The White House thought the shutdown would be quick. Now they’re frustrated.

submitted by

www.politico.com/news/2025/10/31/nobody-thought…

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38198291

*White House officials, at the start of the shutdown, were certain the Trump administration was better positioned to battle the left during a funding lapse.*

In early October, several Trump administration officials had a friendly pool going of how long the shutdown would last. The White House, at the time, was confident Democrats would quickly fold.

No one guessed more than 10 days.

The account, relayed by a person close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, underscores just how much the administration miscalculated the Democrats’ will to keep the government closed even amid furloughs and imperiled social programs like food assistance.

As the shutdown heads into its second month, Donald Trump is increasingly frustrated. On Thursday, he called for Republicans to abolish the filibuster to reopen the government — a plea he knows is futile, but that demonstrates his growing irritation with Democrats, said a second person close to the White House.

16
170

Log in to comment

16 Comments

Who’d’ve guessed the Democrats would refuse to vote in favor of cutting health insurance subsidies for millions of poor Americans in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires?

I’m pleasantly surprised by their backbone

I am too.

On the one hand, it’s a pretty simple and obvious principled stance. But on the other hand, the Democrats haven’t shown much in the way of principles in quite some time.

Maybe this will be the start of a grand rebuilding of the spine we all believed that they had circa 2008.

Mailed my congressmen to tell them not to give up, come hell or high water.

I’m sure it’s still some scheme to cover for the ratchet effect. “We tried. It was the longest shutdown ever!”

I know the Democrats always let us down, hell Schumer created this situation in the first place

But they are doing the thing. They will probably disappoint us, but they are doing the thing. You have to leave room for a miracle

The joke is that this hits small business owners hard because it makes it even harder to compete with big companies that can offer benefits. The GOP just loves to target their base.

I think they just love to target non million/billionaires. They’ve just been able to dupe the gop base.

the gop couldve easily ended the shutdown themselves without the Ds, they have the numbers. its just that they dont want to take the blame for the shutdown.

I’m pretty surprised they haven’t just rolled over, TBH.

One side wants to keep health insurance affordable for millions of hard working Americans, the other side is willing to starve children to keep that from happening.

they need democrats to cave, so they blame them. all REPUBLICANS need to do is remove the filibuster and push the shutdown to end anyways, of course its to prevent the release of epstein files.

Well, democrats are backed into a corner by a violent mob called the GOP. All they can do is wait it out and refuse to negotiate while the GOP voter base goes broke and gets angry. The hope is that the GOP mob goes after their GOP leaders and votes them all out, but that probably wont happen.

Comments from other communities

the administration miscalculated the Democrats’ will to keep the government closed

No, Democrats will isn’t about being the government closed. It is the Democrat’s will to stand up for affordable healthcare.

That’s what it should be, but it’s not the motivation for everyone with a D by their name….

People’s healthcare got fucked anyways, but would have been fucked regardless. But now everything is fucked.

Not saying it’s a bad move, just that being realistic about why things are happening is important.

The shutdown means Dems like Schumer and Jeffries have an excuse for not doing anything as well. Their donors are happy with a shutdown, so the neoliberal are.

Some Dems are doing it for the right reasons as well, but lumping people like Bernie and AOC with Schumer and Jefferies just muddies the water and we need people aware of whose on our side in primaries.

Oversimplification kills.

That’s what it should be, but it’s not the motivation for everyone with a D by their name….

Some Dems are doing it for the right reasons

Oversimplification kills.

The Republicans, with majority control of all three branches of government, have proven themselves inept, incompetent, irresponsible and generally incapable of successfully governing? Surely this is just a one time thing and not part of a continuing cycle that has repeated itself numerous times through the lifespans of the same voters who elected them! /s

Well what else would you vote for… gEnOcIdE?

Don’t you know your vote is wasted unless you vote for Jill Stein to lose again? BIDEN IS HITLER!

Frankly, people should be able to abstain from their votes to send a message because the alternative should not be any real support for crazy, obviously evil fascists.

I’ve had phases all over the spectrum but I think I’m gunna lock in on “the only people to genuinely blame for the overtly evil party gaining power are the people who voted for them.” Yes, it is frustrating that there was no DNC primary(the actual issue on that side of the aisle) and that Trump won by a number of votes that theoretically could have been cancelled out but the fact remains that tens of millions of people happily voted for him. He and his party shouldn’t have been anything more than a joke.

Frankly, people should be able to abstain from their votes to send a message because the alternative should not be any real support for crazy, obviously evil fascists.

Should they be able to? In a perfect world, absolutely, I totally agree. However, when the alternative is fat Hitler, it doesn’t really work out that way.

Go look up the definiton and use of the world “should” and get back to me. I used it twice in specific places to say exactly what you just said.

Ultimately it’s the electorate but you are fucking the whole world over to limit it to single vote

Just before a miscommunication happens: I’m a Canadian who votes in Federal, provincial, and municipal elections.

I would have voted for Harris but I understand that many people felt, reasonably so, that she was forced upon them. They never got a chance to allow their voices to be heard and were simply told to deal with it. It was aggressively anti-democratic only so they could put a weak centrist in charge. The Dems lost because they told their base that they didn’t really give a shit about them and the country lost because there are tens of millions of piss-soaked cum rags who thought Donald Trump was gunna save them.

As bad as the party is, I do place a lot of blame on fickle voters, who were so offended by the undemocratic process that led to the candidate change that they abstained or voted for somebody else instead of rejecting the “evil” guy in the only effective way we have.

Voting should be a duty we perform every election instead of something we need to get “excited” about in order to follow through with it.

But you just said it right there. It wasn’t that people weren’t excited, it was because the DNC knew that people didn’t really like Biden all that much and yet kept him on way too late, then when they did switch it up they didn’t give anyone a chance. They spat in the face of democracy and I can totally understand why people are fed up and told them to go fuck themselves. I willing to bet many would have voted for Harris anyway if she had won a primary but that’s not what happened.

Centrists are conservatives who only ever have one tactic and that’s where they threaten their voters with an even worse time so they can get away with bullshit. People are tired of that.

Donald Taco, overseer of the greatest longest biggest shutdown in US history. Congrats

Aaaaaand the second longest one too!

by
[deleted]

Deleted by moderator

 reply
45

There has been a concerted effort on the right to isolate a dumb down voters for years. There was a solid documentary a number of years back I think it was called outfoxed where they explained how after Nixon was defeated a group of right wingers swore they would create a system where that would never happen again. Surprisingly, they succeeded. Trump is the result of that. When he said he could walk out in a Times Square shoot someone and no one would care he was correct. They have insulated isolated and dumb down their voting base so much that he could do or say whatever he wants and get away with it because they think he’s winning and therefore They are winning. A comedian said it best recently: MAGA supporters are like the guy at the local strip club who thinks that the stripper is in love with them when in reality the stripper doesn’t give a fuck about you and just wants your money. That’s what this entire administration is. They’re going to rob this country blind completely destroy it and then walk away with billions of dollars while the rest of us have to suffer through this shit storm they created. But no one will care because Black people brown people poor people us anybody else than me is suffering just a little bit more than me and that’s good enough for them because they’ve been told to think like that and they’re okay accepting that.

I believe that comedian was Josh Johnson.

It was a fantastic set the compares the blind faith of MAGA for Dump to some dude in love with a stripper who only wants the money.

There’s way too many of his sets that include Dump for me to link the specific one, but he has weekly releases on TubeYou.

They feel like they’re winning as long as groups they don’t relate to are made to suffer even more.

I remain as shocked as you. When Trump was the candidate in 2024 I figured Kamala’s victory was guaranteed. What I’ve come to realize in recent years is that USAmericans are fundamentally unwise. They really vote based on what they feel in the moment, hence why as the country gets worse, the elections keep flip-flopping.

Trump lost in 2020 because of Covid-19 and won in 2024 because of “grocery prices” and being the opposite major party to the current guy. The fact that he’s an insurrectionist rapist conman who pioneered division and destruction just doesn’t matter to them. The 2016-2020 term? The Pandemic he failed to maintain? Forgotten about. The embarrassments in the Republican-held congress? Most voters don’t even recall them. How any of us live with this is beyond me. It’s like being held hostage by self destructive parents.

Says the guy weaponizing the DOJ against his opponents right after accusing the other side of doing the same.

In this administration, every accusation is an admission.

… just like with Russian diplomacy

Hold the line until he’s dead

One of the few surefire ways people have to make the powerful face personal consequences: waste their time.

It’s depressing to think that the most punishment they will ever receive is the feeling the rest of us get waiting in a long line.

The hold the line even longer, until everyone associated with him has been held accountable.

It’s a long line if you want everyone ;)

“frustrated”?! People are literally starving because of their greed, their ego, their complete lack of empathy

People are literally starving

Which means it’s working exactly the way they want.

Frustrated they can’t just steamroll everything, the dems are forcing the republicans to own their shitty policy they are trying to get the dems to vote for.

BuT wHy Do YoU sUpPoRt GeNoCiDe?

Biden is Hitler and Chuck Schumer is Donald Trump, so why don’t you vote for the populist republican?

No no, it’s just don’t vote at all because Biden and Harris are genocides and no different or some shit

“Trump, he’s had it with these people, because he knows they’re playing politics,”

Lmao.

Who’d have thought politicians would play politics when doing politics?

Basic human rights is a hill to die on, and Republicans are trying to take everything away.

Who the hell can even support them anymore? They would have to be living in a bubble.

Deleted by author

 reply
93

When you have no experience with real work, there’s zero chance you have the ability to accurately estimate work

On top of that, surrounding yourself with fake experts (chosen specifically for their willingness to say anything you want to hear) seems like a great way to never know what’s actually going on.

Taco seems like Peak SNAFU principle (From Robert Anton Wilson) in action.

https://hackersdictionary.com/html/entry/SNAFU-principle.html

He said he’d have the war in Ukraine ended on day one.

On day one, he did try to force them to surrender.

It’s almost like people who don’t understand how govt works shouldn’t be president. Or even be allowed to vote, for that matter. It seems like people think there’s a magic wand that the top guy can wave and everything just falls into place.

I think that voter registration should work like driver licensing. And the test you have to pass should be the citizenship exam.

Appealing as the idea is, the problem is who gets to control the exams.

That’s a fair criticism. We know how poll testing has historically been used to disenfranchise minority groups.

That’s why I suggested the citizenship exam, which is a well-established test with specific parameters and existing preparation programs.

Sure, but who decides what’s on the citizenship exam? Who updates it? Who’s in charge of making sure it’s administered fairly?

Right now there’s not really any power to be gained by subverting it, so it’s handled by people who are interested in keeping it working well. Make it the gateway to electoral control, and interest groups will worm their way into control of it - and then you have a variant on poll testing.

You’re right. I just wish politicians would just let us have nice things.

Government and speed go together like car tires and peanut butter.

Steel-belted latex satay just takes a lot of slow cooking.

My grandma’s 28hr slow roasted goodyears were “fall off the rim” tender.

Draining the swamp – Vowed to clean up Washington fast, but faced entrenched bureaucracy and ethics scandals.

Well, and some things are complete delusion on his part as well as conservatives. If anything, Taco created the swamp.

Reviving coal jobs – Claimed fast resurgence, but the industry continued to decline.

And some things, for instance, this and the wall and repealing ACA, and ruining/"overhauling” education, are just plain not worth doing.

Oh well. Too bad about their frustrated expectations.

But I won’t really be happy until justice is done, to each and every one of them, and everything that Trump has corrupted has been rooted out and rescinded.

My prediction is that it will end this week when federal ATC employees stop showing up for work, thus directly affecting the quality of life of republican lawmakers and their billionaire donors. That’s exactly why the last “longest shutdown in history” ended too.

Starving people? Hardly an inconvenience to the ultra rich. Can’t fly their private jet? One phone call to Trump and the shutdown is over that afternoon.

Have ATC employees actually decided to stop showing up this week?

It started last week, but only amounted to flight delays. I anticipate that things are unlikely to improve and will only get worse as more and more ATCs call in sick in protest.

Trump lost the last shutdown in one of the most humiliating political defeats of his Presidency. Did he think this one would be different?

As this continues, I would highly recommend folks support their local food pantries as they are able. Cash is better, but there’s nothing wrong with a food drive to collect cans from your neighbors. Some pantries also accept fresh produce, if you have some left from your garden this year.

Democrats’ plan: we’ll pay half so you only have to spend all of your life savings on healthcare

Republicans’ plan: die you fucking plebs

Democrats: it’s not perfect enough

Republicans: fuck you and die

You: “both sides are the same.”

“Also,combined with my lack of patience towards the arch of history I’m just gonna take a shit on the whole conversation and offer no other option just cause I’m so smart”

Where did they say both sides were the same? I see that they said that both sides suck but one is objectively worse than the other, which is true. Democrats are shit but Republicans are straight evil.

“Dems suck… republicans also suck but for additional stuff….”

You have how hard a time seeing the both sidesism?

It’s like if someone says republicans suck you generate total blindness…

Yea dude. Because only a fucking idiot would act like the Dems are, as a group, good at their jobs. They’re centre/centre-right and do some pretty shitty things on a regular basis if they do anything of substance at all.

But after all that, they are still the better option and highly preferrable to the Republicans. The Dems are the unseasoned, boiled chicken breast to the Republicans arsenic soup; terrible but edible, at least.

“Both-sides” is when you say both are equally bad and, crucially, ignore the difference of severity. Usually the goal of it is to get people to be apathetic about elections which often leads to conservative wins.

Wow reading way too much into my comment much? The fucking obvious other option is a public option which yes, a few Democrats have advocated for.

And with that in mind you posted what?

the left

Lol.. Thae what now ? Jow about centre right.

Insert image