I'm serving a 2-year leadership term which ends in 2027. I won't abandon it because I made a commitment, but remaining Dem-aligned is untenable. Dem leadership made this work exponentially harder than it needs to be. I'll do some kind of organizing in the future, but the Dems have lost me for good.

So congratulations, Caving Eight (plus). You ended the shutdown and removed the mild impediment to MAGA's smash-and-grab of US government. You also (somehow further) damaged the Democratic brand heading into midterms that should have been a walk. If you're lucky, your names will be forgotten.

The majority of US citizens I come across are left-leaning. When trying to get people from opting out of voting to opting in, I described the Dems as a bus: they won't drop you at your door, but they get you closer to your goal. I'll add something about watching out for when the bus backs over you.

And the response from the Dems seems to be: sorry we're going to let your completely treatable ectopic pregnancy kill you, but at least you'll die knowing we still have the filibuster.

Ending the shutdown will cause healthcare costs to spiral and make reproductive bodily autonomy even more difficult to come by. The pain is the point; after all, it's not like they're hurting real people, just whoever they've chosen to dehumanize this week.

I also know that it was causing immediate harm. But causing harm is all MAGA cares about; during the shutdown or after it, they always shoot the hostage because they crave violent domination. The zero-sum worldview dictates that if someone else isn't losing, you're not winning.

But I ended up helping a lot of folks in 2025 who weren't the base, who finally felt moved by seeing some backbone, some fight. If they bother to vote again, I'll be shocked.

I'm not an idiot. I know the Dems were never going to 'win' the shutdown because I understand how numbers work.

And if they are burning out the hard-core democracy dorks who research state senate districts for fun, what is this defeatist kowtowing doing to voters? I see a lot of people worried about the Dem base voters, and demotivating them is very problematic.