After successfully propelling Zohran Mamdani to the mayor’s office in New York City, the campaign firm Fight Agency is moving on to its next targets – defeating Pennsylvania Reps. Ryan Mackenzie (R-07) and Rob Bresnahan (R-08).
The six-person firm consists of Rebecca Katz, Tommy McDonald, Julian Mulvey, Morris Katz, Eric Stern, and Lynnette Jackson. Fight Agency’s website reads that it has assisted over 300 winning elections in 40 states and has won over 100 awards, including 2022 Campaign of the Year.
Katz was the lead strategist for Sen. John Fetterman’s winning campaign in 2022, while McDonald was his key admaker. Mulvey was a key member of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) braintrust, and Katz was the firm’s lead on the Mamdani campaign.
Stern was deputy campaign manager for Fetterman, while Jackson heads operations.
The group’s website says that it is “looking to help American originals” who are “ready to fight the toughest battles in politics.”
“And we’re here to help you with sharp messaging and the next great iconic ad. So, if you’re looking for something different, you might have just found it.”
So their new iconic original is a pro-gun militant, who hates Kaepernick for supporting BLM (as opposed to telling people to not vote in 2016), and stiffed his mother-in-law. An American original? I mean, you can find deadbeats all over the place right, like maybe Trump Tower? Or is this whatever day Northampton County has hearings for people who stiff their family? I’m unsure. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is certainly unoriginal though. I’ve see plenty of people who aren’t even honest when it comes to their family.
Yes, these folks got Zohran elected in a gigantic blue city. Good job. Unless they’re going to flat out lie to people and get away with it like they did with John “Shrek” Fetterman, that doesn’t usually work though. Look, Mamdani will be the latest leftist who promised the world and under delivers. John Fetterman somehow went from a Bernie socialist to a Republican before he finished three years in the Senate. These same folks want you to think it’s okay to have a Nazi tattoo, so much so that you should be elected Senator in Maine. Yes, he’s really their guy. These folks brag about electing like 300 socialists, but they probably lost more Presidential primaries with just Bernie Sanders alone than Eugene Debs did in his career. Most Americans don’t want to be Democratic Socialists.
In case you’re a total fucking idiot, allow me to verify something for you- there is a “political industrial complex.” I mean, c’mon, did you need Marjorie Taylor Greene to tell you that? Look, I’m still not a fan of her’s, but even a broke clock is right twice a day. Like, you thought all of those emails asking you for money with the headline “This is the most important election of our lifetime!” and texts asking you “just give us $5!” were something genuine? You never wondered why after you gave one candidate $10 because you believed in them, then you suddenly ended up on other email lists? List sales and swaps are a big business, man. Really though, you needed her to tell you this?
Washington politics is not any different any other industry, it needs it’s customers to survive. Candidates are taught, if they don’t instinctively know, to cater to the audience that keeps the lights on. Small dollar donors. Volunteers. Interest group leaders. Mega donors. Government affairs directors. Basically, the hyper engaged. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking this only means the rich or corporate interests, but it’s really true of anyone that is an active participant in our political dialogue in America full time. Why are we running candidates who mostly appeal to base voters and turn off most of the rest of the public? It’s an industry. That keeps the lights on.
Is there any reason the #1 metric of the DCCC in a swing seat needs to be money? Not really. Let’s be honest, they’re going to spend money in PA-7 or 8, or NJ-7, or NY-17, and so on. The nominee will be funded, so why worry about if they’re good at it? We all know why- the DCCC exists to make sure people get paid. They want candidates who can sustain expensive consultants and pay staff. Is it always necessary? At a certain point, yes. For months on end? No, not at all.
Let’s be honest, shitty people sustain candidates like Graham Platner because they make them money. Does any one think the guy with the Nazi tattoo should walk into a Senate seat for their first political gig? Only if they’re a weirdo. Did anyone think Marjorie Taylor Greene was an ideal Congresswoman? Only if they were so strange that they thought making the other side angry was a positive attribute. It takes a grift to make someone think the guy robbing his mother in law should go to Congress. This is where we are though.
Conflict sells. Anger sells. Telling people they want the most divisive person possible because the other side’s voters, not just candidates and donors, are horrible people who want to kill children, old people, and puppies, it sells. Lining up AOC’s resume next to say Jimmy Carter’s or Barack Obama’s, let alone Dwight Eisenhower or LBJ, and trying to claim she should be a viable Presidential candidate should immediately tell you by common sense that this is silly. It doesn’t for a lot of hyper partisan people. The industry has rewired your brain to believe things that a rational person would not. If you stay in a constant state of conflict against everyone, even your friends, neighbors, and family members that you disagree with, you’re ready to roll with anyone. Suddenly you have no standards. You’re good with whatever slop is put in front of you. J.D. Vance couldn’t even find the private gym in the Senate, and suddenly he’s up to being Vice-President, because he can speak to the hyper engaged.
I do not think for a second that this all bothered Marjorie Taylor Greene even a little bit. I mean, remember “Jewish space lasers?” This woman pushed every crackpot conspiracy theory, hell she even claimed to believe in Q Anon. She’s not mad that you’re being played. She’s mad that she fell out of favor with the cabal in her party and they turned on her. I do think there was some genuine concern over the Epstein Files on her part, there’s something real there, and she couldn’t let it go. She took it too far and they turned on her. She’s mad the grift was over for her. I don’t think for a second that she’s had some genuine, over-arching epiphany.
If you’re just a normal person that votes twice a year and goes about your daily life, you are not the audience of our politicians. They’re not aiming their message at you. They have figured out that you will make a choice within the binary, even if you’re not really thrilled about it. You don’t sustain the business, like any casual consumer is not the main target of any industry. They’d love to hook you too, so that you spend your time on social media raging about a “second Civil War,” but until you get there, they don’t worry much about you. You knew that though. You knew this was an industry and that people made money off of it. You didn’t need Marjorie Taylor Greene to tell you that. The fact that an animal of the system like MTG is the messenger here may seem not right to you, but consider this- Dwight Eisenhower told you about the military industrial complex, and he rose to prominence by being one of the greatest generals in history.
Now I’m going to tell you something though that runs almost entirely counterintuitive. The vast majority of the people in that industry actually aren’t trying to set a trap for you. There are some, and they benefit a lot. Most are people who hold strongly held convictions and beliefs, and think you’ll live in a better world if they can just win. So they take part in this, to win. I’m not sure if this makes me feel better or worse, but I guess it does make things make sense to me.
And there you have it- the death of the subsidies is here. Trump is demanding direct payments to the people of cash for the ACA subsidies, or he won’t sign it. Of course that won’t work, I know you’re thinking it. People will pocket it. People will buy junk plans. It’s literally just a give away. Yes, you’re right.
Chuck already put abortion access in danger with this stupid deal. Now it’s the whole Affordable Care Act. Giving 8 votes to the GOP to re-open the government was political malpractice, and bad government. It was never a good idea. The most leverage they had to get the subsidies back was in the shutdown. Now Trump is going to say he wants to give the subsidies straight to the people, instead of the companies. And guess what? The GOP Congress will go with that. Democrats will probably end up voting no. A lot of that money will never get to health care, and a lot will go to junk plans. The system will collapse.
I told you before about a bunch of Allentown elected officials endorsing Crooksy for Congress. All had stayed neutral for months, and even suggested to folks that they planned to stay neutral, or possibly endorse other candidates. Obviously in the end, only one state elected official in the city is still neutral, Senator Nick Miller. So what happened?
Republican Ryan Crosswell and Democrat Carol Obando-Derstine are both from Lehigh County. Mark Pinsley is literally the Lehigh County Treasurer. Crosswell even claims he lives in Allentown, even if he’s out with the night owls in DC. I know what they’re going to say, and that’s half the fun of writing this. Crosswell is a Republican carpetbagger that worked at a union busting firm. Well, that’s true. Pinsley is a far left progressive in their eyes, which is maybe true, but he’s also winning with their voters, so they may want to be careful how bad they diss him. So what about Carol Obando-Derstine? She’s endorsed by former Congresswoman Susan Wild, who they all loyally backed basically from the start in 2018, albeit maybe less vocally than they’re being for Crooksy. She worked for Bob Casey, who they all loyally supported as well, as they should. So what is it about Carol that they don’t like? Is it that she worked for PP&L, and now PP&L is asking the PUC to approve a rate hike? PP&L is currently asking for a 7% rate increase, so I can get them being reluctant to be too friendly to PP&L. The thing is, they didn’t care about that when Obando-Derstine actually worked at PP&L and rate increases were enacted, they liked her there. I doubt that’s the reason. While Crooksy has failed to really gain support from local organized labor on the whole, he has the Allentown Fire Fighters basically running his political operation, and they are objectively good at it. Are they demanding endorsements for Crooksy from anyone who will seek their future support? Or is it the state Democratic Party, run by the Governor’s foot soldiers, who are demanding support for Crooksy? Could it literally be the Governor himself demanded they endorse Crooksy? We’ve known from day one that the good ole’ boys in the Democratic Party have wanted to shove Obando-Derstine out of the race as the only woman running, because they think she’s dangerous to their plot to astroturf Crooksy in. Could it be that people were told they are not allowed to endorse her? They have already put a nasty rumor out in the street that Carol will be dropping out and endorsing Crosswell because of her poor fundraising. Are they trying to make sure no one backs her now?
If we’re being honest, there are only three people with a chance to win this primary, unless the Harrisburg insiders can muscle all resources and support to their flunky, Crooksy. Crosswell might be able to win because he’s raising a lot of money and his cover story for why he’s doing this is heart-warming to primary voters who don’t know better. Obando-Derstine can win this primary too, if her supporters put up an IE for her and she doesn’t get knee capped as “unelectable” for either her PP&L time or for the “sin” of being an immigrant woman in the era of Trump. And then there’s Lamont McClure, who can win because he’s actually won some elections around here and the voters like him a lot more than the party good ole’ boys do. Crooksy can only win this race if he can get McClure, and probably Obando-Derstine, out of this race too. Otherwise he starts out too unknown to win any part of this district by a large enough margin to win. They know they can’t get Crosswell out of this race, because his Republican out-of-town donors don’t care what the Governor thinks, or any other Democrat for that matter. They know they can’t get Pinsley out of the race either, because the guy habitually loves to run for something. They know they can’t get Crooksy nominated, to ultimately lose the general election, unless they get the actual Democrats from the actual Lehigh Valley to drop out. If they can pull that off, then a bigot, socialist, that stiffs his mother-in-law can maybe, just maybe win. If we race to the bottom, we’ll find something lower.
If you listen to the Branch BERNidians, BROhan Zohan Mamdani taught Democrats the way forward. We need more charismatic candidates like him, candidates who promise to defund Israel and give away a lot of free stuff. As I’ve said before, Mamdani isn’t a good candidate and being like him would lead to 2026 losses for Democrats, under the kindest of conditions, outside of dark blue enclaves. But do we even need to look beyond New York City to illustrate that?
It turns out there were other races on the ballot citywide in New York City. Both Democratic candidates essentially did what Sherrill and Spanberger did in other states, bringing all anti-Trump voters together under their umbrella. Mamdani supporters will be quick to point out they had a three way with Andrew Cuomo in it. These races had independent candidates too. These guys ran against a field that didn’t include a vigilante and the former Governor who once had to say “I’m not a pervert, I’m Italian” on live TV to defend himself as he was getting ready to resign. One could argue they beat actual candidates and not cartoon characters.
Then there’s these races- Borough wide races within New York City. Staten Island is a red place, so ignore that one for a moment. The dude that won there literally got caught having two families when he was in Congress and they still made him President of Staten Island. The rest of the city is the rest of the city. None of the Democrats, even somewhat controversial ones like say Alvin Bragg, got less than 70%. All of them did at least 20% better than Mamdani. None of them ran against a disgraced ex-Governor or a vigilante.
Let’s look beyond New York City again though. It’s too fun.
This is what Allegheny County looked like in the Pennsylvania Judicial retention elections. Two years ago they ran a strong leftist candidate for County Executive and she barely won. Without that argument this time, Allegheny looked like old Allegheny.
This is my favorite map, because it was put out by Republicans as some sort of evidence that Mikie Sherrill stole the election. I shit you not. I also love this because the terminally online leftists spent months saying Sherrill was a terrible candidate. You know what, I didn’t think she was great as a candidate either (she’ll be a very good governor), but for totally different reasons than they had. Sherrill moved the entire state and never had to answer a question about “globalizing the intifada” one time. People seem to like it when you’re not an obnoxious child.
Basically, Mamdani was a good enough candidate for New York City. He was not a blueprint for the nation, he was not some force of nature. He was just a guy. He beat two strange birds in a very Democratic place. About 30% of people who should have been his voters said “no thanks.” That’s the lesson you should be taking from him.
Bob “Crooksy” Brooks should be a salesman. Apparently Josh Shapiro has been convinced that Crooksy is good for his personal political ambitions, and he’s going to endorse him. Of course, they’ve been saying that since July, but still. The good ole’ boys from Harrisburg have been up here telling people to endorse him, because the Governor will be “soon.” Only a couple did, and for all the wrong reasons. Most people don’t want to support a racist, a religious gun-nut fundamentalist, and guy who stole from his mother-in-law and didn’t pay her back for 14 years, even losing on appeal. You would think in a Democratic primary the racism alone, let alone the embrace of political violence, would do it. Ryan Mackenzie has nothing to fear if he gets to run against this crook. No normal person is going to trust a guy who broke a contract with his mother-in-law for 14 years, it shows you exactly who he is. People aren’t going to vote for a guy who lies, steals, and pulls underhanded moves to take over his union. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is just another Tulsi Gabbard or John Fetterman.
Crooksy is either a real good salesman, delusional, or just hilarious. Now he’s claiming he’s going to get endorsed by Gavin Newsom, according to sources. Look, I’d say he’s full of shit, but he did get Deadbeat Bernie Sanders to endorse him, which is both political malpractice and hilarious. You know what they say about crooks of a feather? But Newsom? Really? Coming across the country to endorse a guy who stiffed his mother-in-law? Gavin Newsom wants to embrace the latest marginal intellect white savior complex candidate endorsed by the bolsheviks? That helps him how? He wants to tell Black voters he is for the guy who hates Kaepernick for kneeling?
There is definitely an element within the Democratic operative world that thinks we need to run communists and bigoted white guys. They think a guy with a Nazi tattoo is what we need to win in Maine. They’re not right though, and Newsom is smart enough to know that. So why would this be? The #2 guy at the IAFF is their head guy in California, and I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, but he may be the link. Perhaps it’s a very low brain wave version of political chess, where one Governor thinks he can get a major endorsement for his quixotic 2028 Presidential campaign, and the other Governor then is convinced he absolutely needs to get in on this too, so nobody gets the credit. I mean, I’m spit balling here. It’s definitely not worth the trouble though.
Look, this is borderline hilarious. Given what a narcissist this guy is, he probably opened an email from Newsom and thinks he’s getting his endorsement now. As one out of the Valley lawmaker puts it, “we all like Bob, but none of us think he can do it.” He’s way nicer than I. If I didn’t know the place he tended bar, I wouldn’t believe he was smart enough to tend bar. Bartenders I know are the smartest people out there, they know when to get cut off a bad situation. This guy is trying to drink from a fire hose while a raging inferno blazes in front of him. The problem is, the powerful and brilliant minds that gave us the 2024 Democratic Party in Harrisburg and Washington are trying to astroturf this guy a victory. This is like handing a mentally ill person a loaded AR-15.
Turnout was really high in this year’s election. Here in Northampton and Lehigh Counties we topped 90,000 voters for the first time in a municipal election. While Donald Trump carried the 7th Congressional district last year, this year high turnout was really bad for Republicans. Democrats won by damn near 20% in both Executive races and won every other county office too, in addition to winning every blue and contested municipal race too. Two years ago we were talking about 70-75,000 voters in each county. Democrats wildly seemed to over perform with the additional voters, whether they were Democrats or independents. Virtually all Democrats voted Democratic, and the margins among independents were wildly beyond the norm (at least from the most complete evidence we have, which was over performance beyond registration in the mail). Why was higher turnout pretty good for Joe Biden, bad for Kamala Harris, and amazing for Democrats basically everywhere this year?
For the most part since LBJ left Washington, the only Democrats who have won national elections were generally personally popular at the time (Carter and Biden were both popular when they won and not as popular when re-election time came). In general, midterms and elections where less personally popular Democrats lead the ticket had not been very good. Basically Democrats won elections where they could massively mobilize the electorate behind a charismatic figure, really until Trump became a political force. From 2017 forward, Democrats have actually done very well in lower turnout elections that they used to lose. Democrats have done remarkably well in special elections. Democrats are winning odd number year Governor races (Virginia, New Jersey, Kentucky, and Louisiana) at an 80% clip in the Trump years. Democrats won a landslide in 2018 and lost just single-digit seats in Joe Biden’s midterm. Democrats are doing really well in elections where only people who are super engaged and really care how government operates are voting. They’re doing less well in electorates with lower education levels and where voters are largely motivated by large scale cultural issues, and less by “how things will run.”
Even in 2024 we saw signs of this. Harris became the first Democrat to carry college educated white men for President in my lifetime. She did see declines among Black men and Latinos, but once you account for education levels, that is entirely confined to voters who had a high school education or less. The most important data point for guessing how a voter will vote is becoming education. Someone with a graduate degree is probably voting Democratic, regardless of race. Increasingly a high school educated (male in particular, but really in most female groups too) voter is probably not voting Democratic.
This is not about “smart vs. stupid,” which would be a lazy and overly simplistic way to break it down. This actually comes down to how important government *seems* to be in your every day life. Many people in jobs that require some sort of advanced degree, or in fields where a college degree is mandatory for entrance (You could think of this as doctors and lawyers, but I’d argue this gets down to some more traditionally blue collar jobs like nurses and teachers) either interact directly with or deal with regulatory decisions by the government. Almost everything in education, from busing and school lunch regulations, to minimum competency standards for teachers, to spending at research institutions involves the government. Everything in a lawyers world involves the government, from the courts they argue in to the laws they argue about, to the court system and it’s services for those involved in it, to their own ability to practice law, it’s set by the government. Even in the health care field, the government is involved in everything from minimum competency for doctors and nurses, to insurance companies and what they must cover, to research and development dollars that fund development of the drugs they use to save lives. People in fields that legally require a degree, or for that matter practically demand you have a certain level of education, interact with the government a lot. Some of the smartest people I know work as bartenders, or in retail, or in a trade- they’re savvy and they often times do pretty well at making money. The government is less ever present in their jobs, and many of them feel as though the government is a hinderance. Find me a bartender that loves when LCB comes around. Find me a guy that paves driveways that thinks the government helps their lives. Friends of mine who lay concrete frankly think the government takes their tax money too much, and gives them way less in return than they deserve. Many of these people don’t have overly positive interactions with the government at the times that they have to interact with it, and they’re not huge fans.
It would be a mistake to think this is the only factor. I know plenty of professors who have a negative point of view of the government, even if they do interact with it a lot. God knows that can be true of teachers, nurses, doctors, and lawyers too. The thing is, again, they’re in fields that there is no choice but to care about what the government does, it impacts their every day life. Of course they’re going to vote more, and they’re going to be motivated to do so even in relatively “minor” (bullshit term) elections, because many of them care about the consequences. Now, add on that people with college degrees and even more so graduate degrees are increasingly voting Democratic, and what you have is a world in which Democrats are winning the voters with the highest engagement in the political system. This is helping them in “low turnout” elections. It’s also helping them even when turnout goes up in those elections, because the additional people who show up are much more alike to their voters than the GOP’s current base.
This doesn’t mean Democrats are going to win every non-Presidential election moving forward, or that their electoral problems in rural America will take care of themselves (less of their voters live there), or that they can’t win Presidential elections anymore. In 2020, Joe Biden won as a really old white man, who leaned into identity politics quite a bit, but was generally viewed as a moderate. That’s probably a pretty good place for a Presidential candidate to be if they want to win, but it’s a really hard space to occupy. There is no candidate for 2028 that really makes it to that spot. For what it’s worth, I think Biden might have reached peak saturation for Democratic voters running at least somewhat under the Obama paradigm. Any more voters we may find will cause us to turn off an equal number of people and turn them out for Republicans. We probably have to offer someone for President who is not a generic Democrat. I’m not suggesting this as a midterm strategy, or even as a regular strategy to win seats in the Senate, the House, or Governor’s mansions. What I mean is that maybe giving our base everything they can ever dream of has a ceiling in a national election, where a lot of voters have varying degrees of animus towards the government. The base Democratic voter may not be moving forward more “like” the median voter in a Presidential race than a Republican base voter. It’s too early to say that with absolute certainty, I’d like to see how things look after Trump is gone. It does seem though that Democrats are becoming the party of the engaged, and that is quite a change from even a few decades back.
They really didn’t need to do it. I guess if you think keeping the government open was crucial, maybe you think they did. If you’re a federal worker, maybe you’re happy they did. Maybe if you’re on SNAP, you’re happy to get what you can here. It wasn’t necessary though. Republicans could have re-opened the government themselves by ending the filibuster. Eventually, when the government re-opened, federal workers would get back pay and SNAP would be restored at that time. Republicans could have done it and eventually would have to turn off the pressure on them from the public. Then they would have owned all the terrible things in this bill. They would have owned pricing a large chunk of the 20 million or so people insured under ACA plans out of the health insurance market. They would have owned the closing hospitals from their Medicaid cuts AND the cuts to the ACA subsidies. This is their government. They fought hard to win it and give it to President Trump.
Instead, the Democrats got absolutely nothing. The “promise” of a Senate vote on subsidies for ACA buyers in December isn’t worth the air used to utter it. It’s not a promise to pass it through the Senate, it’s not a promise to vote on it in the House, it’s not even enforceable to get a vote in the Senate. It’s a promise that is worthless and made for the naive. There are now those saying it’s brilliant because Speaker Johnson was forced to swear in Adelita Grijalva, thereby giving the signatures to force the discharge petition on the “Epstein Files.” Number one, we got the smoking gun without the vote even happening, but also, even Epstein’s own words implicating Trump are probably not going to move Republicans, and we are a day later and absolutely zero Republicans are calling on him to step down. We got everything we needed from a leak, the actual vote in Congress will probably be turned into a circus. We didn’t need to trade health care for it.
What’s worse is now the Democrats will get beat at their own game. Namely, Republicans are going to use health care to gut reproductive health services for women to the bone. By passing the CR, Democrats have acquiesced Medicaid spending levels set in the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Those are going to gut reproductive health care for all Medicaid recipients. Of course, it doesn’t stop there. Republicans are demanding tougher abortion rules in exchange for voting for the ACA subsidies, which will probably kill the bill, but it might even be worse if it ends up passing. Namely, they want to stop states who mandate reproductive health care in their ACA plans. Basically they’re going to make the major blue states accept their version of “pro-life” health care. If Democrats say no, they’ll torpedo the bill. There are also discussions about just handing out the subsidies as cash, which could destroy the entire ACA system.
Insurance companies set rates mostly based on whether they think there will be less or more consumers in the market for the next year. Based on already passed legislation and executive orders in 2025, insurance companies raised their rates, because they think less people will buy next year. Those 2026 rates are set in stone. With the ACA subsidies that are in question, which cover people who just missed qualifying for subsidies in the original ACA, less people will drop their coverage for 2026. That would do a lot to help keep rates in line for 2027. The Democrats best chance to force Republicans to fund those subsidies for 2026 died with the passage of this Continuing Resolution to keep the government open. Their time to pass these subsidies with little to no strings attached has now officially expired.
Chuck Schumer is apparently calling 2028 Presidential contenders (his idea of contenders, but whatever) and begging them to not attack the deal. Gentlemen, unsolicited, free advice- bury the deal. Democrats should be hanging their entire brand on expanding health insurance access, bringing down housing and food costs, and childcare costs. Essential, building block things that people absolutely need to live. Keeping the government open is not the important thing. Keeping the focus on fixing real people’s problems should be the entire focus. Chuck, Fetterstein, a couple of future retirees, a dude from Virginia, and a couple of random Senators I didn’t expect to cave all failed the test. It’s time for a change.
Chuck Schumer ended the government shutdown. Make no mistake about it. Republicans needed seven Democratic votes to re-open the government. They got eight. They even got two retiring Democrats who had no reason to walk the plank. The Democratic Caucus made sure the GOP got their votes.
There was absolutely no reason for it. Leave the government shut down. The Republicans offered absolutely nothing for those eight votes. The “promise” of a vote on subsidies for health insurance under the ACA is utter bullshit. There will likely not be a vote in the House ever, and it probably won’t pass the Senate either. The Democrats were offered nothing and took it. SNAP was gutted in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” so don’t tell me they needed to save that either, they’re saving a less than whole program (Which is already going to be a massive, massive problem). As for the federal workers, you make the GOP cave to pay them. They’ll get back pay then. Besides, in saving SNAP and federal workers from temporary pain, they’ve permanently lost a working health care system. It wasn’t worth the deal.
The politics are worse than the policy. Democrats won the 2025 Elections a month into the shutdown. Voters weren’t revolting against the Democrats. There was no price to pay. Not even a little bit.
Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats overvalue the government. There’s no reason to keep it open, no reason to save it. It’s not doing much good right now. Society was not falling apart without it yet. Yes, I know government has a role to play, and it is important to our society working, but that’s in normal times. This idea that this government is as important as it was in say, 2022, is silly. It’s foolish. It’s misguided.
Democrats had the GOP’s backs to the wall. They are unpopular and were ineffective. You tell John Thune and the Senate GOP to either make a real offer or they get no votes. Restoration of the subsidies should have been a bare minimum to talk, not a guideline. Thune could always have just ended the filibuster and funded the government himself. Democrats didn’t need to sign off on this.
I’m an OG Bernie hater. When his online weirdos put me on their hate list in 2017, it was a badge of honor. I knew then that he was a grifter. His campaign, his super pac (Our Revolution), and his institute (Sanders Institute) all employed his family. Some of his organizations bought his books (great for royalties). He made a profit off of running for office. So he kept running for President in a political party that he slams repeatedly and isn’t a member of. It’s a great existence, for him. He disowns all the stuff that is inconvenient for him, vaguely claims the populist stance, and makes a lot of money off of it. It’s easy to see the guy isn’t real.
I also never trust the people he elevates as our “future.” He has given us some real doozies. Bernie gave us Tulsi Gabbard (who literally had an internal campaign “hate” list that they put me on too). Tulsi Gabbard told us Assad in Syria was “not an enemy,” essentially blaming the U.S. for Russia invading Ukraine, and that Hillary Clinton is drugged and refusing to back her over her foreign policy and cheating Bernie out of the nomination. Today, Tulsi Gabbard is Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, claiming that Russia did not seek to help Trump in 2016 (they did), contradicting a GOP lead Senate report saying they did. Gabbard’s revisionist history is the backbone of the government’s case that former Obama era intelligence leaders lied to Congress and tried to frame Trump. In short, Tulsi Gabbard is a psychopath. Bernie Sanders told us she’s not. Of course, she got her rise by being a trusted friend to Bernie.
Apocalypse Vibes 