Katie Edmondson

Well, I think it gave a lot of people a real sense of whiplash, Michael, because, as you said, I remember standing outside of Democrats' closed-door meeting on Wednesday, and they came out sounding thrilled by what voters had just done in...

New Jersey, New York, Virginia, which is to show overwhelmingly that they sided with the Democratic agenda here, which was focused on lowering costs specifically.

And so we heard from a lot of Democrats, particularly progressive Democrats, that, look, voters have just vindicated what our strategy is and they're telling us they want us to keep up the fight.

But I think what was always brewing under the surface, Michael, was that there was this small clutch of centrist Democrats who have grown really uncomfortable with all of the pain points that have emerged of the shutdown who are looking for some sort of off ramp.

Well, a lot of these senators hail from kind of purple or reddish states.

A lot of these are senators who really pride themselves on having some sort of bipartisan credentials to their name, pride themselves on working across the aisle.

And we're talking about the senators from New Hampshire, Senator Johnson.

June Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.

We're talking about the senators from Nevada, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jackie Rosen.

Angus King of Maine, he's actually an independent, but he caucuses with Democrats.

John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, of course, someone who frequently finds himself breaking with Democrats these days.

We're talking about Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia.

And finally and importantly, there's Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who's actually the number two Democrat.

He is the party's whip who will not be running for reelection at the end of his term.

Mm hmm.

And I think one of the conclusions that they all ended up coming to together is that the chief demand that their party had been asking for, which is for Republicans to vote to extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, was not going to happen.

It was not in the cards.

Well, I think most of them saw the writing on the wall, saw the refusal of President Trump to negotiate, saw the refusal of Speaker Mike Johnson over in the House to even commit to holding a vote on the issue.

And then on the other side of the coin, they saw all of the pain that has been inflicted on American voters ever since the shutdown began.

And I think the conclusion that they came to was, yes, extending these subsidies is extremely important.