Jennifer Rubin, formerly of the Washington Post and currently one of the founders/leaders of the website/podcast The Contrarian, published a vituperative posting yesterday/this morning tearing apart the eight Democratic senators who voted with the Republicans to end the government shutdown. Rubin was so angry at them that she suggested that the Democratic Party cut off all funding support for their next re-election campaigns and suggested that Illinois Senator Dick Durban should not only be removed from his role as Democratic whip in the Senate, and should not only not be nominated by his party for another term (Durban is my age and has already said he will not run for re-election), but should immediately resign and let Illinois governor Pritzker pick a real Democrat to take his place.

Jennifer Rubin is wrong. The Democrats made their point and publicized what would happen to health insurance costs and availability for millions of Americans, so that everyone (hopefully) understands the problem. They stood up for what they believed, and the government shut down because the Republicans refused even to meet with or talk to their Democratic counterparts. The shutdown lasted longer than any other government shutdown and was beginning to drastically curtail SNAP payments, relied upon by many, and air traffic schedules, relied upon perhaps even by more, as well as other governmental functions. Continuing the shutdown would simply continue and increase pain.

At this point, the politics of the shutdown seemed to favor the Democrats, as seen from their victories in last week’s elections. Continuing the shutdown indefinitely might have changed that, and both parties might have found themselves equally blamed for the inevitable chaos. By voting to end the shutdown, the eight Democrats showed that they were looking out for the overall good of the American people. On the other hand, the Republicans showed that they were willing to increase the suffering of the population indefinitely, rather than talk to the Democrats or consider any change to their current position.

If you saw Lawrence O’Donnell last night, you would have seen a much more reasoned response to the vote by the eight senators. Basically, he said that the decision on how to vote involved a “guess” as to what would happen in the future. And the eight made a guess that letting the shutdown continue would wind up hurting, not helping, the country. Others are making a different guess. No one knows which guess is correct, but the task is to start from where we are today, not yesterday, and work as hard as possible to obtain a change to the current position of the Republicans.

O’Donnell is correct.

You might remember Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who during the height of the Vietnam War, suggested that the United States should simply bring all its troops home, and declare victory. Leahy was correct. The Democrats now should do the same thing regarding the shutdown. Declare victory, show that their point has been proven, and state that now is the time to work towards continued, and then better, health care coverage. They obviously have not done this yet, and now it seems that Leader Trump has declared that the ending of the shutdown is a big Republican victory. Trump is wrong, but the Democrats might be letting him get away with it.

In the meantime, what about Leader Trump, our great peace president, who has ended at least eight wars (none of which seem to have really ended, but that’s just a detail)? Now, he is talking about starting at least two wars. He wants to attack Venezuela (and maybe other South American countries while he is at it), and he wants to attack Nigeria, of all places, so that the country will stop attacking Christians. Say, what? And somewhere in the background, isn’t there still the possibility that he will take military action to wrest Greenland from Denmark or the canal from Panama? And what happened to the Great State of Canada, USA?

Of course a lot can happen between now and November 2026, but it looks today like the ability of the Big Beautiful Bully to operate within the Bully Pulpit at will may then be coming to a close.

Finally for today…..tariffs. The original purposes of the tariffs, said Trump, were to make the United States less reliant on other countries, to build up the economy of the United States, and to raise money to help curtail spending and slow, or stop completely, the rise of the National Debt. This seems to have changed as his ICE policies make it more difficult to staff the ventures he wants to bring stateside, and now even more as he says he wants to give $2000 to every American (that includes you, Elon Musk) out of the tariff revenues.

The question is simple. How can you slow the rise of, or begin to pay off, the National Debt if you give away the money you have raised to do that? And, while you are curtailing subsidies for health insurance premiums and SNAP assistance, how can you justify giving $2000 to Elon Musk (and everyone else)?

Those are my questions from yesterday. Today will, I am certain, bring more.