By Zeteo
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
“This fight is about ensuring that we are not going to see 20 million Americans have their health insurance become unaffordable.”
That was Sen. Jeanne Shaheen speaking on the MeidasTouch podcast less than two weeks ago. The centrist Democrat from New Hampshire was so proud of her strong and defiant statement that she posted the clip of it on her own Twitter account.
And yet, on Sunday, the 40th day of this government shutdown, Shaheen joined independent Angus King from Maine, who caucuses with the Dems, to negotiate a deal to end the longest shutdown in US history and fund the government.
It was a dramatic moment last night as the Senate voted 60-40 to advance a stopgap funding bill to reopen the government through Jan. 30, with eight Senate Democrats joining their Republican colleagues.
The impasse is over! Good news, right?
WRONG.
Yes, the deal does contain provisions that would restore jobs to federal workers laid off during this shutdown, ensure furloughed federal employees get paid, and prevent any further mass layoffs of government workers for the next three months.
But those 20 million Americans whom Jeanne Shaheen said she was fighting for just 13 days ago? They’re screwed. There will be no extension of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits. All that the GOP Senate Majority Leader John Thune has promised the Dems is a vote in December on whether to extend ACA subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year. Yes, a pinky promise from Thune! That’s it.
Do you trust Trump, Thune, and the GOP to keep to their word? To guarantee a meaningful vote on healthcare that goes anywhere? If so, do you have a brain injury? (Okay, fine, yeah, one of you does.)
What is wrong with the Democrats? Seriously?
Is there a more feckless, spineless opposition party anywhere in the democratic world?
A more self-defeating, self-destructive force anywhere in the political world?
Why do they insist on repeatedly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?
This is a party that just had a great week, with gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia, a mayoral win in New York, and other key victories in swing states like Georgia and Pennsylvania. This is a party that is not currently being blamed for this damn shutdown. This is a party that is up against a president with insanely low approval ratings.
And yet… these eight Democrats just caved, again, to Trump and the Republicans:
- Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.)
- Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)
- Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.)
- Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.)
- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)
- Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)
- Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.)
- Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.)
Rather conveniently, none of these Dems face an election or a primary challenge next year, while two of them have announced their retirement from the Senate. Their actions are truly inexcusable – even the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate, Georgia’s Jon Ossoff, refused to put his name on this. As for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he said he was a ‘No’ on the deal, but given the reporting that he may have signed off on the Gang of Eight’s negotiations behind the scenes, his future is under question again, with centrists like Rep. Seth Moulton and progressives like Rep. Ro Khanna calling on him to resign. (“We need a politics of morality and truth telling… I’ll take whatever arrows are slung my way,” Khanna told Zeteo last night.)
Progressive groups are still working out how to respond, but activists are discussing plans to encourage more primary challenges within the party.
My colleague Andrew Perez spoke last night to Ezra Levin,co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, which helped organize the ‘No Kings’ protests against Trump. “This is not a deal – it is a surrender,” Levin said. “If this goes through, the last month of pain has been nothing more than a performative act of defiance…What comes next is up to us, all of us. We can demand a party that fights back in the primaries, or we can accept a feckless leadership, and that’s up to primary voters around the country in the coming months.”
The Dems’ resistance efforts ahead of last week’s elections now “looks like a cynical election ploy,” Lindsay Owens, executive director at the progressive advocacy group Groundwork Collaborative, told Andrew. “It’s going to be difficult to exploit Trump’s vulnerabilities on prices and affordability if Dems ostensibly hold identical views to the president.”
Yes, it is.
