Good evening. Tonight, my colleague Reid Epstein, a politics reporter, looks at how Democrats are fighting over the shutdown deal along generational lines. We’ll start with the headlines. — Jess Bidgood
Age is the issue that Democrats can’t shut downThe Democratic unity and good feelings after the party’s big election victories lasted under a week. Now, the knives are back out. As eight Democratic-aligned senators with an average age of about 70 voted with Republicans to end the 40-day government shutdown without the health care concessions Democrats had demanded, the party again convulsed with two questions that have long racked its members: How old is too old and how vigorously should they fight Republicans? Tonight we will look at how these two divides are crucial to understanding both the capitulation and the subsequent anger from virtually all corners of the party. How age plays into the arguingDemocrats are still dealing with the fallout of Joe Biden’s calamitous decision to seek re-election at age 79. What has been less discussed is the fallout of having so many members of Congress who are at (and well beyond) retirement age. And as liberal voters just found out, it’s a lot easier to vote for something your base hates if you’re too old to worry about re-election. Of the Democratic-aligned senators who voted for the shutdown deal, two are not running again: Dick Durbin of Illinois, 80, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, 78. Angus King of Maine is 81 and Jacky Rosen of Nevada is 68. Both Tim Kaine of Virginia and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire are 67. All would be past 70 years old if they decide to run again when their terms end. The other “yes” votes were from Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, 61, who represents a state where the Las Vegas tourism industry feared taking a major hit from canceled flights, and from John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who is just 56 but has already alienated much of his party by embracing Trump on a slew of issues. “This is the problem with the gerontocracy,” said Amanda Litman, the leader of Run for Something, a group that recruits young progressive candidates to run for office. “When you have older leaders who are never going to face re-election again, you make decisions that are disconnected from what their voters believe.” Yet the age issue is likely to keep flaring up. Senator Chuck Schumer’s top three midterm recruits are Janet Mills, 77, in Maine; Sherrod Brown, 73, in Ohio; and Roy Cooper, 68, in North Carolina. Each would be in their 80s by the end of a second term. Fighting about fightingThen there is the matter of how much to fight, and who should lead the charge. “Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work,” King, the senator from Maine, said Monday on MSNBC. “It actually gave him more power.”
This sentiment came as news to Democrats who were less than a week removed from sweeping victories in California, New Jersey and Virginia. For many in the party, Tuesday’s elections were the first time in a year that they could feel good about their collective ability to punch back against Trump. Instead, many Democrats were surprised to see a key slice of senators backing down on the party’s 40-day demand that Republicans fund Affordable Care Act subsidies — with polls showing that voters were generally on the Democrats’ side. Anger from across the party erupted, and elected Democrats found themselves navigating new calls for Senator Chuck Schumer to be ousted as minority leader. Many progressives and younger Democrats have argued increasingly loudly that Schumer, 74, is no longer up to the fight against Trump. Senator Mark Kelly dodged questions on Monday about whether Schumer should remain as leader. Representative Ro Khanna of California suggested Schumer should go, then bickered with reporters on social media about it. And Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, who is aiming for a promotion to the Senate, tried to use his opposition to Schumer as a cudgel against Senator Ed Markey, his primary opponent. “Maybe now @EdMarkey will finally join me in pledging not to vote for Schumer?” Moulton wrote online. Feeding the discontent are memories of the last shutdown fight in March, when Schumer led Senate Democrats to make a deal with Republicans to keep the government open. Then as now, the party’s base and most of its members in Congress wanted the fight against Trump and his allies, while a handful of older institutionalists demurred. In one sign of how far out on an island the eight senators are, they drew backhanded scorn from the Democratic National Committee, which rarely intervenes in intraparty disputes. “I am proud of the majority of Senate Democrats who opposed this vote,” said Ken Martin, the party chairman. This is all taking place as Trump issued pre-emptive pardons to Rudolph Giuliani and a host of people who tried to overturn the 2020 election results. In a world without the Democratic senators’ capitulation, the pardons might have been a galvanizing issue for the party’s elected officials to rally around while continuing to press their case that spiraling health insurance costs were Trump’s fault alone. Instead, they will keeping arguing among themselves. Got a tip? IN ONE NUMBER 76That’s the total number of people believed to have been killed in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea by U.S. military strikes since early September. Led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the campaign to stop vessels suspected of drug smuggling has largely taken place in international waters. A wide range of legal experts have denounced the killings as illegal, while the Trump administration argues that the strikes are lawful because the president has “determined” that the country is in a formal conflict with drug cartels.
QUOTABLE “Grocery prices remain high. Energy prices are high. My electricity bills are higher here in Washington, D.C., at my apartment, and they’re also higher at my house in Rome, Georgia — higher than they were a year ago.”That was Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, in a recent interview with CNN — making yet another departure from the official Republican line by questioning whether all is truly well in President Trump’s America.
ONE LAST THING Embracing the ‘anti-vax’ labelSome supporters of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda once regarded the term “anti-vax” as a slur. But last weekend, his allies descended on Austin for a “Make America Healthy Again” conference, and announced they were changing their attitudes. My colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported from the conference, where vaccine-wary MAHA supporters marveled at the newfound power of their movement now that Kennedy holds clout in Washington. One declared a need “to be more boldly anti-vax.” Ama Sarpomaa and Taylor Robinson contributed reporting. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com.
|
