White House officials, at the start of the shutdown, were certain the Trump administration was better positioned to battle the left during a funding lapse.

In early October, several Trump administration officials had a friendly pool going of how long the shutdown would last. The White House, at the time, was confident Democrats would quickly fold.

No one guessed more than 10 days.

The account, relayed by a person close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking, underscores just how much the administration miscalculated the Democrats’ will to keep the government closed even amid furloughs and imperiled social programs like food assistance.

As the shutdown heads into its second month, Donald Trump is increasingly frustrated. On Thursday, he called for Republicans to abolish the filibuster to reopen the government — a plea he knows is futile, but that demonstrates his growing irritation with Democrats, said a second person close to the White House.

  • Beetschnapps@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Ultimately it’s the electorate but you are fucking the whole world over to limit it to single vote

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Just before a miscommunication happens: I’m a Canadian who votes in Federal, provincial, and municipal elections.

      I would have voted for Harris but I understand that many people felt, reasonably so, that she was forced upon them. They never got a chance to allow their voices to be heard and were simply told to deal with it. It was aggressively anti-democratic only so they could put a weak centrist in charge. The Dems lost because they told their base that they didn’t really give a shit about them and the country lost because there are tens of millions of piss-soaked cum rags who thought Donald Trump was gunna save them.

      • dvoraqs@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        As bad as the party is, I do place a lot of blame on fickle voters, who were so offended by the undemocratic process that led to the candidate change that they abstained or voted for somebody else instead of rejecting the “evil” guy in the only effective way we have.

        Voting should be a duty we perform every election instead of something we need to get “excited” about in order to follow through with it.

        • Soup@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          But you just said it right there. It wasn’t that people weren’t excited, it was because the DNC knew that people didn’t really like Biden all that much and yet kept him on way too late, then when they did switch it up they didn’t give anyone a chance. They spat in the face of democracy and I can totally understand why people are fed up and told them to go fuck themselves. I willing to bet many would have voted for Harris anyway if she had won a primary but that’s not what happened.

          Centrists are conservatives who only ever have one tactic and that’s where they threaten their voters with an even worse time so they can get away with bullshit. People are tired of that.

          • dvoraqs@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            Whatever. If you can’t tell, a “need for excitement” really means “unwilling to follow along if something happens along the way that I disagree with”.

            Really, how can those voters who did not vote for Kamala but generally support the left be so short-sighted not to see the consequences? They wanted to punish Democrats but ended up punishing the country and the world. They let perfect be the enemy of good.