The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 45
Nov. 10, 2025
This week:
- Democrats sweep the 2024 off-year races
- Suddenly give in on the shutdown
- Seven of the eight Dems crossing over to end the shutdown won’t face consquences
Outlook
2025 Elections: If it can be explained in as few words as possible, here it is: Democrats needed to keep the bees angry just long enough, and not at them.
As some commentators had suspected, part of their strategy in staging a government shutdown in the U.S. Senate was likely to amp up turnout among idled government workers, especially in Northern Virginia. And early voter turnout turnout in that Virginia election — in which Democrats swept — reportedly hit 1.4 million, up significantly from 1.1 million in 2021. Overall turnout, at about 3.4 million, was the highest ever for a non-presidential election in the Commonwealth.
This is not the only reason Democrats did so well last Tuesday in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere. With President Trump in the White House, all of the historic trends favored them, just as they favored Govs. Glenn Youngkin (R) in 2021 and Bob McDonnell (R) in 2009, right after Democratic presidents were inaugurated, and Chris Christie in New Jersey that same year.
Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) also just proved to be a weak candidate at the top of the Republican ticket. Her brutal 15-point margin of loss was simply too great for any down-ticket Republican to overcome, including Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), who by all accounts had run an excellent campaign and had done his government job well during his first term in office.
Shutdown over: We mentioned last week that the cynicism behind the shutdown strategy might be revealed immediately after the elections when Democrats agree to end the shutdown without any new deal being cut. And sure enough, on Sunday night, six Democrats voted with nearly all Republicans in a test vote that showed they have 60 votes and the government will soon reopen. The deal they made is the exact same one they could have made in late September — a clean continuing resolution and a promise to hold a Senate vote on the unrelated health insurance company subsidies they had chosen as their shutdown demand. This is, essentially, the same deal that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) had offered before the shutdown began.
Leftists activists are online, furious about this even now, accusing Democratic senators of “throwing the game.” But the Democrats’ problem, much like the Republicans of 2013, was that they had no plan of victory. There was no way Republicans, from the majority, were going to just add trillions of dollars to the budget for them, and they couldn’t keep the government closed much longer, with the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons coming up and air travel set to be massively disrupted.
Who were the eight? Note exactly which Democratic senators — there were eight — voted to end the shutdown. With airline delays becoming a problem and practically all senators recognizing the unsustainability of the shutdown, these senators can be thanked for biting the bullet. But notice that most and perhaps all of them will face minimal consequences.
- Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are both retiring and therefore will face no blowback in any future primary. Durbin, a liberal and a member of Democratic leadership, was probably just giving political cover to whoever else would have had to provide the 60th vote if he hadn’t.
- Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) may be one senator whose constituency will tolerate his vote, given its large number of government employees. He arguably may have even been a bit late to the game in placating restless government employee unions who had been demanding Democrats fund the government for weeks already. In any case, he just won re-election one year ago and won’t face the voters again until 2030.
- Sens. Angus King (I-Maine), an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, doesn’t have to run in a Democratic primary. This also wasn’t his first time voting to reopen the government in the last 40 days.
- Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) have been leaning into this all along, having already voted multiple times in the last 40 days to reopen the government.
That accounts for six of the eight Democrats who just voted to reopen the government. This leaves only two Democrats who could face any additional repercussions from their party’s left wing for taking yesterday’s vote: Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) (who will turn 70 years old in 2028, when her seat comes up for re-election) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who isn’t up until 2030, when she will turn 73.
Note that not a single one of these senators is currently in cycle. Quite a coincidence.
In short, with the possible exception of Fetterman — who seems to relish kicking the hive and inviting a potential primary challenge on other issues as well such as Israel — nobody is taking any risks here.
Perhaps a more charitable and less cynical interpretation would be to say that if Democrats had agreed to reopen the government before Election Day, it would have gone very badly for them. It would have shattered morale on the political Left so badly that the election results might have reflected it. Imagine the furious reaction Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) got in March when agreed to keep the government open through September, but then imagine it had happened right before an election. It could have been devastating.
House 2026
Redistricting: One consequence of the drubbing that Virginia Republicans just received is that Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) will attempt to push a redistricting referendum that could add two additional seats to her party’s total in time for the 2026 elections. Along with the Democrats’ win in throwing out their nonpartisan commission map in California, this would likely leave the redistricting game at par, until and unless Alabama, Louisiana and Florida (and perhaps others) draw new maps after the upcoming Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais that may outlaw racial gerrymandering.
Maine-2: Rep. Jared Golden’s (D) abrupt decision not to run for re-election probably gives Republicans their best shot in more than a decade at winning his northern Maine and Downeast district. Former Gov. Paul LePage (R) is already in the race and favored for the Republican nomination.
Senate 2026
Texas: Don’t want Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) as the Republican nominee in Texas? Then you’d probably better vote for Rep. Wesley Hunt (R) — at least according to a poll by Stratus Intelligence on behalf of a PAC supporting Hunt. The poll shows Hunt defeating either Paxton, a controversial figure, or Cornyn, out of favor with his base, by four and eight points, respectively, in a hypothetical head-to-head runoff. Paxton beats Cornyn in such a runoff by eight points. There can be no “spoilers” in this March primary, since it goes to a May runoff if no one gets to 50 percent.
