Day 15 of the Schumer shutdown, and thus far, Democrats are still mostly united in holding the American government hostage over ransom demands no one in the Republican Party is willing to pay.
Republicans in both House and Senate leadership, to their great credit, have held the line on messaging, whilst Democrats are literally all over the map.
Wednesday night, Kaitlan Collins, CNN's latest incarnation of Jim Acosta, moderated a town hall with Senator Bernie Sanders and the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It went about as well as you'd expect.
🤔 https://t.co/04CRYe4N5y pic.twitter.com/KIRQdiFH4Y
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) October 16, 2025
"We're going to do everything we can and move as quickly as we can to make sure you get your paychecks," says Sanders. The 'we' he's referring to are the vast majority of the Senate Democratic conference who have backed their leader, Chuck Schumer in scuttling a clean continuing resolution nine times in order to make sure those paychecks remain frozen. Sanders' 'we' are the ones responsible for the shutdown. He just admitted it. And yet in the same answer, he also lied. The 'we' of which he speaks are not doing everything we can to get federal employees and military servicemembers paid. Doing everything would be voting yes on the C.R. and fighting out Sanders' health care subsidy concerns in committees where the argument belongs.
As for the leader of the party, AOC, this is just the kind of intellectual prowess that allows Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson to sleep soundly every night.
AOC says "rivers were on fire" because of corporations like Deloitte "pouring chemicals" into waterways.
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) October 16, 2025
Deloitte is an accounting, consulting, and tax services firm.
No idea what she's talking about. pic.twitter.com/mLX64nPnVk
Yes, I remember distinctly when the mega-accounting firm Deloitte set fire to the Cuyahoga River in Ohio using adding machine tape as kindling. I'm fairly confident she might have meant to say DuPont, but to socialists and Marxists who don't really believe much in private ownership of anything, what difference, at this point, does it make what these companies call themselves?
After two weeks of Democrats twisting themselves into rhetorical knots about who's to blame for the shutdown, Sanders ran into a question from the audience at a CNN town hall he wasn't expecting.
Bernie Sanders tries to get smart with this young conservative and gets wrecked: "You think it's a good idea to give $1 trillion in tax breaks to the richest people in the country and then make massive cuts to health care for working class people?"
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 16, 2025
Questioner: "I think Chuck… pic.twitter.com/Py4VRNSMck
That gap after the man in the audience wrecked Sanders' premise by accurately reciting Schumer's record of voting for 13 clean C.R.'s in the last five years was Sanders internally processing his anger at CNN security for admitting someone who shouldn't be there, but not wanting to come across looking like Katie Porter on a podcast or Nancy Pelosi hounded at a Capitol rally on a J6 question.
Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman admitted what everyone casually watching this Capitol circus knows while on a panel at the Kennedy Center.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) admits Democrats are responsible for the government shutdown:
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 16, 2025
"Shutting the government is really what the Democratic Party wants to do... [Obamacare subsidies were] designed by Democrats to expire ... This is NOT something taken by the Republicans.” pic.twitter.com/DRla5H8RjB
Yes, this is Schumer shuttering government for his own political survival. But is this shutdown helping his cause? It sure doesn't look that way. The Democratic Leader just posted one of his worst fundraising quarters in his 50-plus Congressional and Senate career.
👀Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posts his worst fundraising quarter and lowest cash on hand in years, raising just $133,460 in Q3 to end with $8.55M banked. https://t.co/3jS1A0n2lf pic.twitter.com/9KSNfbFmfZ
— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) October 15, 2025
Compare that to AOC's last quarter.
.@AOC raised $4.45 million in Q3 and now has $11.8 million on hand to be spent on...well, some future race. https://t.co/y2c3Pl6VLs
— Rob Pyers (@rpyers) October 15, 2025
He's got about as much chance at a viable political future as Katie Porter has at winning Miss Congeniality.
LMFAO! Bernie Sanders and AOC just lost their minds LIVE on TV.
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) October 16, 2025
Not a SINGLE PERSON clapped after this performance.
These people are BATSHlT crazy!
pic.twitter.com/rf2E9A4IlM
The Democrats lost the election in 2024. They lost soundly. Any way you slice it, they lost. They lost the Electoral College. They lost the popular vote. They lost all seven swing states. They lost on the issues Trump made important, and they lost on the issues they tried to make important. The American people viewed the four years of the Biden regency, and the prospects of Veep, the HBO series becoming a four-year reality show from the Oval Office as a nightmare they didn't want to continue. And yet, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are holding the country's government hostage until they get what they lost last November in ransom. It's as if they believe the American people were too stupid to realize Democrats should remain in power forever, so now they have to implement their agenda the hard way.
CNN's Democratic Congressional reporter, Manu Raju, or Renfield to his friends, showed up to Speaker Johnson's press conference Wednesday afternoon to press him on why Republicans won't cave for the good of the country.
CNN reporter asks Speaker Mike Johnson why don’t he change his strategy to negotiate with Democrats for the “good of the country.”
— Derrick Evans (@DerrickEvans4WV) October 15, 2025
Great answer by Johnson. Republicans had better hold the line. No compromising with the left. pic.twitter.com/22hG9gFHK3
First, Democrats' wish lists are almost by definition not in the best interest of the country. Johnson rightly dismissed the premise. Further, you'll notice that Raju has not as of yet hounded a Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer press conference, asking them repeatedly why they won't cave and vote for a clean C.R. for the good of the country. I wonder why that is?
The working theory amongst Republicans in both chambers is that this Schumer shutdown is going to come to a head this Saturday at the No Kings rally in D.C. on Saturday. Once that happens, and Schumer can preen to the fever swamp about how tough he is, Democrats, mostly the ones not up for reelection or retiring next year, will vote for the clean C.R. and this fortnight will end with a whimper, not a bang.
🚨JUST NOW: Speaker Mike Johnson says that Democrats will keep the Government Shutdown UNTIL the "No Kings" riots happen Saturday
— The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) October 15, 2025
"I don't think it will end before the HATE America rally on the mall Saturday."
Democrats want MORE people to show up Saturday, if they open the… pic.twitter.com/kBtOVLLnWH
But what if Democrats keep it up indefinitely? At some point, if this goes on for months on end, Appropriations bills don't get done, the Obamacare subsidies end cold turkey, and Democrats will finally have their campaign message for the midterms that health care premiums skyrocketed under Trump and the Republicans.
On my Duane's World podcast Wednesday, former Missouri Senator Jim Talent detailed a scenario that Senate Republicans should at least consider, and possibly pursue - a nuclear option, but on the standing rules of the United States Senate.
The Senate is a unique legislative body for lots of reasons, but among them are that there are not new rules established every term. One-third of the Senate comes and goes every two years, but the standing rules remain intact. One of those standing rules are that continuing resolutions require a 60-vote cloture threshold to pass. The opportunity to hold the government hostage has always existed because of the cloture threshold, but it's been rare that a political party is willing to play that card, because the party that causes that shutdown loses in the end. Trump has altered that reality for the Democrats. They're no longer acting as a rational party.
Senator Talent would love to explore a change to the standing rules, which take a 67-vote threshold. There would of course not be support to do that, but then that's where you would deploy the nuclear option, using a simple majority to overrule the parliamentarian's opinion and thereby amend the Senate's standing rules. What would be the text of that new rule?
Appropriations bills, and continuing resolutions, provided they are clean C.R.'s, meaning an extension of existing funding with nothing further added or taken away, for a fixed period of time, are now a 51-vote threshold, or 50 plus a V.P. tiebreaker if necessary. What this would do is remove government shutdowns from happening again as a political weapon. And here's the dirty, little secret. If you put every senator, Democrat or Republican, especially those who serve on the Appropriations Committee, they would love to see this happen, because it allows them to get their work done in committee in a much more timely fashion without the drama.
I know how this is going to be met by a ton of people on my side of the aisle. No! A thousand times, no! If you open this door to breaking the filibuster on legislative action, as soon as the Democrats get a majority, you'll have 15 members of the United States Supreme Court, D.C. and Puerto Rico statehood, and God only knows what else coming down the pike before you know it. I take that criticism fully. Here's my response. Democrats are going to blow up the filibuster the first chance they get when they're in power anyway.
Let's list the roster of the more radical current members of the Senate - Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff, Alex Padilla, Ron Wyden, Patty Murray, Raphael Warnock, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Kristen Gillibrand, Richard Blumenthal, Sheldon Whitehouse, Amy Klobuchar, Tammy Duckworth, Mazie Hirono. I could go on. There are many, many more. You get my point. And if New Yorkers, after cursing themselves with Zohran Mamdani as mayor, further screw the country over by electing Senator Ocasio-Cortez, tell me again whether they would hesitate for a second to destroy the filibuster the second they're in power regardless of what Republicans do or don't do here with the shutdown.
If Republicans explore this option, and Democrats in the upper chamber get wind of this, that Republican leadership is considering this as a viable option to neutralize Schumer's shutdown tantrum, it'll surprise the entire Democratic conference. Many won't have seen this possibility coming, and it'll scare them. The threat of this gambit might even be enough of a shot across the bow to some of the crazies on the left to reverse course in order to preserve their ability to filibuster spending measures later.
Dr. Larry Arnn, president of Hillsdale College, has often spoken about his disdain for what the filibuster has become - a blight. In days of old, the rule was that if you were a senator and you had something to say about a particular piece of legislation or a nominee, especially if you objected, you had the right to speak on the floor until you were blue in the face, as did anyone else who wanted to speak. But at some point, you finish saying what you had to say, and you sit down. Once every member who wishes to speak has had the opportunity afforded them to do so, you hold a vote. That's how it ought to be. This proposed change to the standing rules doesn't go quite that far, but it does remove shutdowns-as-theater from the quiver for minorities, and actually moves the funding legislation process back to where it belongs - the jurisdiction of the committees.
Right now, the Trump Derangement Syndrome fever of the Democrats is beyond what even an ice bath can break. And the Republicans, if they know what's good for them, had better not give an inch on spending an additional $1.5 trillion in left-wing pork they just successfully cut in the One Big Beautiful Bill. So if this impasse goes beyond the No Kings/doodah parade on the Mall Saturday, it's high time the Republicans act like the governing party they are, and move to reform the Senate further in order to get back to regular order.
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