General Discussion

I know who voted yes, who voted no, who is up for re-election, who isn't, etc.

I understand that anger. I empathize with it.

I just don't believe that the GOP was ever going to relent. I think we've seen like maybe, one time, where the GOP was in a similar position to kill the ACA and totally would have had John McCain not had his moment of clarity, realizing that they were not offering any viable replacement (and he probably wanted to give Trump an L out of spite too).

The cruelty is the point with these people. I fully believe they would've said to hell with all the people who were being harmed or about to be harmed by the shut down and let those people go down in flames without a care in the world. That is who they are at this point in history. And I also believe they would've eventually managed to turn public opinion against the Democrats. We always seem to have the deck stacked against us when it comes to stuff like that. The media and WAY too many voters are perfectly fine with accepting that Republicans are childish assholes and that Democrats have to always be the adults in the room.

"Its okay if you are a Republican" is a real thing.

Until someone can provide a realistic argument that supports the notion that there was some other path that would've came to fruition, then I also understand why those Dems backed off. They wanted to stop what bleeding they could.

We give the American voters too much credit. Most of us (Americans) are willfully uninformed people with short attention spans and short term memories. And those are the kinds of voters that handed the GOP everything in 2024. Elections have consequences... its a tired cliche' but its also true.