Key quote, bolding added: "Tell your Dem Senator to vote NO on Cloture and NO on the Republican spending bill.
Do NOT assume your Senator will be good on this. Trust me."
Schumer (NY) appears to be a Yes on cloture according to multiple outlets, though I still consider this unconfirmed. So don’t assume your Dem Senator is a safe vote. If they are, congratulate them.
Put down your doughnut and make the call. The situation is fluid and this is our battle.
Senate Democrats gave up their sole point of leverage Thursday, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced that he would help Republicans pass a continuing resolution that slashes domestic spending and specifically targets Washington D.C. with massive, punitive cuts.
While the CR is bad, Schumer said from the Senate floor, a shutdown would be “much, much worse.”
He pledged to keep fighting President Trump and Elon Musk, a fairly empty promise as Republicans won’t need Democratic help to fund the government for at a year, and can pass their reconciliation bills alone.
I’m going to call my senators tomorrow morning but if Schumer is waving the white flag it’s probably over. This is going to be one of the most consequential votes from the Dems this term - if the rest of the caucus opposes Schumer on this they may as well oust him as leader.
I don’t think this will happen. The Democrats are rudderless and scared of their own shadows. They will stick with Schumer and offer no resistance to the administration. Which is, of course, horrifying.
I will just put this out there. If all the senators who are saying they want to block this bill really wanted to badly enough they could force Schumer’s hand. This isn’t ‘if Mike Pence has courage’. A leader doesn’t buck the overwhelming majority of his caucus. Doesn’t happen.
Filibustering the CR would really screw up the Dem’s brand. See @Saint_Cad and multiply by 100. For the 3rd day in a row, the Dems had shouting matches behind closed doors. There is legit disagreement within the caucus. At least 13 Senate Dems have not yet taken a position on cloture.
This is reminiscent of the filibuster controversy. Senators like the filibuster, but the Dem base hates it. The argument for the filibuster is that it encourages bipartisanship and someday the Dems will be in the minority. Like today. Only now the Dems won’t use it, even when faced with a Screw U bill. Because that would be risky. As opposed to the risks of unchecked power in the Executive.
Schumer and Gillibrand are two of the most useless, self serving, country sabotaging politicians New York has ever elected and that’s saying a lot considering the history of New York.
I do not understand the use of a word like “fold” or, as in the thread title, “play nice.”
Schumer is trying to limit Trump’s ability to reshape the government in an authoritarian direction. It is just a a question of what will increase the probability of doing that…
This is not a left-right issue. It’s pure tactics. Do I know what is tactically best here? No, but I do know that Schumer has real expertise here. While experts are not always correct, they are more often correct than non-experts. Almost all the Democrats who are undoubtedly clogging his in-box with emails stating, with great certainty, that they know better how to limit the damage Trump is doing, have less expertise here. Democratic Senators should ignore those emails.
…by voting to give him unchecked authority to use the Treasury as his personal slush fund?
Sorry, but Schumer is either an idiot, a coward, or a collaborator, and I’ll be donating to whatever Democrat primaries him in 2028, assuming that he doesn’t vote to ban the Democratic Party between now and then.
There were posters who, before the November election, wrote that if Trump was elected, the United States would be permanently authoritarian (or maybe the word used by fascist).
While I argued against that, and still do, in order to get out of authoritarianism, the opposition needs to become unified. This thread makes we wonder if the Democratic Party is too bitterly divided to win in 2026 or 2028.
Now, even if I cam correct in my worry, this does not tell us what ideas the Democrats should unify under. They could unify under a banner such as that of AOC. I would personally dislike that, but it might work politically. They could also unify under a more moderate banner, say that of a younger Schumer-adjacent leader (Gavin Newsom?). I would like that better, but admit that’s no argument for unifying that way.
I do argue that, in the meanwhile, while Democrats are not unified, they at least should avoid the circular firing squad.
As for shutting down the government, here’s my question. Suppose the government does shut down. Will Trump be able to, more or less legally, change the traditional criteria for what is essential to just keep open government offices that he, or his Project 2025 minions, want to keep permanently? And could he so totally shut down agencies he wants to destroy for so long that most employees would have taken other jobs, making the destruction a done deal? And will SCOTUS be more likely to accept that than the approach Trump took previously?
If the democrats do shut it down, then what? This is what I’ve been struggling with. What are they holding out for? An impeachment? Some promise that Republicans will hold Trump accountable?
Meanwhile, Musk has gloated that it’s easier to find people to fire on weekends when there’s nobody there to slow him down. Is that true? Is it bluster? Is it nonsense?
I don’t know, but there seems to be a real possibility that a shutdown would actually help project 2025.
We’re in uncharted territory in an already unprecedented administration. Anyone not having doubts about tactics or strategy is probably fooling themselves.
He seems to be some sort of weird strict constructionist.
Well, yeah. Not every GOPer is in line. And I think a lot more disagree but are afraid to do so openly.
trumps weird idea to rebuilt the American empire like Putin is doing for the old Russian empire has nothing whatsoever to do with shutting the government down. In fact, trump doesnt think he needs Congress. He will still have his budget.
The Democrats are not shutting down the government. The GOP has control over both houses. All they have to do is come up with a clean funding bill.
Traditionally, the military is not affected by a shutdown. Trump, as commander in chief, could, shutdown or not, order an invasion of Greenland. Under the War Powers Act, Trump could keep our troops fighting on the Greenland front for at least 60 days, and probably longer, without congressional authorization.
Just to be clear I agree with Josh Marshall and that’s why I think it’s just over. Schumer wouldn’t have announced this if he didn’t have the backing to do it.
And BTW Schumer has always been known as the kind of general who is very popular with his troops because he avoids putting them in harms way.
Trump and Mike Johnson put a ton of pressure on their thin house majority to get this passed in the house. If they thought it was tactically beneficial to Trump to shut the government down, they could have easily “failed” to pass it.
Institutionalist democrats would have told you that the executive branch couldn’t unilaterally gut the federal government the way they already have. Now maybe the blank checks in this bill don’t actually matter and there is no real institutional guardrail against that, but there’s no reason to just concede on those. A thousand foot view basically says that Trump doesn’t need a shutdown to gut programs at this point, he shouldn’t be given more legal cover to gut them, and that a prolonged shutdown as a tactic for Trump would handcuff him more than the current situation as programs he likes would also not have funding.
This point needs to be addressed so thank you for making it.
Josh Marshall is also an expert insofar as he’s a longtime political observer. His take is that… average DC politicos don’t have deep political insight. Though some do. It’s a surprising claim, but I know of no evidence against it.
But Schumer isn’t just any politico. He’s leadership. But… the #1 skill of a legislative leader isn’t winning, it’s building consensus within the caucus. Winning is #2.
Most of all the experts are divided on this issue. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was lobbying the Senate to vote no on cloture. Reporters have heard shouting matches for 3 days in a row outside of Senate Dem meeting rooms. So you can’t just defer to Schumer. And as noted upthread, this issue doesn’t divide neatly between left wing of Democratic Party and centrist wing or safe seat vs swing seat.
Are the Dems really experts in fighting creeping authoritarianism? I say no. Are they actively consulting with such experts? Not to my knowledge. They aren’t meeting the moment.
Now I could be wrong. I’m not in a permanent state of rage against the Dems, because I’m always aware that politics is the art of the possible. But when there’s an emergency, you need to break glass. And this is a constitutional emergency.
Schumer might be playing 5D chess. He might have a viable plan for opposing Trump. Or he might just have a viable plan for keeping his caucus together. I suspect the latter.
There was a recognition up in the Senate yesterday that letting the bill pass was a bad idea but that was matched by a pained realization that the caucus wasn’t ready for the fight. They hadn’t laid any of the groundwork. They didn’t have a clear answer of what they’d be fighting for if a shutdown happened. They’d put their bets on Mike Johnson not being able to get a bill through the House without Democratic votes. When he did, they were caught flatfooted. But the ‘they’ here is Chuck Schumer. That’s the leader’s job. He lead them into a corner.
