I was just contacted by a journalist colleague, who asked that I make this point of clarification.

Righteous speculation! As Senate Majority Leader, he was vital for passage of ACA, the Dodd-Frank Act and invoked the nuclear option in 2013 to circumvent the 60-vote cloture requirement. I imagine he’s doling out multiple psychic slaps upside the head to Schumer and the Judas 8 Senators.

There will be greater poisons to come now that the Democrats have capitulated. Republicans will now leverage for more restrictions on voter rights, on abortions, education reforms, LGBTQ and trans rights. They are not good faith negotiators, which means you cannot retreat once a position is taken.

As a former political consultant, I concur. I reason an optimist to be someone who doesn’t have all the facts yet. But what I know from history is that when the populace turns on a party, political realities shift. Mamdani and Mississippi signaled this. The shutdown vote was a major blunder.

Written off? Not by me. But I realize this Republican Congress was complicit in Musk (DOGE) firing roughly 300,000 federal employees with no recourse for reinstatement, nor for retroactive recovery of wages. This could have been leveraged for furloughed workers with the healthcare assurances.