I actually think the shutdown worked well for the Democrats - and the likes of King and Hassan saved them from snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Democrats demonstrated they care about the health and welfare of the working class -and, more importantly, the Republicans demonstrated how little they care about-willing to starve millions of their supporters so they could take away their ACA benefits. The fact that Trump, at the height of the anxiety, threw himself an appalling party certainly helped. But had the shutdown continued, we would have had the uncomfortable spectacle of the poor starving so the media elite of New York and Washington could tell themselves “we’re fighting!”, a hideous look. It should be noted that the moderates who caved are precisely the ones who represent substantial numbers of rural working class - and they would not have sought a reopening had they not been subjected to immense pressure from people who are uniquely vulnerable at this time. Instead of a circular firing squad, how about declare victory and move on??
To the Disappointed bloggers of Salon and New York magazine: there’s a limit to the amount of suffering we should impose on the working class we all say we want to get back to the Dem coalition just to give you a sense of smug satisfaction. And, yes, it is now down to Hochul and Spanberger and Sherrill and Shapiro and Moore and all the rest to demonstrate that we really do have the answers.
The notion that any politician at all won this shutdown is patently absurd. Democrats completely obliterated any pretense of caring about working class Americans. By the end, they were ignoring primarily Democrat government unions in order to continue keeping government closed.
This entire farce was predicated on the idea that no matter how bad it looked at least the furloughed and laid off government employees would get 6 weeks of pay for sitting at home doing nothing. This is just basic bring home the bacon politics.
It worked with the base voters, and it turned out voters in Northern Virginia. Congrats, I guess, on winning an off-cycle election in a blue-leaning state that historically votes against the incumbent presidential party.
Democrats won nothing and further debased their brand name with independent voters.
You say “the notion that any politician won is patently absurd”. Well, there are millions of Democrats and progressives and even working class folk who would vehemently disagree. And the polls did in fact show there are big swatches of Americans out there - especially, it seems, Latinos (a term I hate but it will have to do for now)- who DID blame the shutdown on Trump and are back in the fold, at least for now. The problem remains that the Republicans willingness to impose pain on American citizens far exceeds anything we have seen before, which upsets conventional political calculus - at least for now.
In politics, one has the unique ability to blow the whistle when you are in the lead, declaring the game over. Or the season. To take one painful example, it would have been nice if the Mets could have stopped baseball in its tracks at the All Star break and gone straight to the playoffs. But, alas 🤬The Dems got off their high horse before the SNAP hunger got too out of control and the Thanksgiving air traffic meltdown enraged too many people. This was not the Battle of Gettysburg that many hoped it would be, but I remind all the Civil War went on for another two years. Now: on to the Epstein files.
After Noem answers, can Dems inform Americans of the appropriate remedy for the 90% of Biden migrants who will not qualify for asylum and who are are not violently criminal? Asylum is a specific remedy for distinct situations. War, natural disaster, persecution. . . Poverty, crime and domestic abuse do not now, nor have they ever, been the legal basis for US asylum.
So what do we do with the roughly 9 million people released into the US lacking valid asylum claims, who are not violently criminal? Has all US immigration law, except for the deportation of violent felons, ceased to exist? Is the new standard, any nonviolent world resident who arrives on US soil can stay forever, no valid asylum claim or economic self sufficiency necessary?
Dems have greatly benefitted from Reps failing to link affordability to the arrival of 10 million people, without a single extra housing unit to shelter them. In NYC, the residential vacancy rate has been reported as roughly 3% before 300K-400K Biden new arrivals arrived, in a short window. Ethnicity has nothing to do with the situation. Everyone has to sleep somewhere. What is the answer to a housing shortage turned housing emergency, when people vastly far outnumber US housing units, long before affordability is considered?
If Dems do not intend to end all immigration law, except deportations of violent felons, what is the Dem answer for 9 million people in the US that will lack valid asylum claims, mass amnesty? If so, how many more migrants will be admitted and granted amnesty? How many would constitute too many for Dems? What do Dems intend to do with US borders when they retake the WH?
Your 9 million is a guess. The path to citizenship should require 10 years of non-criminal behavior, proof of employment and tax paying. If they've been valuable citizens for 10 years, I don't care--in fact, I'd welcome--9 million new American citizens.
Joe, IMO your approach to the immigration issue was the right one prior to Biden. After, no. He let too many people in and has driven down wages and increased rents for our most vulnerable existing citizens. And Trump has demonstrated that the border can be controlled under current laws so what additional laws can we pass to keep future Administrations from ignoring them?
How about path for citizenship to those here illegally prior to say 2016. And something to keep our borders as they are now no matter what a future President fails to do?
My 9 million is a guess based on historically 90% of asylum claims failing, but let's say I'm off by 1 or even 2 million, that still leaves millions of people in legal limbo.
Whether one agrees with your idea citizenship after 10 years or not, it would be preferable to the current state US Immigration anarchy. The most defining characteristic of the West, along with Protestantism, Property rights and the Rule of Law, has always been our treatment of women and children.
Women and children are physically weaker than men. In the majority of the world, many are perpetual victims lacking any real legal protections. Only the level of acceptable abuse changes. In the West, we protect women and children, at all costs, or at least we once did so. The world knows that, which is why hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors were sent to the US border. We would take care of the kids, no matter what, because we were the world's Good Guys, until we were not.
In Texas, breaking up child sex rings now occurs with such regularity, it no longer makes the front page of the paper, because the supply of exploitable children is nearly endless. Unaccompanied migrant minor victims, placed with unvetted guardians by now defunct NGOs, are found in increasing numbers. The whereabouts are still unknown for more than a hundred thousand migrant kids. Only Trump waving sovereign immunity for abuse claims will ever tell us the real scope of the nightmare.
Even when CA homelessness began to explode, it was still rare to see children at intersections, when they should be in school. No more. When a CA pot farm raid found migrant children working and sharing housing with a convicted pedophile and an illegal labor force, in slave like conditions, not a single Dem praised their rescue by ICE.
These problems were not birthed by the open border, but made exponentially worse. So whether it is a 10 year timeframe for citizenship or payments of $10K or $ 20K for those who wish to self deport, someone has to do something. A caste system is bad enough. A child caste system, built on exploitation, should be a bridge too far for any American, Rep or Dem.
Ok, Bo...back at it again? I actually took much of the final paragraphs from some very smart suggestions YOU made. As always, I invite you for specifics...and if a plea for Democrats to take governing seriously--which you've done, brilliantly, all your life-- isn't serious, what do you prescribe for the party? The promise of order, as opposed to Trumpist chaos, is the predicate for regaining control, if we are to remain a democracy. I won't throw in the towel on that yet.
Then please point out the inaccuracies. No one in the US wants the father of 3 Marines deported or anyone else in the US for decades without criminality. Nor does anyone want Americans wrongly targeted. That is clear because Trump already served 1 term and nothing remotely similar happened.
Now, wholly the result of Biden's actions, we face a problem of previously unknown magnitude. Yet Dems insist "nothing to see here" but Nazi Reps. Dems purposefully lit the US house on fire, and now perpetually yell at how Reps attempt to extinguish it, with no plan of their own to put out the blaze.
Lamenting on the phone to a Chicago friend a few weeks ago, the perpetual tragedy of migrant women accompanied by their school age children, selling candy on a street corner, in the middle of the school day in 90 degree heat, my friend noted the same situation is often found in Chicago.
Her Black colleague pointed out, a Black Mother in the same situation, in Chicago or anywhere in the US, would quickly find herself arrested and her child taken by CPS for truancy and child endangerment. Yet with the right skin hue, children out of school, standing in a busy median all day, are not a problem?
Screaming about Noem and ICE does not fix the problem. If Dems do not plan to allow the situation to continue in perpetuity, they might want to offer some answers, especially as winter approaches and ICE hires thousands of more officers.
Really “No one in the US wants the father of 3 Marines deported or anyone else in the US for decades without criminality. Nor does anyone want Americans wrongly targeted.”??? Trump and his cabinet is full of people who do want exactly that. Sorry serious discussions by Rs around immigration reform ended with the Bipartisan Border Bill negotiated in 2024 that dealt with most of the issues you outline and had broad bipartisan support. Yet Trump forced republicans to reject it as he wanted to campaign on demonizing immigrants (“they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs…”). He and his party have made no policy proposals to deal with asylum seekers or anything else beyond $ to hire ICE and Border Patrol officers to rampage and arrest for the TV cameras.
The bipartisan bill simply codified Biden's numbers into law, which is why it received one Rep Senate vote, if that. It was the last gasp of open border Reps and Dems looking for an endless exploitable work force. It had no funding for the 1/2 of new arrivals that become welfare enrollees or any funding for their mass healthcare costs.
With Gotaways and exempt nations, the bill would have resulted in 2-3 million migrants a year, on top of the 1 million immigrants we accept in our orderly normal immigration. We do not possess enough extra housing, MDs or bilingual teachers to absorb 4 million new people a year. Trump didn't kill the bill. 5th Grade math killed the bill.
I am one of the few (apparently) who thinks Schumer needs to step down but also thought Schumer was correct last Spring to refuse the calls from the performative wing of the Democrats to shut down the Federal Government. Had he done so, the Democrats would have been blamed for the DOGE cuts and the Spring panic in the stock market.
The Republicans have always been responsible, and blamed by the public, for government shutdowns—justly, since the Republicans don’t believe in the value of the Federal Government, and are happy to wound its workings.
The Democrats should never have cooperated in this shutdown. The fact that a switch in Democratic votes allowed the Federal Government to reopen conclusively and logically pins the blame on the Democrats for the shutdown.
The theory that the shutdown is how the public at large has become aware of the upcoming Republican price hikes to health care premiums is absurd. This disconnect between the Democrats and everyday people (pace, Sly Stone) is why the Democrats keep losing.
This shutdown demonstrates what a Chess grandmaster Pelosi was compared to Checkers King Schumer. These 7 Senate D’s that apparently still believe in Santa Claus because they are satisfied with John Thune’s promise of a funding vote next month- none of them should win a party nomination again.
Schumer has no muscle and worse, no vision.
John Fetterman is the biggest disgrace to the CoPA, his Party, and the Senate that I can recall. Ever. He flat out lied about his medical condition and he clearly is not functioning at a level that is expected of a US Senator.
A fraud and a liar.
And Bernie - STFU about universal health care in the US. NOT happening ever and you’re too old - you should have let someone else run but your giant ego wouldn’t let you.
"That he would have caved eventually. (Like when?)"
Well, when it comes to certain stances, like tariffs, Trump got the nickname TACO for a reason. Their was always a reasonable argument that the dems should have signed onto the bill immediately, without the subsidies, so that there was time for the higher premiums to become a reality for Cletus and family prior to the 2026 mid-terms. That would have been my strategy. However, using your own position that democrats should not be the party of pain for eventual gain, then digging in is also defensible, had it worked. The timing of the capitulation may also have a positive outcome in that, perhaps, the dems will get some credit for re-opening the gummit. My crystal ball is currently out for polishing so that prediction comes with no guarantee. This electronic comment has no impact on trees or paper.
There's a difference between TACO and this. TACO involves dollars--and the stock market, which Trump sees as the equivalent of TV ratings. The shutdown involved individual inconvenience and suffering, which Trump cares about not at all.
Amen, and we should also be boycotting those clearly bad actors in the corporate world who are supporting Trump's cruel and dehumanizing policies. And we should not be demonizing those of our elected representatives who, after exhausting the attempt to reason with the hopelessly unreasonable Republicans, took a side road in order to protect and defend their constituents. Just look at the state of the states they represent and ask yourself if their citizens need to eat and earn money more than worrying overmuch about their medical insurance. It's a matter of dire priorities. And next year--an election. year--when those insurance hikes all kick in, well, we shall see what we shall see. And meanwhile, the starving shall eat, and the working folk shall get paid, keep their housing and celebrate the holidays this year. As for us? We can ask that free clinics be made accessible for those whose medical needs can't wait a few months to be attended to. There is power in petition, too. Often and often, the so-called perfect is the enemy of the good.
What amazing victories? Democrat victories in blue-leaning states during off-cycle elections are hardly amazing. Especially when you consider that one of those states had its highest turnout in areas absolutely packed with people who were put out of work, but too partisan to actually admit that their own party was responsible.
I continue to see no hope whatsoever in our national government, and your post today just made me feel even more hopeless. I hope that I'm wrong. I fear that I am not.
In the Blue states, and even some of the purple ones, life has been pretty tolerable. New York, in particular, has never been cleaner or safer. Philly seems to be on the uptick. Giving in to hopelessness does not help, finding a campaign that flips a seat does.
Joe, good analysis. We are so used to the winner take all, playoff nature of expectations that when no one wins we are lost, confused. But the real work neither sparkles nor completely satisfies. It's consensus through debate and compromise. Trump was never going to cave, just pursue his hideous, systematic, cruel destruction of 250 years worth of liberal progress towards law, order, peace, equality and tranquility. The shutdown drama had to end, the process of negotiating needed to continue. The 8 'progressives' that signed led the adults back to the table. It's not over but it's moving again. That's the part that matters. And it may get worse before it gets better.
I actually think the shutdown worked well for the Democrats - and the likes of King and Hassan saved them from snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Democrats demonstrated they care about the health and welfare of the working class -and, more importantly, the Republicans demonstrated how little they care about-willing to starve millions of their supporters so they could take away their ACA benefits. The fact that Trump, at the height of the anxiety, threw himself an appalling party certainly helped. But had the shutdown continued, we would have had the uncomfortable spectacle of the poor starving so the media elite of New York and Washington could tell themselves “we’re fighting!”, a hideous look. It should be noted that the moderates who caved are precisely the ones who represent substantial numbers of rural working class - and they would not have sought a reopening had they not been subjected to immense pressure from people who are uniquely vulnerable at this time. Instead of a circular firing squad, how about declare victory and move on??
To the Disappointed bloggers of Salon and New York magazine: there’s a limit to the amount of suffering we should impose on the working class we all say we want to get back to the Dem coalition just to give you a sense of smug satisfaction. And, yes, it is now down to Hochul and Spanberger and Sherrill and Shapiro and Moore and all the rest to demonstrate that we really do have the answers.
The notion that any politician at all won this shutdown is patently absurd. Democrats completely obliterated any pretense of caring about working class Americans. By the end, they were ignoring primarily Democrat government unions in order to continue keeping government closed.
This entire farce was predicated on the idea that no matter how bad it looked at least the furloughed and laid off government employees would get 6 weeks of pay for sitting at home doing nothing. This is just basic bring home the bacon politics.
It worked with the base voters, and it turned out voters in Northern Virginia. Congrats, I guess, on winning an off-cycle election in a blue-leaning state that historically votes against the incumbent presidential party.
Democrats won nothing and further debased their brand name with independent voters.
You say “the notion that any politician won is patently absurd”. Well, there are millions of Democrats and progressives and even working class folk who would vehemently disagree. And the polls did in fact show there are big swatches of Americans out there - especially, it seems, Latinos (a term I hate but it will have to do for now)- who DID blame the shutdown on Trump and are back in the fold, at least for now. The problem remains that the Republicans willingness to impose pain on American citizens far exceeds anything we have seen before, which upsets conventional political calculus - at least for now.
In politics, one has the unique ability to blow the whistle when you are in the lead, declaring the game over. Or the season. To take one painful example, it would have been nice if the Mets could have stopped baseball in its tracks at the All Star break and gone straight to the playoffs. But, alas 🤬The Dems got off their high horse before the SNAP hunger got too out of control and the Thanksgiving air traffic meltdown enraged too many people. This was not the Battle of Gettysburg that many hoped it would be, but I remind all the Civil War went on for another two years. Now: on to the Epstein files.
The Epstein files? Polling in NOVA and New Jersey?
If you're hanging your hat on that, what can I tell you? You're wishcasting.
I agree
Great response!
After Noem answers, can Dems inform Americans of the appropriate remedy for the 90% of Biden migrants who will not qualify for asylum and who are are not violently criminal? Asylum is a specific remedy for distinct situations. War, natural disaster, persecution. . . Poverty, crime and domestic abuse do not now, nor have they ever, been the legal basis for US asylum.
So what do we do with the roughly 9 million people released into the US lacking valid asylum claims, who are not violently criminal? Has all US immigration law, except for the deportation of violent felons, ceased to exist? Is the new standard, any nonviolent world resident who arrives on US soil can stay forever, no valid asylum claim or economic self sufficiency necessary?
Dems have greatly benefitted from Reps failing to link affordability to the arrival of 10 million people, without a single extra housing unit to shelter them. In NYC, the residential vacancy rate has been reported as roughly 3% before 300K-400K Biden new arrivals arrived, in a short window. Ethnicity has nothing to do with the situation. Everyone has to sleep somewhere. What is the answer to a housing shortage turned housing emergency, when people vastly far outnumber US housing units, long before affordability is considered?
If Dems do not intend to end all immigration law, except deportations of violent felons, what is the Dem answer for 9 million people in the US that will lack valid asylum claims, mass amnesty? If so, how many more migrants will be admitted and granted amnesty? How many would constitute too many for Dems? What do Dems intend to do with US borders when they retake the WH?
Your 9 million is a guess. The path to citizenship should require 10 years of non-criminal behavior, proof of employment and tax paying. If they've been valuable citizens for 10 years, I don't care--in fact, I'd welcome--9 million new American citizens.
Joe, IMO your approach to the immigration issue was the right one prior to Biden. After, no. He let too many people in and has driven down wages and increased rents for our most vulnerable existing citizens. And Trump has demonstrated that the border can be controlled under current laws so what additional laws can we pass to keep future Administrations from ignoring them?
How about path for citizenship to those here illegally prior to say 2016. And something to keep our borders as they are now no matter what a future President fails to do?
My 9 million is a guess based on historically 90% of asylum claims failing, but let's say I'm off by 1 or even 2 million, that still leaves millions of people in legal limbo.
Whether one agrees with your idea citizenship after 10 years or not, it would be preferable to the current state US Immigration anarchy. The most defining characteristic of the West, along with Protestantism, Property rights and the Rule of Law, has always been our treatment of women and children.
Women and children are physically weaker than men. In the majority of the world, many are perpetual victims lacking any real legal protections. Only the level of acceptable abuse changes. In the West, we protect women and children, at all costs, or at least we once did so. The world knows that, which is why hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors were sent to the US border. We would take care of the kids, no matter what, because we were the world's Good Guys, until we were not.
In Texas, breaking up child sex rings now occurs with such regularity, it no longer makes the front page of the paper, because the supply of exploitable children is nearly endless. Unaccompanied migrant minor victims, placed with unvetted guardians by now defunct NGOs, are found in increasing numbers. The whereabouts are still unknown for more than a hundred thousand migrant kids. Only Trump waving sovereign immunity for abuse claims will ever tell us the real scope of the nightmare.
Even when CA homelessness began to explode, it was still rare to see children at intersections, when they should be in school. No more. When a CA pot farm raid found migrant children working and sharing housing with a convicted pedophile and an illegal labor force, in slave like conditions, not a single Dem praised their rescue by ICE.
These problems were not birthed by the open border, but made exponentially worse. So whether it is a 10 year timeframe for citizenship or payments of $10K or $ 20K for those who wish to self deport, someone has to do something. A caste system is bad enough. A child caste system, built on exploitation, should be a bridge too far for any American, Rep or Dem.
This is not a serious effort to deal with a problem. This is a diatribe without any actual thought
Ok, Bo...back at it again? I actually took much of the final paragraphs from some very smart suggestions YOU made. As always, I invite you for specifics...and if a plea for Democrats to take governing seriously--which you've done, brilliantly, all your life-- isn't serious, what do you prescribe for the party? The promise of order, as opposed to Trumpist chaos, is the predicate for regaining control, if we are to remain a democracy. I won't throw in the towel on that yet.
Ooops. I thought you were responding to me, but it was Ronda all along.
Then please point out the inaccuracies. No one in the US wants the father of 3 Marines deported or anyone else in the US for decades without criminality. Nor does anyone want Americans wrongly targeted. That is clear because Trump already served 1 term and nothing remotely similar happened.
Now, wholly the result of Biden's actions, we face a problem of previously unknown magnitude. Yet Dems insist "nothing to see here" but Nazi Reps. Dems purposefully lit the US house on fire, and now perpetually yell at how Reps attempt to extinguish it, with no plan of their own to put out the blaze.
Lamenting on the phone to a Chicago friend a few weeks ago, the perpetual tragedy of migrant women accompanied by their school age children, selling candy on a street corner, in the middle of the school day in 90 degree heat, my friend noted the same situation is often found in Chicago.
Her Black colleague pointed out, a Black Mother in the same situation, in Chicago or anywhere in the US, would quickly find herself arrested and her child taken by CPS for truancy and child endangerment. Yet with the right skin hue, children out of school, standing in a busy median all day, are not a problem?
Screaming about Noem and ICE does not fix the problem. If Dems do not plan to allow the situation to continue in perpetuity, they might want to offer some answers, especially as winter approaches and ICE hires thousands of more officers.
Really “No one in the US wants the father of 3 Marines deported or anyone else in the US for decades without criminality. Nor does anyone want Americans wrongly targeted.”??? Trump and his cabinet is full of people who do want exactly that. Sorry serious discussions by Rs around immigration reform ended with the Bipartisan Border Bill negotiated in 2024 that dealt with most of the issues you outline and had broad bipartisan support. Yet Trump forced republicans to reject it as he wanted to campaign on demonizing immigrants (“they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs…”). He and his party have made no policy proposals to deal with asylum seekers or anything else beyond $ to hire ICE and Border Patrol officers to rampage and arrest for the TV cameras.
The bipartisan bill simply codified Biden's numbers into law, which is why it received one Rep Senate vote, if that. It was the last gasp of open border Reps and Dems looking for an endless exploitable work force. It had no funding for the 1/2 of new arrivals that become welfare enrollees or any funding for their mass healthcare costs.
With Gotaways and exempt nations, the bill would have resulted in 2-3 million migrants a year, on top of the 1 million immigrants we accept in our orderly normal immigration. We do not possess enough extra housing, MDs or bilingual teachers to absorb 4 million new people a year. Trump didn't kill the bill. 5th Grade math killed the bill.
The statement you made can be applied to the unserious far left wing of the Democratic party, charitably called the “progressive” wing.
Absolutely correct, Joe.
I am one of the few (apparently) who thinks Schumer needs to step down but also thought Schumer was correct last Spring to refuse the calls from the performative wing of the Democrats to shut down the Federal Government. Had he done so, the Democrats would have been blamed for the DOGE cuts and the Spring panic in the stock market.
The Republicans have always been responsible, and blamed by the public, for government shutdowns—justly, since the Republicans don’t believe in the value of the Federal Government, and are happy to wound its workings.
The Democrats should never have cooperated in this shutdown. The fact that a switch in Democratic votes allowed the Federal Government to reopen conclusively and logically pins the blame on the Democrats for the shutdown.
The theory that the shutdown is how the public at large has become aware of the upcoming Republican price hikes to health care premiums is absurd. This disconnect between the Democrats and everyday people (pace, Sly Stone) is why the Democrats keep losing.
This shutdown demonstrates what a Chess grandmaster Pelosi was compared to Checkers King Schumer. These 7 Senate D’s that apparently still believe in Santa Claus because they are satisfied with John Thune’s promise of a funding vote next month- none of them should win a party nomination again.
Schumer has no muscle and worse, no vision.
John Fetterman is the biggest disgrace to the CoPA, his Party, and the Senate that I can recall. Ever. He flat out lied about his medical condition and he clearly is not functioning at a level that is expected of a US Senator.
A fraud and a liar.
And Bernie - STFU about universal health care in the US. NOT happening ever and you’re too old - you should have let someone else run but your giant ego wouldn’t let you.
I agree with most of this but I must say that my sense of “the level we should expect” of a U.S. senator is a whole lot lower.
They seem to also have given up on non-violence, persuasion, basic courtesy, and other items which were once part of their everyday existence.
"That he would have caved eventually. (Like when?)"
Well, when it comes to certain stances, like tariffs, Trump got the nickname TACO for a reason. Their was always a reasonable argument that the dems should have signed onto the bill immediately, without the subsidies, so that there was time for the higher premiums to become a reality for Cletus and family prior to the 2026 mid-terms. That would have been my strategy. However, using your own position that democrats should not be the party of pain for eventual gain, then digging in is also defensible, had it worked. The timing of the capitulation may also have a positive outcome in that, perhaps, the dems will get some credit for re-opening the gummit. My crystal ball is currently out for polishing so that prediction comes with no guarantee. This electronic comment has no impact on trees or paper.
There's a difference between TACO and this. TACO involves dollars--and the stock market, which Trump sees as the equivalent of TV ratings. The shutdown involved individual inconvenience and suffering, which Trump cares about not at all.
It’s very difficult to read minds, especially DJT’s. Your reply addresses one of my issues but not the timing one but I appreciate the pushback.
Amen, and we should also be boycotting those clearly bad actors in the corporate world who are supporting Trump's cruel and dehumanizing policies. And we should not be demonizing those of our elected representatives who, after exhausting the attempt to reason with the hopelessly unreasonable Republicans, took a side road in order to protect and defend their constituents. Just look at the state of the states they represent and ask yourself if their citizens need to eat and earn money more than worrying overmuch about their medical insurance. It's a matter of dire priorities. And next year--an election. year--when those insurance hikes all kick in, well, we shall see what we shall see. And meanwhile, the starving shall eat, and the working folk shall get paid, keep their housing and celebrate the holidays this year. As for us? We can ask that free clinics be made accessible for those whose medical needs can't wait a few months to be attended to. There is power in petition, too. Often and often, the so-called perfect is the enemy of the good.
After last week's amazing victories Democrats again pulled defeat out of the Jaws of victory. Seems about right.
What amazing victories? Democrat victories in blue-leaning states during off-cycle elections are hardly amazing. Especially when you consider that one of those states had its highest turnout in areas absolutely packed with people who were put out of work, but too partisan to actually admit that their own party was responsible.
I continue to see no hope whatsoever in our national government, and your post today just made me feel even more hopeless. I hope that I'm wrong. I fear that I am not.
In the Blue states, and even some of the purple ones, life has been pretty tolerable. New York, in particular, has never been cleaner or safer. Philly seems to be on the uptick. Giving in to hopelessness does not help, finding a campaign that flips a seat does.
Joe, good analysis. We are so used to the winner take all, playoff nature of expectations that when no one wins we are lost, confused. But the real work neither sparkles nor completely satisfies. It's consensus through debate and compromise. Trump was never going to cave, just pursue his hideous, systematic, cruel destruction of 250 years worth of liberal progress towards law, order, peace, equality and tranquility. The shutdown drama had to end, the process of negotiating needed to continue. The 8 'progressives' that signed led the adults back to the table. It's not over but it's moving again. That's the part that matters. And it may get worse before it gets better.
Brilliant! I completely agree!