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Oct. 5, 2025 19:23-20:00 - CSPAN

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Washington Journal Kyle Kondik

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pedro echevarria

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pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Kyle Kondick of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
		He's also the managing editor of Sabado's Crystal Ball and the co-author of the book, Campaign of Chaos, Trump Biden-Harris, and the 2024 American Election.
		Kyle Kondik, welcome back to C-SPAN.
unidentified		Thanks for having me.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Politics of shutdown.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's important to think about at this time?
unidentified		You know, I was coming over here this morning and I was looking at my phone and looking at, you know, New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.
		And, you know, it really wasn't a top story on those sites.
		I mean, obviously it's being covered a lot, but the point I just wanted to make is that this does not seem like an all-consuming sort of thing, even though, I mean, it's obviously it's a big story and you're going to reach a point where people are going to start missing paychecks.
		So this probably will turn into maybe a bigger deal later on, but I don't necessarily know if it's a huge national thing right now.
		I think it was maybe when it was first announced, but then we've gone several days and I just don't necessarily know if it's breaking through.
		So when you're thinking about who's going to feel the political pain here, that's always the question we ask.
		Typically you would say, well, it's the Democrats because they're the ones who aren't agreeing to sort of the status quo.
		The Democrats are saying, hey, wait a second, we can't trust this administration to make any deals anyway.
		They're going to go back and impound the funding or whatever.
		They have good cards to play, I think, on healthcare.
		And polling suggests that to the extent people are paying attention, Republicans are getting more blame.
		But again, it doesn't feel like some sort of huge story in the way I felt, like 2013, for instance.
		I guess I just sort of felt it was kind of a kind of a bigger deal.
		Maybe it'll get to that point later on in this month.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And a piece you recently took wrote about it, you used the phrase, still he fights when it comes to the Democratic approach to this.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Can you elaborate on that piece?
unidentified		So prior or after Mitt Romney lost in 2012 and you had like the Tea Party and other things on the Republican side, I think there was this desire on the Republican side for like, hey, we, you know, we, John McCain, he was too moderate.
		You know, Mitt Romney was too moderate.
		We, you know, we need a fighter.
		And I think that Ted Cruz and the Tea Party and, you know, they use that shutdown to try to say, hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to fight.
		And Democrats haven't necessarily had that sort of impulse or that strong of an impulse, but the Democrats are starting to face the same problems Republicans did a dozen years ago.
		Democrats all of a sudden don't like their leaders.
		They're less likely to express a favorable attitude about their party.
		And they feel like they're getting run over by the Trump administration, which has been very aggressive, more so the second time than the first time.
		And so there's this desire to fight, to do something.
		And after Chuck Schumer decided not to pick, you know, not to shut the government down in March, his numbers took a big hit.
		And so they're just Democrats are sort of feeling it, I think, from their base in a way that they historically haven't.
		And that's sort of more reminiscent of what we're used to from Republicans.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Remind people what took place in March and what led Senator Schumer to take that action.
unidentified		So there was sort of another sort of similar situation where there had to be, I think it was a continuing resolution that's actually led up to this point now when it ran out.
		And so just like now, back in March, the Senate had to, you know, because the filibuster had to provide 60 votes to pass this.
		And, you know, the Republicans only have 53.
		And so the Democrats needed to provide votes to prevent a shutdown back in March.
		They decided not to.
		I think there were 10 Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, who voted for that deal.
		And again, they sort of got beat up for it.
		Now, in hindsight, do I think that the Democrats made a bad decision back then?
		I don't necessarily think that they did.
		You also got to remember that was right around the time of Trump doing the quote-unquote liberation day, the tariff announcements and all that.
		And that's also the time where Trump's approval rating, which has been more robust in his second term, but is still relatively weak.
		That's around the time that it turned net negative.
		If they had done a shutdown back in March, would that have played out any differently?
		I don't necessarily, I think maybe it would have.
		But again, the sort of rule of thumb is that the party that doesn't vote for the quote-unquote clean CR is the one that's responsible for it.
		But it's easy for me to say that the public's ultimately going to make a determination one way or the other.
		But they may also just not necessarily be paying all that much attention to it either.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		If you want to ask your thoughts about the politics behind the shutdown, 202748-8001 for Republicans, 202748-8000 for Democrats, Independents, 202748-8002.
		You can text Susser's Law.
		It's at 202-748-8003.
		You can also use that number if you're a federal employee and you're directly impacted by what's going on with the shutdown.
		And you can also post on Facebook and OnX.
		Let's talk about the Republicans.
		Mike Johnson decides not even to come back next week.
		What do you think of that as a strategy?
unidentified		I sort of feel like they might be better off if they were actually just coming back and voting on this thing.
		Again, I mean, I know it's already passed the House, which is why they don't necessarily have to come back.
		They just kick this to the Senate.
		They also run the risk of allowing the president and the Senate to come up with an agreement that then they just have to sort of swallow later.
		You know, there is also another thing going on here completely unrelated to the shutdown, but that is that so the Democrats just held a safe House seat in a special election in Arizona.
		Adelita Grijalva won a special election.
		And whenever she's sworn in, she's not sworn in yet because the Republicans are delaying it because the House isn't in regular session.
		She will be the 218 signatory to this discharge petition related to files related to Jeffrey Epstein, which of course has been a thorn in the side of the Trump White House.
		They don't want the House to vote on that.
		And so one of the ways you could interpret it is that this isn't really about to shut down at all, or maybe it's partially about to shut down, but it's also about just sort of kicking a can down the road on letting her be sworn in and then having this, you know, the discharge position, discharge petition would allow the House to vote on something that, you know, that isn't supported by leadership.
		And so and there probably would be 218 votes to vote in favor of releasing these files.
		It would just be overwhelmingly Democrats, but there are a handful of Republicans who have signed on too, which is why it's right on the threshold of being of getting that magic 218 number.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the president's role in a shutdown?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		You can talk about Trump, but historically, what role do they play typically?
unidentified		You know, it sort of varies.
		You know, in 2019, Trump himself kind of precipitated a shutdown because he was demanding funding for the border wall and the Democratic-controlled House didn't want to do it.
		Back in 2013, it was Barack Obama and the Democrats sort of with the status quo position, which is kind of where Republicans are right now.
		And, you know, I feel like in some ways, Trump is kind of turning up the temperature a little bit.
		And he's doing that in part through Russ Vogt, the OMB director, who is starting to threaten essentially blue states with, hey, we're going to turn off this funding, we're going to turn off that funding.
		And I do wonder if there is this inherent kind of chaos that's associated with Trump that I think in some ways could be politically helpful for him.
		But when you're thinking about who is to blame for a shutdown, which is a chaotic sort of thing, I wonder if to some people the default is just, oh, well, Trump's responsible.
		And again, Democrats are arguing Republicans are responsible anyway because they're not negotiating on extending these tax credits for the Affordable Care Act plans, or subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans.
		But again, typically the position is that if you're in support of the sort of status quo, that's an easier position to defend than if you're using a shutdown to try to enact changes, which is what the Democrats are trying to do.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Our guest is the managing editor at Sabado's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
unidentified		What is that?
		Center for Politics been around at UVA for a quarter century.
		We do a lot of things.
		We have classes.
		We have civics education programs for K-12 schools.
		We do a lot of programs at the university.
		I'm moderating a panel on Wednesday.
		We do all sorts of stuff.
		And led by Professor Larry Sabado, who's been an institution at UVA going back to the 1970s.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And the Crystal Ball.
unidentified		Crystal Ball is a usually twice weekly newsletter, free to sign up, centerforpolitics.org backslash crystal ball.
		We talk about elections.
		We try to forecast elections.
		I wrote about the shutdown this week.
		We got elections coming up just about a month away in Virginia, New Jersey, California, some other places.
		And then, of course, we're looking ahead to the midterm too.
		So one of the big topics we've dealt with this year is redistricting and sort of looking at the nuts and bolts of how the district's changing, whether these things are legal or not, all sorts of stuff.
		So if you're interested in electoral politics, please sign up.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		We'll talk about those elections in a bit.
		Let's hear from Jim.
		Jim's in Maryland, Republican line for our guest, Kyle Kondick.
		Jim, go ahead.
unidentified		I don't.
		Let's go back to 2013.
		This is going to lead to the shutdown, but Harry Reed pulled the trigger on the first nuclear option.
		Okay.
		And then so he could get all justices except for Supremes, I guess.
		Then I remember I was watching when Mitch McConnell said, you're going to regret this.
		I guess Harry thought he was going to be in there forever.
		Well, then Mitch McConnell did the same thing in 2017 so that they could get Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court.
		Okay.
		Now you can blame the Supreme Court we have on Harry Reid.
		And I think Jon Thune's going to come under some pressure and finally pull the trigger on the last nuclear option because what's the difference?
		I mean, they say, oh, then the Senate will be just like the House.
		Who cares?
		I mean, big deal.
		So got your point, Jim.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thanks.
unidentified		Marjorie Taylor Green, a fairly prominent House Republican from Georgia, she's saying that Jon Thune should just have Republicans do away with the filibuster and just use eliminate the 60-vote threshold, and that would allow them to pass the CR through the Senate because the CR in the Senate has had 55 votes.
		So clearly there's a majority in the Senate for it.
		But the Senate is a, you know, you need a three-fifths majority basically to do many things, not everything.
		A lot of the budget reconciliation process is just a simple majority vote, and that's how a lot of our sort of signature policy gets made.
		But yeah, I mean, there's this sort of escalating kind of arms race in terms of making the Senate kind of more of a straight majority chamber.
		And maybe we're headed there.
		I don't know if this is going to be what would cause that, because I would think that the party that does away with the filibuster for good is going to do it in favor of some giant legislative achievement or giant legislative goal.
		This is not that, I don't think.
		But yeah, I mean, I could imagine that happening at some point.
		Again, not necessarily here, and the caller recounts the history accurately as far as I know.
		I mean, there's, again, there's sort of tit for tat on judges in particular.
		And there was just one about Republicans in the Senate trying to make it faster to confirm some of Trump's nominees.
		So again, this is sort of an ongoing thing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Florida, Democrats line.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		James, hello.
unidentified		Good morning, gentlemen.
		Good morning.
		Thank you.
		Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
		I'm going to talk about the Affordable Care Act.
		I have a dear friend.
		She's a Republican, but she had diabetes, and it took her eyesight and her kidneys.
		So she was on the machine every three times a week and all that.
		In 2018, she had $1.7 million in medical bill.
		If it was the old plan, of course, you all know that it was only cover up to a million dollars.
		Then after that, you're responsible for 100%.
		This affordable care makes a big difference for individuals who own business of their own business.
		Or individuals like my son works for a company that do not have medical insurance through them.
		He'd have to go out and they've got an Affordable Care Act.
		The Republican need to wake up and smell the copy and think about the American people.
		It is vital that this affordable care.
		And we're the only country in the world to have commercial health insurance where all other countries have government-run health care.
		And people said, oh, you'd be waiting for six months for medical care.
		It's happening now when we're not in a good money.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha, James.
		Thank you for bringing that up.
		That center of the politics behind everything going back and forth between the Republicans and the Democrats.
unidentified		Yeah, I mean, the caller makes a good point about that.
		ACA is very important to a lot of different people.
		There are people who get coverage now who didn't have it before.
		And even in the midst of this shutdown, Republicans don't want to essentially be pushed through the shutdown to negotiate on these ACA subsidies.
		But they are concerned about it.
		There's reporting about that.
		And maybe there would be some sort of deal.
		And what's happening with the shutdown, it kind of reminds me of, I talked about redistricting earlier.
		So in Texas, Texas has a new Republican-leaning map that the White House asked for.
		It should allow the Republicans to win at least a few more extra seats in Texas.
		But one of the things that the Texas Democrats did is they broke quorum, which is something you can do in Texas.
		They left the state.
		And they weren't really going to stop this redistricting plan, but by breaking quorum, they were, they would argue, able to bring more attention to it.
		And so it sort of makes it a bigger deal.
		And maybe that's what the shutdown is doing for Democrats now federally in that they want to make a big deal about the ACA.
		You know, it's interesting that the 2013 shutdown fight was about the ACA too.
		Republicans tried to use it to block or delay implementation of the ACA.
		But the ACA was such a, quote-unquote Obamacare was such an anvil for Democrats during the Obama years.
		But then in the Trump years, it became a political asset.
		And I think it continues to be a political asset.
		Democrats, despite having a lot of problems in terms of how they're viewed as a party, Democrats do still have an advantage on the health care issue.
		And I think they feel like they've got a good argument on this and an argument that even a lot of Republicans agree with.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of Democrats consistently, and this is from Newsweek, but you've seen it too, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, and then Independent Angus King supporting the Republican effort.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		What's the best way to think about why they're doing that?
unidentified		You know, Fetterman has said specifically that he doesn't really believe in shutdowns.
		I think the other two are kind of in a similar vein there.
		I think what Republicans would say is, hey, we're unified, you guys are not.
		And so that's part of it, too.
		And I think Republicans are probably hopeful that over time they could chip away more senators.
		But the other Democrats have generally stood firm here.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Let's go to Alexis.
		Alexis is in Michigan, in Detroit, Independent Line.
		You're on with Kyle Condick.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I want to follow up on a call you had earlier, Pedro.
		Some guy from Tampa, I think, was giving a statistic that some percentage of some percentage of federal workers were Democrats.
		How would someone know that?
		Do you have a list of all the federal employees and what their party affiliation is?
		I don't quite get that.
		So to follow up on that question, I want to know some Democrat demographic statistics.
		I'm assuming Maryland and Virginia have the most federal employees, but I don't know.
		Can somebody tell me what are the top three states that have federal employees?
		And then deeper dive, I'd like to know what percentage, if you know, you know, male, female, black, white, and the most important thing I'd like to know is what percentage of the federal workforce is foreign-born thinks?
		I don't have those statistics at hand.
		I can tell you that, you know, Virginia and Maryland obviously do rank pretty highly in terms of federal workers.
		And this is why we've got these elections coming up in Virginia in November, why you see sort of a particular focus on Virginia and discussions.
		And it's not just Northern Virginia and, of course, its proximity to Washington, D.C.
		But there's also a very heavy military presence in Hampton Roads in Norfolk.
		Norfolk's biggest, I believe it's the biggest naval base in the world.
		So you have a lot of folks down there, and those are some people who are going to be missing paychecks.
		Although, again, they'll be made whole, assuming that there's some sort of agreement here.
		In terms of the political leanings of federal workers, I don't think there would necessarily be any statistics about that.
		I think there were some numbers floating around about political donations that maybe skewed Democratic, although the vast majority of federal workers probably aren't giving donations.
		I don't know that with 100% certainty, but that would be my guess anyway.
		So the other ones I would have to look up later on.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I suppose Democrats would say, maybe some Republicans, that regardless of what happens, federal employees, depending on their politics regards of that, are affected at the end of the day.
unidentified		Yeah, and look, there are people who And go and who are sort of specifically kind of political appointees that serve at the pleasure of the president.
		And so, you know, when a Biden leaves office, those people all leave office with him.
		And, you know, when Trump leaves office, you know, particularly if there's a Democrat who takes over in 2029, that those people will go.
		I think what the Trump administration and some of the kind of intellectual architects of the Trump administration sort of believe that, oh, well, there's this quote-unquote deep state and it's heavily Democratic and therefore it's sort of impeding them.
		And so they want sort of more ability to hire and fire people and sort of do away with some civil service protections for certain jobs.
		But do you really want, I mean, again, different people have different reactions to this, but we went through this whole fight in the United States in the late 18th century about whether we should have civil service requirements for jobs and how much patronage you would have.
		And I think that this current administration takes almost kind of like a pre-civil service reform view to that.
		And they think more about Andrew Jackson, who I believe the president has a portrait of Andrew Jackson in his office.
		And Jackson was a very sort of disruptive force in the same way that I think that Trump is.
		Jackson was associated with what was called the spoil system, which was that, you know, you win the election, you basically bring in all your people to run the government and to have the jobs in the government.
		We sort of moved away from that as a country, but I feel like this administration is sort of more supportive of kind of that older style thinking about it.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Alexis, are you still there?
unidentified		Yeah.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I want to let you know that the Washington Post, as of December of last year, provided a map where federal workers live in the United States.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		It may not give you the most complete up-to-date data, but at least it's a starting point.
unidentified		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, let's hear from Richard.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Richard, in Colorado, Republican line, go ahead.
unidentified		Yeah, first I'd say to say something I like to show when he was in, he had more common sense to the Democratic Party than anybody.
		And I wish he would have come over to the Republican Party because I thought that he fit more in the Republican Party than the Democratic part.
		The only one criticism I had as far as this kind of last term under Biden was you were against that, oh, the Infrastructure Act because it really wasn't spending on the infrastructure and it was wasting a lot of money and then you ended up voting for it.
		And you were really the one that was keeping it from getting passed.
		Kind of like an excellent.
		And then I'd like to comment on budget system.
		You know, private industry goes through these turmoils all the time where they have to cut employees or they got reduced costs in order to save a company.
		So this is not uncommon in the American workforce.
		So why should the federal government be protected any different than what the common people are in the private workforce?
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Richard in Colorado.
unidentified		I didn't quite catch if the caller was talking.
unidentified		I think the caller was talking about Joe Manchin.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		I believe so, yeah.
unidentified		And, you know, he mentioned something about switching parties, and that actually made me think of John Fetterman, Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, who actually has better favorability with Republicans now in Pennsylvania.
		There was a Quinnipiac poll that came out that suggested that.
		Fetterman has said he's not going to switch parties, but the Republicans are really kind of being nice to him.
		They're trying to, I think they're trying to cultivate him a little bit, and he's facing a lot of criticism for Democrats, in part because of his views on Israel and Gaza and a number of other things.
		But that's just something interesting to watch.
		Fetterman's term is not up until 2028.
		I don't necessarily even know if he's going to run for another term, but it is kind of reminiscent of Kirsten Sinema when she was a Democratic senator from Arizona.
		She never left the Democratic caucus.
		She did become an independent, though, and she only served for one term.
		In terms of protections for the workforce, obviously, if the federal government could lay people off just like anyone else, I guess the criticism of Trump is that the way in which they're doing it, Democrats argue is basically illegal.
		And the other thing about the federal government is that so much of the cost of it is tied up in Social Security and Medicare and the sorts of things that if you really want to save big money, you have to cut places that aren't just as simple as laying off people.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		As far as the shutdown impacting elections, you can talk about 2026, but let's look at a couple of the weeks of the elections that take place, particularly those governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey.
unidentified		Yeah, there was a great report in Semaphore.
		Dave Weigel and one of his colleagues wrote about it.
		And this was as of several days ago, but they didn't really see, they were talking to people in New Jersey and Virginia.
		They didn't really see that there was much of an impact.
		I haven't necessarily heard there's much of an impact.
		I did mention Virginia is pretty high on the list in terms of federal workers, but then it's also a question of who's blamed.
		And this is why, again, it's easy to say, oh, well, the Democrats aren't voting for the clean CR, so therefore they're responsible.
		But the public may react to it in a totally different way, and it might be wound up in their feelings about Trump.
		If Trump uses the shutdown as a pretext to lay people off, then it's easy to blame him if you're someone who's affected by that.
		So it doesn't seem like there's a big impact as of now.
		Maybe that could change over the course of the month.
		You have people already voting.
		In Virginia, you've got about 350,000 votes cast, which is probably going to be more than 10% of the total.
		In New Jersey, there's a number of mail ballots.
		I think it's fewer because Virginia has this early in-person voting going on.
		But you're starting to see votes already trickle in in these races.
		And so whatever impact there is, maybe it would be less than if it was a month ago because some people have already voted.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		And 26 is?
unidentified		You know, the one thing I thought about is that so in 2013, obviously Republicans really took it on the chin during the shutdown fight.
		Again, it was right around this time, you know, throughout the month of October.
		You know, Democrats actually took like a half a dozen point lead on the House generic ballot polling, which is sort of a good marker as to how people are going to vote in the House.
		You know, Republicans ended up winning the House easily.
		They actually won their biggest majority since before the Great Depression.
		They netted nine Senate seats, so they flipped control of the Senate.
		We had a caller referring to Harry Reid, the then Senate majority leader.
		He lost that position in 2014.
		Mitch McConnell, a Republican, became the Senate majority leader then.
		There was one race in particular where the shutdown did seem to have some lingering impact, and that was one of the few kind of weak spots for Republicans is that there were a couple of Republican incumbents who lost who had sort of made basically boneheaded comments.
		One of them, Lee Terry, Republican from Nebraska too, which is the Omaha district that Don Bacon represents now, he had made a comment about he didn't want to give up his paycheck from the shutdown.
		And members of Congress are paid, I think, regardless of whether the shutdown.
		And that was used against him in the campaign.
		Now, there were other things that he had problems with.
		So I'm sort of looking to see if there's anything like that that comes out of this fight, but for the most part, I wouldn't expect it to be a big thing.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		This is Kyle Condic joining us for this conversation.
		We'll go to Michigan Democrats line.
		We'll hear from Brian.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey, good afternoon, Eric.
		Good morning, guys.
		How are you doing today?
		Good.
		Good.
		Hey, I wanted to give you a quick call here.
		Thanks for taking my call for a call.
		But in regards to the shutdown, I believe that the Democrats should have shut down the government.
		There is no other way that the Republicans were listening.
		They did all of their dealings behind closed doors.
		They did not attempt to talk to the Democrats or reach out across the aisle or give them any sense of being part of the negotiations.
		My second point is: illegal immigrants do not receive social security or Medicare, Medicaid.
		It's a lie.
		And I'm so sick of Republicans getting on TV and lying and saying that they get these benefits that they don't get.
		So, you know, what do they have to gain?
		And the gain is the fact that they can lie and continue to have their base just to continue to believe in what they're believing in.
		But the ultimate thing is we're fighting left or right.
		And the fight should be against the billionaires.
		The billionaires are the ones who are garning off this money.
		They're the ones who are the ones who are being the beneficiaries of all of the decisions.
		And we're fighting above ourselves for pennies.
		It's another deal today, as far as I can see.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Okay, that's Brian in Michigan.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		He's back to this idea of the fight.
unidentified		Yeah, yeah.
		And I think that the caller sort of makes the point as to, hey, this is the one lever is Democrats that we have to pull.
		And so therefore, let's pull it and hope that you could sort of, again, peg it to the Affordable Care Act, an issue that the Democrats still have an advantage on.
		And also that, you know, there is this issue.
		And I think it's a real complaint from the Democratic side that any budget agreement they come up with, they can't necessarily trust the White House to go forward with.
		They've already tried these quote-unquote pocket rescissions.
		And basically, the White House is, I think, trying to set up sort of a legal fight in which they can sort of make the argument that they can impound funds.
		This goes back.
		There's a big Supreme Court decision.
		I think it was during the Nixon administration because Nixon tried to do that too.
		It's like, you know, Congress is going to appropriate this money.
		Well, I'm not going to spend it.
		And the court said, you know, the executive has to spend it.
		But, you know, I don't necessarily know what this court would say about it, but it is something that seems to be on the horizon here.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		From Ohio, this is Terry, Independent Lying.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for calling.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Hi.
		Yeah.
		So I just want to echo the last few points have been right spot on.
		I mean, the fact of the matter is, until the billionaires and millionaires start getting taxed, we're not getting anywhere.
		And the Supreme Court has upheld what Trump's been doing without any possibility of intervention at all.
		And so those are the two things that are causing the biggest problems here.
		So yeah, right now we have a Republican Party and the president going wild that is killing our country.
		Those are the two things, really.
		That's all.
		That's all I have to say today.
		I want to thank everybody and listening intently to the commentary and love it.
		Thank you.
pedro echevarria ▲ ● ▼		That's Terry in Ohio.
		Shutdown 35 days.
		When do we start seeing thawing when it comes to this?
unidentified		It's a great question.
		I think October 15th is the sort of the missed paycheck point.
		And so that becomes a problem.
		You've got a lot of people who are living paycheck to paycheck.
		I mean, obviously they need to be paid.
		And so maybe sort of the back half of the month, the House isn't in session as we talked about earlier.
		And they were supposed to come back next week or rather tomorrow.
		They're not doing that.
		And so, you know, I don't necessarily see a resolution coming this week.
		And, you know, I don't know what the end game is.
		And again, I don't, it doesn't really feel like either side is necessarily having its feet held to the fire.
		You know, one thing I'm curious about is I do think the polls will help set the direction of this.
		If, you know, again, the sort of the general breakdown was that if you said, hey, who's responsible?
		You know, Trump and the Republicans, the Democrats, or both equally, or, you know, no opinion, you know, both equally was like 25, 30% or something.
		Democrats are maybe 25 to 30%, and the Republicans were 40%.
		Maybe my math isn't quite accurate there.
		But basically, the Republicans are getting more blame, but it was sort of squishy.
		Does that change?
		Is there a swing one way or the other?
		And that could maybe help inform the discussion.
		What if there actually is an impact on some of these elections we have coming up?
		What if there's a problem for the Democrats in Virginia?
		I'm just hypothetically, I think Abigail Spanberger's in good shape in that race.
		But what if we get to a point where there's some sort of problem?
		Does that change the Democrats' opinion on it at all?
		I just don't know.
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