Fetterman Knows the Score + Trump Rolls Dems in Shutdown Battle

As the end of the shutdown looms, reading the other side is more important than living in a bubble.

The quality of your mental health in the modern world is directly linked to your ability to avoid reading too much into the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows. When you win the big election, like we did in 2024, it’s important to understand the enemy is going to come back with a plan to resist and that you must not rest on your laurels indefinitely; conversely, when you get mud stomped as Republicans did last Tuesday in some of the most predictable election results in modern history, it has to be kept in proper perspective. That is why, like someone dealing with a bad hangover, I came out with “An Election 2025 Autopsy for Your Sanity and Understanding” Wednesday:

No one likes to lose, but the reality is that Republicans have neglected New York City for a century, and New Jersey and Virginia have a blue lean only exacerbated by population density, lax election laws allowing for massive leads accumulated through mail-in balloting and harvesting, and in the case of Virginia, a massive reliance upon the growth and sustainment of the federal government, which drives NoVA politics. If you wanted better GOP outcomes, you would also need to wish for a Democrat president based upon more than five decades of off-year election trends (12 of the last 13 gubernatorial elections in Virginia have been won by the party not in the White House, with the only exception being a 2.5% race in 2013 with a libertarian sitting on 6.5% of the vote).

Our side, as is standard in the online era, has been dooming and glooming for six days. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has been consistent for the entire shutdown and is on the verge of getting exiled from his own party - if not sometime soon, then certainly by the 2028 primary in which he will be attacked from his left by a field of radicals who can’t read the cards on the Trump-era Keystone. Now that it appears the shutdown is going to end, Fetterman’s wisdom will be apparent again. Here is what he said after the Senate vote (60-40) to reopen:

After 40 days as a consistent voice against shutting our government down, I voted YES for the 15th time to REOPEN. I’m sorry to our military, SNAP recipients, gov workers, and Capitol Police who haven’t been paid in weeks. It should’ve never come to this.

Here is who joined him from the Democrats:

• Catherine Cortez Masto (NV)

• Jacky Rosen (NV)

• Dick Durbin (IL)

• Jeanne Shaheen (NH)

• Maggie Hassan (NH)

• Tim Kaine (VA)

• Angus King (ME) - technically an independent, but one who caucuses with Democrats

Including Fetterman, five of the eight have battleground state worries to contend with. Since Fetterman was elected in 2022 by a reasonably comfortable (but not stiff) 4.9% margin, the Keystone State has drifted 4.3% toward Republicans by registration - or by nearly 380,000 net r

egistrations. Nearly everyone on Capitol Hill is a political creature that knows how to read the room, or has staffers that know how to read the room. Their number one focus is on getting reelected, and if they say otherwise, they’re lying. Fetterman’s seat will be up in a presidential year next time around, and he just saw Bob Casey lose thanks to Trump’s coattails, despite every effort to cheat enough to keep Dave McCormick out of the Senate.

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What is the Deal?

The deal is essentially the same one that was on the table before the shutdown went into effect on October 1, which Democrats walked away from.