk's destruction of our government agencies. The fact that Trump immediately signed the bill into law suggests, to me at least, they saw a shutdown as something to be avoided. And here is where we can't predict the outcome of those theoretical scenarios. It may just be that Trump & Musk's plans (which we don't actually know) might have been slowed by a shutdown, rather than accelerated.
My bottom line on all of this is that Democrats need to be visibly, consistently and vigorously fighting with every tool at their disposal. It is the stark absence of such efforts that forms the foundation of Mike's analysis: an opposition party that isn't actively opposing serves no meaningful purpose. It could be theatrical, or possibly collaborative, but it surely isn't helping.
Many thank-yous, Robert. This is where my non-American ignorance of the whole Senate process has come up. Your reply has given me the keywords I needed to put into Claude and see the full Senate process. Very interesting.
Thanks for the reply, Anthony. I’ve spent a good portion of the last few days attempting to explain these concepts to Americans, who you’d think would have a basic understanding of the process. Our system is quite peculiar.
PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE TO CONSIDER BROADENING YOUR AUDIENCE BY MAKING YOUR WRITING ACCESSIBLE. I share your views and want more people to access them. I am bilingual --I can write like you and admire your broad vocabulary, because I also majored in philosophy and topped that with a prestigious law degree. But I've also learned to write in plain English. Prior to law school I covered civil rights for National Public Radio, and that's where I learned the value of minimizing monosyllabic words when normal language would do. An easy way to self-edit is to read your writing outloud before you finalize it, and imagine someone with only a high school diploma as your audience. Ask yourself if they will need a dictionary to understand your words, and whether they'll bother to find one. More to the point: ask yourself who you want as your audience: people like me, who already think like you? Or people you'd like to persuade who don't. Any hint of elitism will turn off the people you may most want to reach, if your goal is to convert rather than reinforce. BEST OF ALL, the power of your message will be enhanced, not diminished, if you use simple English language. Please think about this, and even better, please let your readers know your opinion about my comment. If you disagree, that's fine--we all need reinforcement, so there's still value in your work. But not if you also want to covert people who don't already think like us, didn't major in philosophy, and learned English as their second language. If you agree, then please let us know if you plan to simplify your words so they have a far broader impact than they currently do. I believe we need to do less talking among ourselves, and more outreach to people we hope will someday join us, once they can access our vocabulary.
Mike’s already responded to requests like this, as he links in his own comment-reply to you.
The job to absorb a “re-transmit” The Message to best reach different audiences who prefer different styles, **is for others to do**.
Perhaps one of those people is you, as it is for me, trying to channel news of the “outside world” to my sometimes-a-bit-provincial friends back home in Australia.
Hi. Unfortunately, for me at least, the overall impression your comment leaves is of sheer desperation, easy to appreciate given America's nightmare straits. We are all struggling to find ways to process accumulating outrage and fear, and yet avoid despair.
Philosophical arguements do best when they're structured in a broadly philosophical way, even or especially when they address lived chaos and confusion.
Can someone else say similar things differently and reach a different and perhaps broader readership?
Perhaps. But why should the present author, who has thought through what he wants to say and over time, and presumably with great effort, has developed his own way to say it, be charged with that task?
As a groundswell of incoherent outrage seeking agency grows in the days ahead, as it will, faith in our country informed by passion and expressed in a rational writing voice will be in even shorter supply.
For that reason, I hope the author kerps doing what he's doing, and in exactly the way he's doing it.
My feelings exactly. Our Democratic leaders do not yet see that the rules of the game have changed. The GAME is not the same game. The ship is steaming towards an iceberg and they are worried about protocols that no longer matter. I’m unnerved that old school-ers like Schumer still have so much sway. But encouraged by several younger, louder, angrier, Democrats AND Bernie (thank God for Bernie) who are taking the gloves off, and coloring outside the lines. Ever forward!
The Democratic Party brand is now so tarnished I don’t believe we will be able to raise a resistance of American people against the Trump regime under their banner.
When are they going to accept that the traditional playbook simply doesn’t work in the current political environment? We democrats kinda don’t believe what they say anymore because their actions are so out of sync with their narratives. I’m pretty sure the only things that drive Schumer and the others is what the donors want and the next election. They are operating from fear.
I appreciate your reflections on this topic and your overall purpose. We do need big ideas. Hopefully my big idea - running for Congress as an independent - will find more insights from your work that I can bring to bear in Washington.
Pretty sure that politicians funded by big money will want what Trump is doing because their doners will. They should not be able to call them selves democrats if they don't support democracy. In my country they would be ousted from their party and serve out their term isolated.
Remember Zelensky arriving at the White House in battle dress only to be called a "dictator" by Trump? He was jealous of Zelensky because, during the invasion of Ukraine, President Zelensky had emergency powers designed to allow quick response to a threat.
Schumer's actions were calculated to avoid having a government shutdown giving Trump additional power under the Emergency Powers Act. "Upon declaring a national emergency, over 130 special authorities — such as the authority to shut down communications facilities or draw down equipment from national defense stockpiles— are immediately unlocked that enable a president to intervene in ways that are unavailable to them outside of an emergency declaration." https://protectdemocracy.org/work/presidential-emergency-powers-explained/
Allowing a government shutdown emergency to occur would worsen an already downhill slide toward autocracy and give Trump all the reasons he needs to wreak even more havoc in dismantling the Federal Civil Service. With the razor-thin margins in Congress, there would be no chance of having the Legislative Branch oppose him. As Trump previously bragged: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters..."
Our government was not designed to anticipate having a sociopath as President and, yes, not only would he not lose voters, but many Americans would cheer him on. The rest of the world is saying; "Go home America, you're drunk." We'll probably have to reach rock bottom before an intervention can happen. Schumer and his advisors know this and make the lesser of two evil choices. Schumer is an honorable man, a mensch. You can be sure his intentions were from painful integrity and with a deep knowledge of how the U.S. government operates.
I didn't argue that the Democrats should shut down the government. But they certainly could have used the moment more effectively to exact leverage, attention, and educate Americans on what is really going on. But that is not what they did.
HOW? Please get a bit more specific. Because from my understanding of the options available to Democrats in the 2-3 days they had available, your post was a poor paragon to choose to demonstrate an otherwise valid “philosophical” point.
Trump and his MAGA minions are power-drunk and will inflict the maximum amount of pain simply because they can. Whacking the honest nest will only inflict even greater levels of pain on larger numbers of citizens.
“Actions speak louder than words.” If the tables were turned, what would Trump do? I doubt that any concern for the greater good would enter his mind. Schumer and the Dems modeled an alternative of responsible and empathetic adult behavior in contrast to Trump’s self-centered vengeance. The Dems politically had no leverage using words, but certainly demonstrated empathy and grace in contrast to Trump’s soulless hatred.
The time is not right for assertive force which by now we should realize must be a swift coup de grace for a decisive end. There was no chance of that here and cooler heads prevailed.
I’ve heard some say they think Democrats are implicated/complicit in the whole thing, and that notion is getting easier to consider with each day that passes.
You haven’t sold me on this idea, at all. I’m very open to learning how the Democrat’s could’ve rejected it and avoided the foreseeable consequence, but that learning is not to be had in this post.
The GOP could’ve passed this shit sandwich funding bill if it wanted to, it has the majority. Why didn’t it? Because having a few GOP hold-outs lets Trump put the “power” into Democrat’s hands, turning it into a poison pill buried in that shit sandwich, “This is all the Democrat’s fault!!!” shouts Trump.
You haven’t outlined tangible **actions the Democrat Senators could’ve taken** (given the House went home days ago) that would’ve actually had any effect.
You haven’t explained how a shut-down **doesn’t give Trump & Musk exactly what they want**: the ability to define what’s essential and what’s not, and let the rest wither, not for hours or days like past shut-downs, but weeks or months, hastening Project 2025’s progress to completion.
**Tell me how this wasn’t** a masterful slam-dunk by the Trump machine to not only pass the shit sandwich funding bill, but also sew division in the Democrats (which, let’s face it, is quite obvious anyway).
I'd like to offer some additional insight here. Let's start with your assertion that the GOP could have passed it alone because they have the majority. That's not quite true. They were able to pass it in the House with a simple majority, but over in the Senate, the GOP needed 60 votes to move beyond a procedural rule (cloture) before the bill could proceed to a final vote. That was the point of leverage the Democrats had. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority, so - assuming there were no defections - they needed at least 7 Democrats to vote for cloture (with the VP casting a tie-breaking vote). Without that, the bill would have remained stuck in debate indefinitely (a filibuster). So that describes the leverage. It was real, and the Democrats chose not to use it. As things turned out, there was one Republican defection, ten Democrats signed on, and cloture was achieved with 62 'yes' votes. The bill then moved on to final consideration, where it passed 54-46.
Next is the question of what Democrats could have done differently. The most obvious thing, which IMO was Schumer's biggest mistake, was to plan for this possible scenario. Schumer's assumption was that the House Republicans wouldn't be able to pass the bill on a party-line vote - a somewhat reasonable assumption given Republican failures in the past. But this time they pulled it off, and Schumer was caught flat-footed with no backup plan in place. Senate Democrats had a competing 30-day funding proposal ready to submit, but that was viable only if the House measure failed. It did not.
This left Democrats with two admittedly bad choices. Now, one could extrapolate any number of theoretical scenarios as to how an actual shutdown would have played out. But to the claims put forth by Schumer, Whitehouse et al that a shutdown would have given Trump & Musk the ability to define what's essential and allow things to wither for weeks or months, I would counter with this simple proposition:
The funding bill did not take effect upon passage by the Senate. It still required Trump's signature. If Trump & Musk were secretly salivating over "extraordinary powers" that they'd have during a shutdown, Trump could have done that on his own - simply by vetoing the bill. There's certainly no precedent for a president to *cause* a shutdown by such action, but there's no legal requirement for him to avoid one. It's just a bill, like any other piece of legislation, that needs the president's signature (or an override of his/her veto) to become law. It's for that simple reason that I find the ex post facto argument put forth by Senate Democratic leadership to be unconvincing. Trump is drawing public ire for the slash and burn tactics they're already deploying. I see no reason to believe he'd back away from more criticism if it gave him a route to consolidate more power and further escalate Musk's destruction of our government agencies. The fact that Trump immediately signed the bill into law suggests, to me at least, they saw a shutdown as something to be avoided. And here is where we can't predict the outcome of those theoretical scenarios. It may just be that Trump & Musk's plans (which we don't actually know) might have been slowed by a shutdown, rather than accelerated.
My bottom line on all of this is that Democrats need to be visibly, consistently and vigorously fighting with every tool at their disposal. It is the stark absence of such efforts that forms the foundation of Mike's analysis: an opposition party that isn't actively opposing serves no meaningful purpose. It could be theatrical, or possibly collaborative, but it surely isn't helping.
Many thank-yous, Robert. This is where my non-American ignorance of the whole Senate process has come up. Your reply has given me the keywords I needed to put into Claude and see the full Senate process. Very interesting.
Thanks for the reply, Anthony. I’ve spent a good portion of the last few days attempting to explain these concepts to Americans, who you’d think would have a basic understanding of the process. Our system is quite peculiar.
PLEASE TAKE A MINUTE TO CONSIDER BROADENING YOUR AUDIENCE BY MAKING YOUR WRITING ACCESSIBLE. I share your views and want more people to access them. I am bilingual --I can write like you and admire your broad vocabulary, because I also majored in philosophy and topped that with a prestigious law degree. But I've also learned to write in plain English. Prior to law school I covered civil rights for National Public Radio, and that's where I learned the value of minimizing monosyllabic words when normal language would do. An easy way to self-edit is to read your writing outloud before you finalize it, and imagine someone with only a high school diploma as your audience. Ask yourself if they will need a dictionary to understand your words, and whether they'll bother to find one. More to the point: ask yourself who you want as your audience: people like me, who already think like you? Or people you'd like to persuade who don't. Any hint of elitism will turn off the people you may most want to reach, if your goal is to convert rather than reinforce. BEST OF ALL, the power of your message will be enhanced, not diminished, if you use simple English language. Please think about this, and even better, please let your readers know your opinion about my comment. If you disagree, that's fine--we all need reinforcement, so there's still value in your work. But not if you also want to covert people who don't already think like us, didn't major in philosophy, and learned English as their second language. If you agree, then please let us know if you plan to simplify your words so they have a far broader impact than they currently do. I believe we need to do less talking among ourselves, and more outreach to people we hope will someday join us, once they can access our vocabulary.
I have written about this. The suggestion that I tone down my intellectual prose, that is.
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-view-from-here
Mike’s already responded to requests like this, as he links in his own comment-reply to you.
The job to absorb a “re-transmit” The Message to best reach different audiences who prefer different styles, **is for others to do**.
Perhaps one of those people is you, as it is for me, trying to channel news of the “outside world” to my sometimes-a-bit-provincial friends back home in Australia.
Hi. Unfortunately, for me at least, the overall impression your comment leaves is of sheer desperation, easy to appreciate given America's nightmare straits. We are all struggling to find ways to process accumulating outrage and fear, and yet avoid despair.
Philosophical arguements do best when they're structured in a broadly philosophical way, even or especially when they address lived chaos and confusion.
Can someone else say similar things differently and reach a different and perhaps broader readership?
Perhaps. But why should the present author, who has thought through what he wants to say and over time, and presumably with great effort, has developed his own way to say it, be charged with that task?
As a groundswell of incoherent outrage seeking agency grows in the days ahead, as it will, faith in our country informed by passion and expressed in a rational writing voice will be in even shorter supply.
For that reason, I hope the author kerps doing what he's doing, and in exactly the way he's doing it.
Schumer, Jeffries, Gillibrands' biggest donors are in the financial industry. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
My feelings exactly. Our Democratic leaders do not yet see that the rules of the game have changed. The GAME is not the same game. The ship is steaming towards an iceberg and they are worried about protocols that no longer matter. I’m unnerved that old school-ers like Schumer still have so much sway. But encouraged by several younger, louder, angrier, Democrats AND Bernie (thank God for Bernie) who are taking the gloves off, and coloring outside the lines. Ever forward!
The Democratic Party brand is now so tarnished I don’t believe we will be able to raise a resistance of American people against the Trump regime under their banner.
Agreed. We can only hope that one or more spontaneous groupings born of the moment will rise in rebellion and a counter-revolution take hold.
Schumer just destroyed the Democratic Party. Well done you spineless idiot.
Showing their stripes. Good riddance.
When are they going to accept that the traditional playbook simply doesn’t work in the current political environment? We democrats kinda don’t believe what they say anymore because their actions are so out of sync with their narratives. I’m pretty sure the only things that drive Schumer and the others is what the donors want and the next election. They are operating from fear.
Well reasoned argument suggesting .... it's worth the risk
I'm not so sure that this is a "counterfactual" (something that didn't happen).
Hi Mike,
I appreciate your reflections on this topic and your overall purpose. We do need big ideas. Hopefully my big idea - running for Congress as an independent - will find more insights from your work that I can bring to bear in Washington.
Pretty sure that politicians funded by big money will want what Trump is doing because their doners will. They should not be able to call them selves democrats if they don't support democracy. In my country they would be ousted from their party and serve out their term isolated.
Ouch. Painful to read. Impossible to dispute. History will not be kind.
I am not buying this.
Remember Zelensky arriving at the White House in battle dress only to be called a "dictator" by Trump? He was jealous of Zelensky because, during the invasion of Ukraine, President Zelensky had emergency powers designed to allow quick response to a threat.
Schumer's actions were calculated to avoid having a government shutdown giving Trump additional power under the Emergency Powers Act. "Upon declaring a national emergency, over 130 special authorities — such as the authority to shut down communications facilities or draw down equipment from national defense stockpiles— are immediately unlocked that enable a president to intervene in ways that are unavailable to them outside of an emergency declaration." https://protectdemocracy.org/work/presidential-emergency-powers-explained/
Allowing a government shutdown emergency to occur would worsen an already downhill slide toward autocracy and give Trump all the reasons he needs to wreak even more havoc in dismantling the Federal Civil Service. With the razor-thin margins in Congress, there would be no chance of having the Legislative Branch oppose him. As Trump previously bragged: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters..."
Our government was not designed to anticipate having a sociopath as President and, yes, not only would he not lose voters, but many Americans would cheer him on. The rest of the world is saying; "Go home America, you're drunk." We'll probably have to reach rock bottom before an intervention can happen. Schumer and his advisors know this and make the lesser of two evil choices. Schumer is an honorable man, a mensch. You can be sure his intentions were from painful integrity and with a deep knowledge of how the U.S. government operates.
I didn't argue that the Democrats should shut down the government. But they certainly could have used the moment more effectively to exact leverage, attention, and educate Americans on what is really going on. But that is not what they did.
https://america2.news/to-survive-this-we-must-break-the-fourth-wall/
HOW? Please get a bit more specific. Because from my understanding of the options available to Democrats in the 2-3 days they had available, your post was a poor paragon to choose to demonstrate an otherwise valid “philosophical” point.
Trump and his MAGA minions are power-drunk and will inflict the maximum amount of pain simply because they can. Whacking the honest nest will only inflict even greater levels of pain on larger numbers of citizens.
“Actions speak louder than words.” If the tables were turned, what would Trump do? I doubt that any concern for the greater good would enter his mind. Schumer and the Dems modeled an alternative of responsible and empathetic adult behavior in contrast to Trump’s self-centered vengeance. The Dems politically had no leverage using words, but certainly demonstrated empathy and grace in contrast to Trump’s soulless hatred.
The time is not right for assertive force which by now we should realize must be a swift coup de grace for a decisive end. There was no chance of that here and cooler heads prevailed.
The big corporate donors fund both parties to maintain the appearance of opposition as they dismantle the government that constrains them.
1 pond + 1 pond = 1 bigger pond