"This is an embarrassing deal, a deal to basically settle for nothing. It’s particularly galling..."

"... since it comes only days after Democrats crushed Republicans in races across the country. Election Day not only showed that Democrats had payed [sic] no price for the shutdown. It also confirmed the already abundant evidence that it has been deeply damaging for Donald Trump. But even with all this, I think the overall situation and outcome is basically fine [because]... Democrats fought. They held out for 40 days.... And that’s a big deal... It’s a big change in the direction of the fight we need in the years to come that just didn’t go far enough. Yet."

Writes Josh Marshall, in "A Quick Take on Team Cave's Big Win."

"Six Takeaways From the Senate Deal to End the Shutdown."

Headline at the NYT. Free-access link: here. The 6 things (paraphrased unless in quotes):

1. Democrats lost their unity.

2. The health care matter was left out.

3. "Trump’s pressure tactics worked.... The group of people affected by the shutdown grew with each week" — from the thousands of federal workers going without pay to the millions who expected food-buying assistance and the millions who were hoping to travel by plane.

4. Trump did not participate in talks with Democratic Party leaders. He was, conspicuously, at an NFL game when the deal coalesced last night.

5. Republican leaders Mike Johnson and John Thune also withheld participation.

6. Democrats at least have "some concessions in their fight against the Trump administration’s concerted effort to reconfigure and diminish the federal government." That's not about health care. It's about rehiring those who were laid off during the shutdown and barring further layoffs until January 30th.

ADDED: Will Trump gloat? Should he? He hasn't put anything up on Truth Social since his display — 13 hours ago — of Air Force One flying over the football stadium. And at X, 9 hours ago:

 

The most EPIC flyover of the season 🇺🇸🦅 pic.twitter.com/WYJtg7AHcW

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) November 10, 2025

Unless they nuke the filibuster, "it will be impossible for Republicans to get Common Sense Policies done." The "Crazed Democrat Lunatics" will "block everything."

"FOR THREE YEARS, NOTHING WILL BE PASSED, AND REPUBLICANS WILL BE BLAMED. Elections, including the Midterms, will be rightfully brutal. If we do terminate the Filibuster, we will get EVERYTHING approved, like no Congress in History. We will have FAIR, FREE, and SAFE Elections, No Men in Women’s Sports or Transgender for Everybody, Strong Borders, Major Tax and Energy Cuts, and will secure our Second Amendment, which the Democrats will also terminate, IMMEDIATELY."

Wrote Trump, on Truth Social this Morning.

He's all about winning: "[The Democrats] have much less chance of WINNING if we have Great Policy Wins after Wins after Wins. IN FACT, THEY WILL LOSE BIG, AND FOR A VERY LONG TIME. TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER NOW, END THE RIDICULOUS SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATELY, AND THEN, MOST IMPORTANTLY, PASS EVERY WONDERFUL REPUBLICAN POLICY THAT WE HAVE DREAMT OF, FOR YEARS, BUT NEVER GOTTEN. WE WILL BE THE PARTY THAT CANNOT BE BEATEN - THE SMART PARTY!!!"

"Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)."

"Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance."

So it says at the official USDA website, quoted in "USDA blames Democrats for potential SNAP benefits lapse in new message: 'The well has run dry'/The federal agency's website features a banner that says no benefits will be issued on Nov. 1" (NBC News).

Gender mutilation procedures! The Democrats say that what they are fighting for is to keep health insurance premiums from doubling. It's a shame the issues are so confusing. We're talking about millions of ordinary people — 43 million — facing loss of food stamps. That's so much raw anxiety. So elemental. How are they supposed to begin to think about complicated politics? By getting upset about transgender people and immigrants taking their money?!

"... you can wrap healthcare and tariffs and authoritarianism into a single argument...."

I'm listening to Ezra Klein, at 00:15:32, in the new episode of his podcast, "Jon Favreau on Where the Democrats Went Right":

"I've been talking to members of the House and Senate, and both politically and morally, I've been going back to my big shutdown piece a month ago on the side that says you can wrap healthcare and tariffs and authoritarianism into a single argument, and it is worth doing that if only to set up the argument you're actually making — if only to make American politics about what it is really about. Partly if you believe this is an attentional event. I was talking with my staff and we were looking at coverage on the front pages and it's interesting how few front pages every day are running the shutdown.... And the shutdown has, instead of becoming the focusing event that ties together what is happening in American politics, it is one hermetically sealed event in American politics. And then there are these other events happening simultaneously and coverage is splitting between them."

Listen to the whole dialogue if you can. It's interesting, if disturbing, because Klein and Favreau openly talk about using the shutdown to leverage the Democratic Party back into power. Why aren't they more circumspect? I have to assume they are cocksure that their listeners share their primary goal — the success of the Democratic Party. 

"I’m not sure that winning the shutdown is a thing that matters. And I’m not sure that polling tells us very much about it."

Says the poll analyst Nate Silver — in "'Democrats Fumbled This a Bit’: 3 Writers Assess Where We Are With the Shutdown" (NYT) — making me assume the Democrats are losing ground in the polls.

Let's see:

A.I. powered "sombrero" memes are overflowing on X, and no one seems at all sensitive to the charge that they are racist.

I saw James Woods pushing this one:

Best yet… pic.twitter.com/Hrhr0MsZJh

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) October 5, 2025

Very extreme, perhaps maxxing out the trend. But no. There is much much more. Go to the replies to Woods's post and scroll. The sombrero-themed A.I. concoctions are endless.

"Just a night earlier, Mr. Trump had posted an A.I.-generated video of his budget chief, Russell T. Vought, dressed as the grim reaper, wielding a scythe..."

"... while A.I. versions of Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance (both draped in black cloaks as well) played percussion set to the Blue Öyster Cult jam '(Don’t Fear) the Reaper.'"

From "The White House Can’t Decide: Is the Shutdown Bad or Good? Is it 'fun' and an 'unprecedented opportunity,' or is it 'madness' that must end? Depends who’s talking" by Shawn McCreesh in the NYT.

"The White House will restore $187 million in cuts to law enforcement funding that would have devastated New York’s intelligence and counterterrorism operations..."

"... following a bipartisan effort to reinstate the funds, administration officials told The New York Times on Friday.The push, which included personal appeals from Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, a Democrat, as well as several of the state’s Republican House members, has been underway since news of the cuts began trickling out over the weekend.The cuts, which represented the largest federal defunding of police operations in New York in decades, were made by the Department of Homeland Security, without the approval of President Trump, White House officials said...."

The NYT reports.

Without the approval of President Trump is interesting. 

The way it was done, it scared the hell out of New York, and then Trump got the advantage of being seen setting things right.

Here's the Althouse/Meade text conversation after I (blue) sent a link to the article (and Meade highlighted "without the approval of President Trump"):

These are all things the President of the United States posted on social media 8 hours ago.

pic.twitter.com/na2ivYVFoT

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 3, 2025

Is it still hard to believe that the President of the United States posts things like this? He is taunting. He's giving material that will be snapped up and used to say (once again) that he's a racist. And — that last one — that he is grandiose. But this is what we have now. We (collectively) voted for it. He's not bland. And it is — all of it — comedy. He's keeping our spirits up. Some of us have a good spirit about it. They're laughing — maybe even laughing off the budget crisis. Others of us have inflamed spirits, angry spirits. And according to Trump, they come from hell. They've been giving him hell for years. He's entitled to laugh at them. I'd prefer more dignity, but that's more Trump 45, and what did that get him?

"Publicly, though, Mr. Trump’s deputies still insisted that they had not politicized the funding lapse."

"Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, maintained instead that the layoffs, in particular, were necessary because of the realities of the budget."

Those are the last 2 sentences of a news article in the NYT with a headline that states a contrary opinion as if it were fact: "White House Uses Shutdown to Maximize Pain and Punish Political Foes/The Trump administration forged ahead with plans to conduct mass layoffs, as the fiscal standoff appeared to intensify."

We all agree with the opinion, of course, don't we?

Is the White House using the shutdown to maximize pain and punish political foes?

No, it is simply dealing with the realities of the shutdown.

No, but it should.

Yes, and it should.

Yes, and it ought instead to deal neutrally with the realities of the shutdown.

Unlike the NYT, I refrain from reading minds. I stand aloof and await further information.

 

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"The last time Senate Democrats found themselves taking the blame for a government shutdown, they quickly caved..."

"... and raced to reopen federal agencies in 2018, as their more moderate members demanded a fast resolution after only three days. This shutdown could be different. The Democrats from red states who decried the shutdown strategy as a foolish miscalculation and pressed for an immediate reversal in the showdown with President Trump seven years ago are long gone. The ideological makeup of the party has shifted to the left, and Democrats are now bracing for an extended confrontation with the White House and congressional Republicans, despite the clear political risks. The same dynamic is at play in the G.O.P., which has lurched to the right under Mr. Trump and no longer sees room for compromise."

Writes Carl Hulse, in "Democrats See No Need to Capitulate, Nor Republicans to Cut a Deal/The last time Senate Democrats found themselves taking the blame for a government shutdown, they quickly caved. That’s less likely to happen now" (NYT).

How does spending some time in shutdown achieve anything? Doesn't everyone know everything they need to know before the shutdown even begins? Are they just waiting to annoy and otherwise torment us so they can then poll us to see who we blame? I think they already know that everyone blames the party they started out disliking more. Nevertheless, we must endure the bad political theater.

"If Congress fails to fund the government next week, the White House is preparing for a shutdown that would reflect the purest version of President Donald Trump’s vision for the federal government..."

"... guided by White House budget director Russell Vought, an architect of the controversial Project 2025 playbook for Trump’s second term. Federal funds expire when the fiscal year ends Tuesday night, and Congress appears deadlocked over a stopgap measure that would keep agencies online for seven weeks while long-term negotiations continue. Under the Vought plan, the only agencies that would remain operating apace are those that received money in Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the $4.1 trillion tax and immigration package that Congress passed in July. The Defense and Homeland Security departments were the main beneficiaries.The result, both during and potentially after a shutdown, could be a federal government dramatically reoriented to defense, immigration and law enforcement — and not much else...."

I'm reading "Trump’s shutdown plans: Mass layoffs, deregulation, military deployments/The White House’s call for mass layoffs in a looming shutdown tracks with past administration efforts to defang much of the federal government" (WaPo)(gift link).

Is this something like a return to DOGE? DOGE had "Musk’s high-visibility 'move fast and break things' ethos. But Vought, people in and around the administration say, has been quietly potent, drawing on four years out of government to surgically plan measures that overhaul the executive branch and Trump’s power."

So Vought is low-visibility, move slow, and wait for Congress to break everything, then put it together in the way you've been quietly calculating for decades. 

About that grouse.

"Before lawmakers could agree to a $1.1 trillion, last-minute deal to avoid shutting down the U.S. government, they first had to deal with a couple of birds. The result is a 1,603-page spending bill that includes a paragraph barring the Obama administration from approving endangered-species protections for two types of sage grouse, an imperiled, pheasant-like bird that is ruffling the petroleum industry’s feathers across the West by cohabiting on prime oil and gas land. Now environmentalists are squawking...."

"Hey, this is kinda like 'Bridgegate,' only national in scale..."

"... and targeted at children."

ADDED: I love Bridgegate. Acknowledge what a terrible thing it was to do. Don't back off. Welcome it. Lay it down as foundational: This is exactly what politicians should not do with the power we've trusted them with. Hardcore. Stick to it. No excuses.

Now, what can be built on that foundation? What else is like Bridgegate?

"Embrace the suck."

This looks so wrong — over at Drudge:



But she said it:

“Embrace the suck,” House minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats Thursday morning... “We need to get this off the table so we can go forward,” she added. It’s a way of telling her colleagues the budget deal negotiated with Republicans is the best they can get.

"Even When the GOP Loses, It Wins/Think the Senate deal is a resounding defeat for Republicans? Think again."

 That is the headline of an editorial in The Nation.

[I]n the war of ideas, the Senate deal is but a stalemate, one made almost entirely on conservative terms. The GOP now goes into budget talks with sequestration as the new baseline, primed to demand longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And they still hold the gun of a US default to the nation’s head in the next debt ceiling showdown.

Surrender? Any more “victories” like this and Democrats will end up paying tribute into the GOP’s coffers.

I'm surprised to read this, because I thought what I was observing — to the extent that I did not avert my eyes — was the liberal media doing the Democratic Party's work of declaring victory.* I'm interested in seeing The Nation peel off from that strategy. It's all propaganda of one kind or another, but the strategies of propaganda interest me. It's boring when they all do the same thing, which is the  main reason I had my own personal shutdown during the shutdown.

Key line: "The GOP may be bearing the brunt of the public’s rage, but anger is also directed at Washington and government generally." The Democratic Party and its supporters in the media mostly had the strategy of blaming the GOP. Get people mad and then: Be mad at those guys. But stirring up anger is a problem:

1. There are a lot of people like me who turn away and refuse to listen when someone is directing us to be angry. Those ugly people over there are going to solve their problem whether I monitor their argument or not.

2. Then you have the kind of people who actually do take direction to the point where they become inflamed with anger. Do these hotheaded folks pay attention to the details of why these nasty people as opposed to those nasty people were more responsible for the thing they were induced to feel angry about?

Examine that key line again: "The GOP may be bearing the brunt of the public’s rage, but anger is also directed at Washington and government generally." There are 2 clauses, and if the second clause is the stronger proposition — which is likely — then the GOP came out ahead.
_______________________________

* Yesterday, I almost ended my personal shutdown to do a post based on the old saying "Declare victory and get out." Do you know the origin of that phrase?

Can I look again?

I had my own personal shutdown for the shutdown. I was unwilling to consume the propaganda — they're losing, they're losers, they're committing suicide — and I'm still afraid to look because I don't want to read the predictable post-mortems — they died, they're dead, they killed themselves. 

I'm just going to add my "civility bullshit" tag to this post, and let it stand in for the blah blah blah I might otherwise scribble here. 

Ted Cruz would like to disagree with the premise of your question.

It was "a remarkable victory... a profile of courage."

"'It’s very, very serious,' warned Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona."

“Republicans have to understand we have lost this battle, as I predicted weeks ago, that we would not be able to win because we were demanding something that was not achievable.”

You have been warned... and warned again.

Are you taking this seriously?
	Yes! Obviously! It's very, very serious.
	It's serious, but not as serious as they're trying to scare us into thinking.
	It's a whole lot of theater... with ugly actors. I'm averting my eyes.
	It's one huge joke. I'm saying "vewy, vewy serious" in my Elmer Fudd voice.
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