I think we're better off with him continuing to eat shit for his members. They simply can't get any real political wins right now regardless, so whoever replaces him will get pooped on just as much for no real benefit. I could see him holding on until the Dems win back the House.

Like for years the Obama-era Republicans have been held up as the gold standard of obstructionism and now everyone's saying "waahh you only managed to get a longer shutdown than the Tea Party ever did"

I agree with the criticisms, just not that strongly. If we agree that he probably did as well as anyone else would in his situation then why are we really doing this? To punish him individually for having the same opinion on Gaza as every other Democrat and for not endorsing the NYC mayor?

The only plausible scenario I see is a replacement who winds up largely doing and saying the same things as Schumer along with a political cost of the Democrats looking weak for shucking their leadership.

I'm so far past the point of believing in karma. 10 years of thinking "this is the thing that will turn everyone against Trump." Nobody's going to learn any lessons, nobody will repent. We just have to get through it with as little harm as possible.

If your reason for forcing a shutdown is not this, and you're doing it because you think you can get a deal, that's okay. Some Democrats realized they weren't getting a deal.

I distinctly remember that I, myself, blamed the Republicans for all the government shutdowns they threatened during the Obama years.

I see polls like this and my reaction is "meh." I need to see >70% in a poll to convince me something is making a difference.

What I learned last night is that a critical mass of Bluesky posters thought the shutdown was some kind of magic undo button for the election

Even if HRC was guilty of thinking Trump was "easy to beat," that was at much more reasonable opinion to have in early 2016 versus now.

He's never done an hour of manual labor in his life, bought groceries, or as far as I know, worn a T-shirt in public. I can't imagine him ever just flopping down on the couch watching a movie with his family. A totally bizarre and disconnected guy.

Seems like athletes in most sports are outgrowing their arenas

Biden did the opposite of this. He didn't sell a progressive message but he actually did progressivism. And that was a terrible strategy that backfired horribly.

Sometimes I think I read Bernie Sanders wrong the whole time. Maybe he was really saying you just have to say stuff that's popular and you shouldn't actually do it. You just perpetuate a constant outrage cycle that keeps people voting for you out of anger.

Of course, I don't have a problem with insulting voters, because most of them are very stupid. It still seems like progressives need to reconcile some internal consistencies with how they view voters though.