Will Saletan: Sorry, but the Democrats Won the Shutdown
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It is Monday. Bill Kristol is out. He's sitting shiva for Dick Cheney. No, that's not true. He's just traveling today. He'll be back next week. And so instead, we've got a throwback for the Bulwark Pod originals. It used to be Will Salatin Mondays back in the Charlie Sykes days. And I'm excited to welcome my colleague Will Salatin back. He was known for finding... ponies in the pile of horse shit back then. That was kind of the running joke. You'd always try to find the pony. And I got to warn you guys. I'm seeing a lot. I'm the only one on the internet seeing ponies this morning. So Will is rubbing off on me. Trigger warning for positivity ahead.
How are you doing, Will? Good, good.
I saw you in the Nuggets hat. I thought I had to wear the Rockets hat. How is it, Tim, that our teams are in the so-called group of death in the NBA Cup?
Yeah, luckily nobody cares about the NBA Cup, but it's going to be fun. And why are we trailing? We're losing to the bad teams in what was supposed to be the group of death. I'm hoping for a trip to Houston with you this next summer because I think it's two really good teams. All right, let's talk about the shutdown news. There's been a group of... weak-kneed Democrats in the Senate. We always knew this was going to happen. It's a big risk always.
What was the immediate news hook that started the episode—who’s filling in and why?
I had lunch with somebody that I can remain nameless, who is friends with a lot of the Democratic senators, and he's like, you have no idea how weak these people are. The fact that we were able to keep the shutdown going this long is a miracle. What ended up happening is eight Senate Democrats broke ranks to advance a deal. The deal is it's going to reverse the rifts, the firings of government workers, which is not nothing. real people with real jobs, funding the government until like January, promising a vote on the Obamacare tax credits. It's kind of the silliest version of this because the House was never going to vote on this. Funding several agencies, funding SNAP, guaranteeing that SNAP gets funded for a couple of years.
The eight are Durbin, Angus King of Maine, Tim Kaine of Virginia, Fetterman, Shaheenan Hassan of New Hampshire, Masto and Rosen of Nevada. Democrats online are big mad, not me. But before we get to my contrarian take, Will, what do you make of the deal? Damn, well, Tim, I'm afraid we probably agree more than you'd like.
Okay, no, that's great. To me, the key word in what you just said was online. Democrats online are really pissed off. This is not an online thing. This is a real life thing, okay? And I know that people wish that the Republicans would have folded because of the pain that a lot of people were suffering because of the shutdown. But the sad truth is that the Republican Party doesn't care as much about the pain as the Democratic Party does.
Doesn't care at all, I think we can say. Absolutely.
Pretty much doesn't care at all. Absolutely. And you can call that a political weakness, and I guess it is. But if you are doing the right thing, that will always be a political weakness. I don't have a problem with this deal. OK, I just don't have a problem with it. It ends the immediate pressure on, you know, there was people losing SNAP benefits, people going hungry, for God's sake. All the federal employees who are out of work, obviously the air traffic problem. The Democrats did not sell out forever, okay? They made this deal until the end of January. That's it. That's it. It went from the four-month period from where we started. What is it now? Two and a half months away. So it's a short-term concession to end the immediate pain.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:59
2
What was the immediate news hook that started the episode—who’s filling in and why?
1:59–6:59
3
Which Senate Democrats broke ranks to end the shutdown and what did their deal include?
6:59–14:38
4
Why do Will Saletan and Tim Miller argue the Democrats 'won' the shutdown politically?
14:38–37:06
5
Could a longer shutdown have forced Republicans to abandon the filibuster?
37:06–49:13
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from The Bulwark Daily
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