Another unforced error as Democratic capitulation hands Trump a shutdown victory

Well, here we are, folks, in the twisted carnival of American governance, where the clowns are in charge of the fire department and they’ve just decided to sell the water hoses for scrap.

In an act of political self-immolation so profound it would be comical if it weren’t so tragic, a critical gang of eight Senate Democrats, smelling of compromise and fear, have joined the Republicans to pry open the government’s doors.

The same thing happened before a possible shutdown in March, so the Republican monopoly on power in Washington is not a new thing.

The shutdown is ending. And in doing so, Democrats have handed a flaming victory to the man who started the fire, who was, by all accounts, slowly roasting on the spit of his own incompetence.

For forty days, the gears of government ground to a halt. Food assistance for millions hung by a thread, the skies threatened to go silent, and the great, hulking ship of state listed in the water, taking on the brine of absurdity.

Who did the American people blame? The polls screamed the answer in a unified voice: they blamed Donald Trump and his band of ideological arsonists.

The man hosted a Gatsby-esque masquerade ball at his Palm Beach palace while the nation’s pantries went bare. The image was perfect, a stark, damning lithograph of gilded indifference.

American voters delivered a sharp rebuke to Trump and his MAGA movement in state and local elections from coast to coast.

The most potent symbol was the victory of Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist elected as New York’s next mayor, whose win, alongside triumphs for more moderate Democrats like Virginia’s Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger and New Jersey’s Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill, gave the beaten-down Democratic Party a crucial surge of momentum.

“Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it,” Mamdani declared, framing the win as a transfer of power from the wealthy elite to the “bruised and calloused hands of working Americans.”

The Democrats, for once, held a winning hand.

They had only to stand firm, to let the consequences of Republican malfeasance continue to accrue like compound interest on a national debt of rage.

The public’s anger was a heat-seeking missile, and its target was locked on Mar-a-Lago.

But then, the day airports started scrambling with flight disruptions, constituents’ complaints became more terrifying to senators than the death rattle of democracy itself.

The limited disruptions at airports across the country canceled about three percent of the 25,000 flights scheduled for Friday, but those passengers who experienced frustration represent a different economic class than the 42 million Americans struggling without food stamps.

So, the spineless Senate Democrats cut a deal. Democratic defectors—Dick Durbin, Jacky Rosen, John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Tim Kaine, and independent Angus King—have handed Donald Trump another get-out-of-jail-free card.

Their capitulation rescues Trump from a political crisis of his own making in a deal that amounts to trading the family farm for a handful of magic beans and a whispered promise.

The government will reopen, yes. Federal workers, who have been used as human shields in this idiotic siege, will get their back pay—a right they should never have been denied.

But the heart of the matter, the very reason for this standoff, has been punted down the field like a dead pigskin.

The Affordable Care Act subsidies, the lifeline for millions facing a cliff of skyrocketing premiums, were left to expire. In their place, the Democratic defectors accepted a “pinky promise” from Senator John Thune, a man whose word has the lasting power of a snowball in a South Dakota summer, that there will be a vote on the matter later.

Later. A word that has killed more hopes than a firing squad.

This is not a compromise; it is a capitulation.

It is the political equivalent of a boxer, with his opponent on the ropes and bleeding, suddenly deciding to throw the fight because he felt a twinge of sympathy.

Senator Elizabeth Warren called it a “terrible mistake,” which is the polite, academic term for an act of catastrophic stupidity.

New Jersey’s progressive firebrand Lisa McCormick was less diplomatic, branding it “sniveling capitulation” and a betrayal of the voters who just days ago delivered a stinging rebuke to Trumpism at the polls.

She’s right. The voters are not confused. They saw a Republican shutdown. They held Republicans responsible.

Now, a handful of Democrats have absolved them of that responsibility. They have thrown a life preserver to a drowning administration, allowing Trump to swagger away from the wreckage he created, claiming he “got the government open.”

The trillion-dollar cut from Medicaid remains, US cities remain under military occupation, and Trump falsely claimed that Barack Obama has earned $40 million in “royalties linked to Obamacare” in a social media post on Sunday.

The logic is so perverse that it defies all known laws of political physics.

When your adversary is in the process of destroying himself, you do not intervene. You get out of the way. You make some popcorn. You let the tragedy play out.

Instead, these eight Senators—Kaine, Hassan, Shaheen, King, and the rest of the Nervous Nellie Caucus—have staged a rescue mission for their own executioner.

Chuck Schumer, the Minority Leader who supposedly held the line, now stands against the deal he couldn’t stop.

His leadership appears as effective as a screen door on a submarine. The whole sordid affair reveals a party terrified of its own shadow, a collection of careerists so spooked by the specter of a headline about a delayed flight that they will sacrifice the health security of millions to avoid it.

Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker announced their opposition to the shutdown deal, but the last time the party was betrayed, Lisa McCormick suggested more action was needed.

“Perhaps they are merely providing a performative show of resistance, while eagerly serving the interests of the billionaires and corporations that fund their campaigns,” said McCormick. “Any Democratic Party officials who today are not aggressively working to remove Chuck Schumer as Senate Minority Leader must be considered equally responsible for allowing Donald Trump to get away with his crimes. Senate Democrats who voted against the stopgap spending bill are largely staying quiet, keeping their heads down as the silence grows increasingly awkward, and wrongly hoping that this will all go away.”

Schumer received blowback from his party in March when he voted to keep the government open, is not saying that Democrats have now “sounded the alarm” on health care.

“We will not give up the fight,” said Schumer, who apparently does not understand that the fight is over and he lost.

Sen. Bernie Sanders called the capitulation a “horrific mistake.”

So let the record show: on this day, the Democratic Party, or a crucial segment of it, saw victory on the horizon and chose to surrender. They had the high ground, the momentum, and the public on their side.

And they folded. They have proven, once again, that in the face of a brawler, a gentleman with no stomach for a fight is merely a well-dressed victim.

The government will sputter back to life, the headlines will cheer the return to normalcy, and the cameras will click away as politicians pat themselves on the back for ending a crisis they had the power to resolve on their own terms weeks ago.

But do not be fooled. This is not a return to normal. It is a ratification of chaos. It is a signal that the most reckless behavior will be rewarded, and that the opposition lacks the spine to stop it.

They had Trump cornered. And they let him go.

God is not going to help us at all, because this is still a democratic republic. If people want change, they are going to have to fight for it.