Everyone's "mad as hell" - talk show hosts, activist Democrats, substack writers-that "moderate" Democratic Senators "caved," voting to support a Senate bill to end the shutdown. Josh Marshall's observation: "This is an embarrassing deal, a deal to basically settle for nothing. It's particularly galling since it comes only days after Democrats crushed Republicans in races across the country." Most of the anger is focused on the Democratic Party and its members in the Congress, along the lines of "get rid of all the treacherous Democratic legislators." There's another way to see the 40-day holdout/cave as "a big change in the direction of the fight we need in the years to come that just didn't go far enough. Yet." (1)

But first, let's reflect on what's happened. For one thing, this surrender is not nearly the debacle of last March's "cave," when Democrats collapsed without a whimper over the Republican stopgap funding bill. This time, Dems put together a coherent agenda and held out for forty days. Could they really have held out until Republicans/Trump caved to their demands? Get real.

The Dems were never going to "win." It's deeply frustrating but incontrovertible that Trump and the Republicans both control the Executive and the Legislature and use that control in unprecedented and coercive ways. Trump made clear he would continue to force ordinary Americans to endure worsening pain while flaunting the gorgeous feasts he provided for his wealthy elite friends in gold encrusted ballrooms - and to keep on doing that for as long as it took. He even started threatening air traffic controllers balking at working for no pay. (2).

Congressional Republicans repeatedly signaled all this was fine with them. That's a pretty unbreakable force. While public opinion continued to hold Trump/Republicans responsible for the shutdown for the entire 40 days, it's unlikely that could have continued much longer. Major constituencies such as government workers were already turning. Think of it this way: perhaps Senate Dems

caved at the right time, while public opinion was still with us. And some of the results are good.(3)

The Senate Bill has already forced Speaker Johnson to bring the House back into session. And that means Johnson will have to swear in Adelita Grijalva, who can then become the 218th representative to sign the discharge petition to force a vote to release the Epstein papers. All evidence points to the papers being full of negative information about Trump, which will become public just as 2026 election activity cranks up. And the Senate's bill does contain at least two points in the next few months where Republicans will be forced to make public votes to deny Americans health care and food supports while preserving billionaire tax breaks.

What should angry Dems do? Keep that anger long enough to vote out or hogtie the sellouts (e.g., replace Schumer). But that's the barest of beginnings.

Here is one way to look at "what's far enough?" The Democratic Party must rethink their role and overhaul their action agenda, just as Republicans did years ago, when they stopped playing the consensus-seeking legislator role. Look no further than the white supremacist agenda emerging with little pushback alongside the "whatever Trump does is good" legislative approach.(5)