House Dems’ Problem Children Who Ended the Shutdown
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
By now you’ve read the news the shut down ended thanks to a few House Democrats caving and crossing the aisle to vote with the GOP.
These are the problem children:
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA-03) – running for re-election, district rated R+2
Jared Golden (ME-02) – NOT running for re-election
Adam Gray (CA-13) – running for re-election, toss-up district
Don Davis (NC-01) – running for re-election, district rated R+1
Henry Cuellar (TX-28) – running for re-election, district rated R+2
Tom Suozzi (NY-03) – running for re-election, toss-up district
Some are the usual suspects, like Golden and Cuellar and Suozzi.
All of these races are gettable by a Democrat firmly left of these boneheads given the current dissatisfaction with the Trump administration and his party of enablers. As Charles Gaba pointed out, “Dems have overperformed an avg of 15 pts across 55 Special Elections so far, winning 36 of them including *flipping* 6 GOP seats!” Democrats running on affordability have done very well.
Golden apparently can read the weather and is bailing out. But the rest of these reps need to be primaried — even Cuellar who has been primaried in the past and survived. Suozzi must think affordability is a NYC thing and doesn’t affect his district.
Gluesenkamp Perez is particularly annoying because of her bullshit party bashing about the shutdown. She posted this on the Nazi bar site:
Tonight, I voted to end this partisan car crash of a shutdown. Nobody likes paying even more money to insurance companies – and the fight to stop runaway health insurance premiums won’t be won by holding hungry Americans hostage. Americans can’t afford for their Representatives to get so caught up in landing a partisan win that they abandon their obligation to come together to solve the urgent problems that our nation faces.
The last several weeks have been a case study in why most Americans can’t stand Congress. None of my friends who rely on SNAP would want to trade their dinner for an ambiguous D.C. beltway “messaging victory” and I’m glad this ugly scene is in the rearview mirror.
Now, it’s time for Congress to get back to work and build an economy where people aren’t yanked around by partisan interests, where we understand national health doesn’t come from insurance coverage – and reestablish a truly deliberative democracy. I’ll work with whoever is necessary to reach those goals – and I don’t give a damn which side of the aisle they sit on.
8:28 PM · Nov 12, 2025
Emphasis mine.
Bet she wouldn’t turn down money from the DCCC for her re-election campaign. Biting the hand, much?
Apparently Gluesenkamp Perez is pretty dense as are these other Dems. What leverage does the Democratic Party have now to negotiate a reinstatement of healthcare subsidies? Because if she knows of any, she can’t be arsed to offer it.
Here’s a snapshot of the problem, offered in a joking manner:
Shoshana @[email protected]
Rent: $3,200
Health Insurance: $2,600
Avocado Toast: $8Someone who is good at the economy, please help me with my avocado toast budget
AltText for image above: Screenshot of healthcare plans without the ACA subsidies. 2025 plan was $45, 2026 plan will be $2,620. The deductible will increase from $800 to $6,000, primary care visits increase from $5 to $40, ER costs go from $0 to 40% co-insurance
The poster may offer this in a lighthearted fashion but the looming threat is real: a sizeable number of Americans will have to choose between paying for rent/mortgage/food and healthcare insurance. For many of these folks this will be a matter of life or death.
Trying to protect more than 20 million Americans who rely on the ACA marketplace and healthcare subsidies isn’t a partisan stunt for “messaging victory.” It’s about saving the lives of Americans who will otherwise be unable to afford healthcare insurance.
Assuming the GOP will act in good faith to address this country’s problematic for-profit healthcare system is insanely naive or ignorant. I assume Gluesenkamp Perez stuck her head in the sand every time Trump said he wanted to kill ACA, and missed Sen. John McCain’s going against his party and Trump in 2017 to vote to protect the ACA.
John McCain is dead. There’s no maverick to save Gluesenkamp Perez’s butt when her constituents lose their homes to pay for their healthcare because she didn’t want to appear to be too partisan.
Primary all of them. There was NO valid reason to for any D to vote for this, especially considering the stuff snuck into the bill by GOP Senators (phone logs, etc.) and no D votes were needed to pass.
Maybe Pete Davidson can primary Suozzi, who it should be noted was beaten by a recently pardoned fraudster (‘Santos’) by whatever name he is using now. I don’t know if Davidson lives in that district, though the Article 1 requirement is residency in the state, not disrict.
Golden announced he’s not running for re-election. His seat is open. Technically speaking, he can’t be primaries but his seat will have a primary race.
The ones who could be primaried, anyhow. As for Golden, his stated reason for calling it quits was protecting his family from ongoing threats, but perhaps even then he was going to sell out.
I would note that the data shows a blue wave coming regardless and progressives are leading the way.
I have yet to see any concrete info about the so-called threats. Haven’t seen any info about police reports re threats.
Replying to Rayne: That’s what Golden said in his annoncement, but I haven’t seen police reports either.
Unfortunately, not surprised about this. In the book “Reckoning”, Mitt Romney was quoted as saying Trump mob threats of violence against families changed Republican senator’s impeachment votes. Nobody paid attention:
“One of the biggest revelations to me in my conversations with Romney was just how important the threat of political violence was to the psychology of elected Republicans today,” said Coppins, who recalled Romney telling him “story after story about Republican members of Congress, Republican senators, who at various points wanted to vote for impeachment —vote to convict Trump or vote to impeach Trump —and decided not to, not because they thought he was innocent, but because they were afraid for their family’s safety.
They were afraid of what Trump supporters might do to them or to their families.” That “raises a really uncomfortable question,” Coppins said, which is “how long can the American project last if elected officials from one of the major parties are making their political decisions based on fear of physical violence from their constituents?”
What’s really pissed me off is that neither party has clued into dealing effectively with an organized crime entity including their mob enforcers.
But I still want to know if the state and local police in Maine are dealing with the alleged threats to Golden.
Democrats didn’t like Golden. Republicans didn’t like Golden. With Golden dropping out, it has thrown a giant monkey into the wrench. Jordan Wood has now switched from a senate campaign and will go after Goldens seat. Matt Dunlap would be a good choice as well. But unless Troy Jackson drops his bid for the Blaine House, Paul LePlague will win the 2nd district, handily.
Jackson is a three time Maine state senate president and is from Allagash in northern Aroostook County. Jackson is the one democrat who could beat LePlague.
There is a Democrat running against Gluesenkamp-Perez right now. He’s raised ~$41K so far. A primary challenge from the left isn’t going to work because Perez is very nearly exactly as far left as one can be and reliably win this seat. Local Dems aren’t going to throw her out now and risk losing the seat in 2028.
So you’re saying throw in the towel and let a centrist have the seat at a time when Dems elsewhere are winning R districts. Just let Gleusenkamp Perez sabotage the rest of the Democratic Party next time she thinks the subject is too partisan.
Just let her get away with forcing ACA marketplace users in her district and the rest of the country regardless of their party affiliation to go bankrupt or go without healthcare without any accountability.
*smh*
Uh, yeah. We should let a centrist have a center-right district. Yes, someone (a little bit) to the left could maybe win in 2026 given the expected environment for that year. And then they’d lose in 2028. I would far rather have a reliable vote for a Democratic speaker even if she votes with Dems half of the rest of the time. Because the alternative in 2 years is a reliable vote for the Republican speaker and who will vote with the Republicans 99%+ of the time. 50% plus a Democratic speaker is better than 0% and a Republican.
Reply to boatgeek
November 13, 2025 at 4:27 pm
Looking forward to explaining this perspective to +20 million people struggling to make ends meet. “You see, we have to go with this centrist’s opinion because 2028…”
Maybe they’ll just die and decrease the surplus population and they won’t have to concern themselves with understanding this flimsy electoral excuse for math.
@Rayne If you’d rather have insurrectionist Joe Kent in Congress than Perez, I can’t help you. If you were talking about WA-07 in Seattle or any of the inner-ring suburban seats, I’d feel differently running a progressive challenge. I’d love to see a progressive challenge to Maria Cantwell too. But if we’re talking about a reddish seat, I’ll take the centrist Democrat every day over a Republican.
I’m sorry she offends you with a lack of purity, but that’s what it takes to win and hold this seat.
Finishing Glues’n’clamps Barrettes’ thought:
…that are compelled to raise their prices by virtue of the heartless GOP intransigence I’m enabling with this vote.”
It would be irresponsible not to remember that the entire House Democratic leadership and DCCC came out in favor of the conservative, corrupt, anti-abortion Cuellar when he was challenged from the left.
And yes, that includes Pelosi.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/23/nancy-pelosi-henry-cuellar/
The district at the time was eminently winnable by a progressive,
going for Biden over Trump, 53-46% in 2020, and Beto O’Rourke over Greg Abbott, 52-46% in 2022.
I don’t know what the internal math told the DCCC. IIRC a more progressive candidate didn’t win a primary across two different terms.
The calculus isn’t the same now.
Gluesenkamp-Perez is absolutely not a surprise to have voted for the funding bill. As mentioned above, she’s in an R+2 district. Yes, she won by 4-6 points in the last two elections, but she was also running against insurrectionist Joe Kent who was a hair too MAGA even for this district. Next year, she’s running against a longtime state senator who has enough of a veneer or reasonableness that she’s going to have a tough fight. Maybe not in a blue wave year, but the election afterwards certainly. Someone to the left of Perez is not going to hold that seat long term. I’d much rather have her in the seat sometimes crossing the aisle than a Republican.
The House vote was not about ending the shutdown; it was a vote on a new CR passed by the Senate. No Democratic votes for it were required for the government to re-open. Why would any Democrat who wasn’t moved by some reflexive cravenness cast a vote to screw their constituents? There is nothing in that CR for the people except government turning its back on them. Oh, I forgot: and retribution. Maybe they didn’t want to be seen opposing that. Might have made some MAGA folks mad.
In what way was passage of the CR not a vote to end the shutdown? Passage of the CR through Congress is precisely what ended the shutdown.
But OK, let’s answer your question. Because Perez is trying to stay elected in an R+2 district. She absolutely votes with the Republicans on some issues so that she can say that she’s independent of the Democratic leadership when she goes back home to campaign. And you hit the nail exactly on the head–none of these D votes were needed, so it’s a messaging thing. And honestly, the carping about her vote here is probably valuable to her when it’s time to campaign for the red-leaning independents. “I’m not beholden to the left wing. Look at how much they beat me up when I voted to re-open the government.” That is votes in the bank for her next November.
I don’t have any issue about primarying any of these congresspeople but I do wonder whether the implied assumption that a further holdout would have forced the Repubs to cave on ACA subsidies was never likely. Obviously we cannot run counterfactuals but the notion that Trump would give in on bolstering Obamacare seems a bit fanciful. I think the more plausible scenario was that in the next two weeks before Thanksgiving, Trump would lean on Thune to claim some obscure rule exemption from the filibuster and force the govt open and claim credit for it. Then the Dems would have successfully stolen defeat from the jaws of (modest but measurable in terms of Trump’s declining approval ratings) victory.
I don’t want to give the Dems too much credit but they certainly saw ending the filibuster as one scenario that would end the stand off. It was one of their talking points. That the GOP could end the shut down at any point if they just put the filibuster up for a vote.
But then that puts the onus of the CR and not funding the ACA subsidies squarely on the GOP. And you don’t get the spectacle of 8 Dems caving 5 days after an historic off year election night. You don’t get the optics of the 8 Dems caving to Walmart and/or the airline industry.
Well, I guess the only good thing that might come from this is that a large herd of MAGAts are now going to encounter bitter reality on the road to the mid-terms and finally realise that Trump’s oft-claimed intent to “improve” health care was a steaming load of old baloney. (Even though anyone who was paying even minimal attention knew that from the get-go, although unfortunately a lot of innocent working stiffs are going to suffer along with the informationally-vacuous.)
The herd you speak of will never, ever realize anything other than Trump is awesome, and right all the time, and its all Biden’s fault, and whatever it is, and will unnecessarily go to their graves without proper health care believing this
Trump’s idea of “improving healthcare” is to ensure profitability to whichever insurers cross his palm with silver, and that profitability will likely come at the expense of the most marginalized Americans.
If a system is what it does per Stafford Beer’s aphoris, then Trump is a grifter and not effective at governance. He’s not even been effective at running businesses; why should anyone trust him on healthcare?
People still become Nazis even though Hitler died in a bunker like a coward.
I grew up with people who became maga. They were ALWAYS magats, long before the name was coined.
You are deeply wrong to believe that more than a few will be ‘convinced’.
The only stategy for dealing with these people is containment. You will not convert them to new ideas. You must simply make it not worth their while to act out their hatred.
And be prepared to spend the rest of your life doing this, if that’s your mission.
I sympathize with the anti-primary peoples’ argument that a bad Democrat is better than a Republican in a purple district. But this is still consistent with waging a lively primary campaign from the left. If the challenger loses badly, nothing has changed for the worse. If the challenger loses well, the incumbent will start to worry about their left flank in the future. The only bad result is a challenger winning the primary and losing the general in a close election. And even this will encourage surviving incumbents to consider their left flank.
Jesus, there is no reason for a healthy person to buy that insurance. If you self-insured by putting *half* those premiums in the bank, you’d likely come out ahead.
Yes, I know that they likely can’t afford to put that kind of money aside — but still.