'If You Can Keep It': The Results Of The 2025 Election

This message comes from Data IQ. AI is everywhere, but companies struggle to prove results. For that, they need people, orchestration, and governance working as one. Data IQ is the platform for AI success, built to bring it all together. Visit D-A-T-A-I-U.com slash NPR. You're listening to the 1A podcast. I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwillick. The longest government shut down in history could be ending soon. Last night, senators voted 60 to 40 to begin debating on a spending bill to reopen the government. A coalition of eight Democrats broke with their party and voted with Republicans on the measure. Here's Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota. From the truly precarious situation we are in with regard to air travel to the fact that our staffs have been working without pay for a full 40 days now, all of us. Republicans and Democrats who support this bill know that the time to act is now. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York voted no, along with the majority of his party. I must vote no. This health care crisis is so severe, so urgent, so devastating for families back home that I cannot in good faith support this CR. But many Democrats are unhappy with Chuck Schumer and his inability to rally all members of his party. Those unhappy with the deal includes some of the biggest winners from last week's election, newly elected New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and California Governor Gavin Newsom, who called the vote, quote, a betrayal of working Americans on social media last night. Today, we break down some of the results of last week's election and why they matter as part of If You Can Keep It, our weekly series on the State of Democracy. But first, What happened last night and what does it say about Democrats that a small group of senators would fold on the shutdown just days after their party won big across the country? We get into that after the break. Stay with us.

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going to find that out. There's a couple of things that I would say. One, just to kind of put this in the context of last week's elections, you know, Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger in Virginia did use part of her victory speech to call for Congress to figure out how to end this thing. And so I think that's worth sort of throwing into the pot there that, you know, she is Democrats won big in Virginia. Now we have this split among the two senators from the state. Kane emphasized that the deal guarantees a vote to extend the ACA tax credits, of course, and protects federal workers. That's a big deal in Virginia, you know, because of the large federal workforce that we have in the Commonwealth. Also worth noting that he emphasized that this, that the deal. will guarantee federal workers on furlough back pay. That is a law that he passed himself and then he's happy to talk to you about in 2019. So it's interesting that, you know, he felt that it was necessary to include that in, you know, this plan. And, you know, Warner, for his part, said this still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they're going to pay for their health care and said he couldn't support it for that reason. It is very unusual. for the two of them to break ranks. They usually are pretty much united in, you know, policy questions like this. And second, maybe worth mentioning that Warner is up for reelection next year. Obviously, this is speculation, but I wonder how that played into his decision to, you know, to continue holding out for something more. Meanwhile, not far away in New Jersey, Democrats also won big last week. They scored a supermajority in. New Jersey's General Assembly, and every single county in Virginia shifted blue on Tuesday. The Democratic nominee for governor, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, she won the governor's race there. She spoke to ABC 7 in New York about what the race means for Democrats there. I moved every single county of all 21 counties to the left. That is a shot across the bow. That is a warning sign for Republicans. that they need to start actually taking governing seriously and serving the people of this country and certainly of New Jersey. Kenneth, you wouldn't know it from what Mikie Sherrill is saying to look at Washington and watch Democrats, a small group of Democrats fold on the shutdown. But tie these things together with us. Mikie Sherrill beat Jack Ciattarelli in the governor's race. How much of this race was about Donald Trump? and his popularity or lack thereof. I would say based on the results, a huge part of it is based on Donald Trump. And to point out something, a lot of the polls saw this as a much tighter race, maybe a single-digit victory, but two things that I pointed out are late last week. One, we didn't have a President Trump acting in real time. in a state where he's underwater. Four years ago, Jack Chitterrelli brought the contest a lot closer than anybody expected, but President Trump was out of office. But this time around, Trump was the X factor in this case. Now, Margaret, looking at last week's election results, every county in Virginia shifted towards Democrats, just like in New Jersey. Now, you spoke with voters leading up to the election.

What issues did they tell you were driving them to the polls? Yeah. I mean, you definitely heard about cost of living, which, of course, you know, I think affordability has sort of become the buzzword of last week's elections in many ways. But in Virginia, you know, federal workforce concerns partially the shutdown, but I would say more so kind of doge and federal firings overall were a big theme. A lot of people who, you know, really, you know, their livelihoods are tied to. what happens in the federal government through, you know, whether directly or indirectly. And, you know, so that was really important to them. You know, I, and I would say that this was almost a more emotional election for a lot of Virginia voters than, you know, I had ever seen, you know, I had a woman breakdown on me, you know, when just having just cast her about her vote and I just asked her why she voted and she just, you know, there was just, you know, her husband was on furlough, her. Sorry, her husband was working without pay, actually. It was a federal employee. And, you know, she had concerns about education and all kinds of things. So, you know, I think that there's never one thing that, you know, motivates people's votes. Certainly resistance to Trump was part of it. And certainly, I think, you know, affordability and concerns about the cost of living were part of it. Kenneth, what about in New Jersey? Affordability is a buzzword. there too it kind of is everywhere even if it doesn't describe the full picture of the election but i look at a place like the say it county you know just across the river from new york city um where Donald Trump won the county by three points in 2024. That county is over 42% Latino, according to the census in 2020, and he was the first Republican candidate to win there since 92. But last week, Mikie Sherrill, the new governor-elect who we mentioned, she won the county by 15 points, and overall led with Latinos by 30 points statewide. So there's some big things going on in New Jersey. Absolutely. Affordability, same as Virginia is an important factor up in New Jersey, but specific to Passa County and how the Latino vote flipped from red just last year to... blue this year, those gains that Trump was able to obtain in Pisaic County was wiped down in a year. So in addition to affordability, you also had issues with federal immigration agents. There were concerns that they were just... randomly picking people off the street, and also specific to North Jersey, the issues with the gateway tunnel. This is the new tunnel that will run between New Jersey and Manhattan, and President Trump announced on Twitter or X that funding was going to be withheld. Well,

That's a big deal if you're in North Jersey and you commute to Manhattan every day. 18 billion dollars, that project. 18 billion dollars. So those three issues, especially in North Jersey, was a concern. South Jersey, definitely affordability. It's not as prosperous as North Jersey, to say the least. You have some of the poorest counties in the state. And just look at the map now, three counties that went. read for Jack Ciattarelli four years ago, they went blue for Mikie Sherrill, Gloucester, Cumberland, and Atlanta County. Margaret, I'm curious what questions you have as a reporter covering Northern Virginia. Now that we have the election results, we know who's going to be running this state in the coming year. What are your outstanding questions? Yeah, I mean, I think if I can be forgiven quoting Lin-Manuel Miranda, winning is easy, but governing is harder. And, you know, look, there are a lot of things that will be on Abigail Spanberger's plate, on the General Assembly's plate, where, you know, Democrats also won a supermajority. You know, they will be, you know, responsible for navigating, you know, the state budget through a stagnant economy, through, you know, you know, cuts to a Medicaid funding over the next several years, you know, SNAP, all kinds of different issues that I think will, you know, may sort of take away or at least, you know, kind of pre. preclude some of the things that they want to do around affordability, right? Like, you know, if you have people who are hungry and people who don't have health insurance, it's, you know, it's hard to kind of ignore that and, you know, focus on prescription drug affordability. Of course, you can do things, you know, multiple things at once, but, you know, money is going to be tight. And so I think it's really sort of how do you, you know, having one on this affordability message and pushing back against the Trump administration. What does that actually look like in practice? You know, what's possible here? And, Kenneth, what about for you, especially as you weigh out the, I would assume the high from Tuesday's win from Democrats, but also now this very public fight among Democrats at the national level? Well, what I'm looking for is specifically to New Jersey, how is Governor-elect Cheryl going to govern? A lot of the criticism against her was about the broad strokes and the generalities of her campaign, but now she has to get down to specifics. In relation to Washington, she, like a number of Democrats were not happy that the eight senators crossed over to help the Republicans. She called the deal malpractice in regards to that. So it'll be interesting, especially as the midterms come, I don't expect a whole lot of fireworks except for maybe who will succeed her in Congress.

Let's turn now to California. After months of campaigning, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom's Proposition 50 ballot initiative passed. Prop 50 will temporarily overturn the requirement that California draw its congressional districts through independent commission. Joining us is Jeannie Kwong. She's a reporter at Cal Matters. It's a nonprofit newsroom covering California politics. Jeannie, welcome to the program. Hi, thanks for having me on. Now, the Prop 50 effort got support from a lot of high-profile Democrats, including former president Barack Obama. Gavin Newsom, the governor, spoke to CNN's Jake Tapper about his victory on Sunday. And I think Donald Trump did not expect what Californians did. He thought we would just would try to win an argument by writing an op-ed, maybe express disdain and concern about the country. I don't expect. The Democratic Party of... Yeah, of old. And I think that's the bottom line. And I think this moment, what happened on Tuesday, represents a new moment. Jeannie, we've been talking about affordability and other issues in other states. California wasn't about those things. This was partisanship. This was gerrymandering. This was Texas is getting votes for Republicans. So let's get some votes for Democrats. What did you see, though, under the surface with this big win, 6040 for Prop 50 and how it relates to the national scene? Yeah, I think you're absolutely right that this was entirely an election about politics. There was very little policy involved. But I will note that a lot of the messaging by the yes on 50 campaign by the Democrats was policy issues. You know, they tried to tie all of this to sticking it to Donald Trump. So they ran numerous ads kind of highlighting, you know, Alex Padilla, the senator getting... you know, tackled to the ground by Homeland Security. And Los Angeles over the summer, you know, they talked to voters about losing their potential health care benefits, about the effect of tariffs on the economy, about the aggressive immigration raids that the Trump administration has unleashed upon California cities. I think what's going on is that it was, it was like a purely political maneuver. And yet they were basically able. to harness just widespread discontent about the Trump administration and sort of say that this was a way to counteract all of that. Obviously, whether or not that is true or can be done by gaining potentially five blue seats in Congress, we'll have to see. We got this question from Marion, who says the GOP in California is suing to overturn Proposition 50. If they succeed in overturning it, does that indicate that Texas' redistricting measure could likewise be invalidated? Now, California Republicans filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Fresno just hours after Prop 50 passed, and they argue it violates the 14th and 15th amendments by creating a racial bias. Jeannie, what's the status of that lawsuit?

Yeah, we'll watch that lawsuit wind its way through. I will say that they had tried to sue before this went to the ballot as well, and that was quickly thrown out by the California courts. So, you know, I think... No one else here in the state is really kind of waiting to see the outcome of that lawsuit. You know, all the campaigns from either side, you know, whether it's the Republicans that are now going to have to fight really hard for re-election in those targeted districts, whether it's Democrats that are, you know, chomping at the bit to come get in on these races now that they have a chance in some of these previously red districts. You know, everybody is just moving forward as if it hadn't happened. Well, Jeannie, we. We heard the governor, Gavin Newsom say just a minute ago that Republicans expected Dems to just write like a strongly worded op-ed, and that's as far as they would go. He was rewarded for not writing a strongly-worded op-ed for sort of taking the fight to Donald Trump. How is he distinguishing himself from what we just saw in Washington, a group of Democrats, at least, who wanted to fold in a fight that they appeared to be winning? Yeah, I mean... Gavin Newsom has taken an interesting turn this year. He started off the year, actually. Similarly, trying to sort of reconcile himself with the president. You know, he started this podcast earlier this year where he had on a bunch of right-wing activists and, you know, including Charlie Kirk, and was just sort of mulling over why the party had suffered such bruising losses last year. And a lot of people saw that as him, like, you know, maybe making his own right-word shift. angered a lot of Democrats in the process. But, you know, the lack of progress, you know, actually having fire aid get delivered to Los Angeles from the federal government, you know, the deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles over the summer. All of that just sort of fueled this, you know, again, a hard turn from him where now he's really bringing the fight back. And I think at the moment nationally, like he really notched himself a victory with this. proposition. He really sort of got to say, like, you know, I actually really delivered some gains for the party here nationally. And so I think that's, you know, something that he's really riding high off that. You know, it's no secret that he is considering a run for president. And I think that this all helps that. I don't know. I'm very interested in seeing how long it lasts because, of course, governing a state like California, it does come with a lot of baggage and a lot of criticism from, you know, the of living and a lot of other issues here in the state. And so I'm kind of curious how long this victory propels him forward as a potential leader for the National Democrats. That's Jeannie Kwong, reporter at Cal Matters. Also Margaret Barthow, Northern Virginia reporter at WAMU, and Kenneth Burns, he covers New Jersey for WHYY. Thanks to you all. More about last week's election and what the results tell us about the issues most important to voters right after this.

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their anger somewhere. And some of them say affordability, but it's unclear if they're personally financially stressed. It's unclear if they're upset that Donald Trump. is not following through on his promise to make things cheaper or that he signed a bill to cut rich people's taxes. He's building a ballroom for himself. Meanwhile, tariffs are making things more expensive and that this evinces hypocrisy or that, you know, he lied in order to get himself elected. So I think that, you know, a better lesson for Democrats in Congress to take is that there is widespread anger about a lot of different things and to fight him on all of those fronts, not just affordability. Eva, your thoughts? Well, I think that Democrats are in a tough place because I think it's apt to say there is an internal civil war right now. There are, there's a good. faction of the party that is absolutely on board with that theory of the case. But there is another faction that said this shutdown went on too long that ultimately we made our point that now, you know, the average American was not talking about extending subsidies for health care, but now they have crystallized that in all of our minds. So as people get this sticker shock and the cost of health care goes up. Democrats are confident that most Americans will point to Republicans because they now understand the issue. So I think that what continues to be a live conversation in the Democratic Party is how to wage this fight. Let's take a moment for this message we got from one of you. I think we're overemphasizing economic issues. I think people are really upset and frightened by the creeping fascism we are seeing. ICE violating human rights and due process in the streets all day long every day. Grabbing kids, grabbing, you know, beating up grandparents. That's what's really fueling the anti-Trump votes. Brian Boitler, you have spoken and written on this issue. Democrats find it very easy to talk about affordability. And when affordability is certainly an issue in an election, it seems like they latch on to that. It becomes kind of a confirmation bias. And Amy, who just called in is sort of giving voice to that. She says there's a lot else going on here under the surface. You've spoken to that a little bit. How do you think that's playing here? I think it sort of remains to be seen. If you wind the clock back to 2017, Democrats did something similar. They had some good off-year elections, some good special elections after Trump's first victory, after they stopped him from repealing the Affordable Care Act.

And they let to the conclusion that health care was driving their rebound after losing the 2016 election. And so they dismissed a lot of other concerns that their own voters had about Donald Trump in order to pivot every conversation back to health care. And I think the premature termination of the shutdown. is consistent with the idea that they're doing something similar again under a broader umbrella of affordability that pertains to health care, but also housing, groceries, and other staple goods that people purchase that have become more expensive over the years. The bill that passed, or I'm sorry, the bill that advanced on Sunday that would reopen the government only runs through January 30th. And so I think we'll know by then whether we're seeing those old patterns reassert themselves. Well, Eva, I want to point to some CNN exit polls that suggest voters in key racists mostly disapprove of Trump. Only 26% of voters in New York approved of the president's actions, 39% in Virginia. To your mind, how much of this election was a referendum on this presidency? I think it could be read that way. It is for a number of reasons. I remember I covered the Virginia governor's race closely and driving through Northern Virginia on my way to a campaign event and seeing a huge banner outside of a church that said, love thy neighbor, don't kidnap them. And I think that that really speaks to a sentiment in a good portion of the country right now, where the administration in many. in many people's minds has gone too far on that issue. So it's not only affordability that voters are sending a message on, it's other issues as well. Well, I want to get to this question of leadership. Daniel emails in regards to the shutdown. It's endlessly frustrating watching how the GOP is entirely in lockstep seemingly all of the time while Democrats remain divided. It's going to be very hard to reclaim this democracy if the opposition cannot match the kind of cohesion that the Republicans seem to handle with ease. biggest victories from last week was in New York City. Democratic socialists, Zohran Mamdani, won a historic mayoral campaign focused on affordability and cost of living in New York. Gavin Newsom, as we said, won his Prop 50 fight. He's become this cheerleader for Democrats who want to push back on the Trump administration. But meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has enraged other members of his party because he has not been able to keep his caucus together in a major fight again. a fight the Democrats seemed to be winning. So, Eva, first from you, I mean, what are you hearing about what's happening inside the Democratic Party around questions of leadership? There is a lot of anger. At Chuck Schumer, but I think that it is important that he did not endorse this strategy. I think that the progressive groups, the organizing infrastructure outside of Washington might give him some grace on this. But also I think that I was just at CrookedCon, the massive convention of democratic thought leaders and strategists from all across the country.

And Democrats are also realizing that they have to make peace with themselves in order to actually win elections. I mean, Abigail Spanberger thought that the government should reopen. Cheryl wanted Democrats to hold the line. They're both part of this winning Democratic coalition. And so, yes, they're going to continue to be divides, but they all need each other. Yeah. Brian, your thought. So I think that the sentiments about Chuck Schumer are negative, but they are divided on the question of how involved he was in the decision to end this, right? That it's either the case that he lost control of these eight members or that he sort of secretly backed them. He couldn't vote for it because he's already taken, you know, taken a lot of. strays and arrows when he voted to reopen the government back in March. So he had to stand back and keep his hands clean. Yeah, I just want to quickly share this email we got from Laura to that point who says, can you address the idea that the Democrats may have worked out who crosses over to vote with the Republicans? I find it too much of a coincidence that all eight don't face re-election until 2028 or 2030. Exactly, right? So it is conspicuous that these are retiring members or members who aren't up. for election next year. And it's it's further conspiccy to that if there's this anger within the caucus at Chuck Schumer that there's nobody trying to rally members for new leadership elections, which would be, you know, a very firm way of saying, you know, a vote of no confidence in Chuck Schumer. And it, I think it lends suspicion of the idea that Chuck Schumer is also happy to be out of this. Now, now along the way, they did raise the salience, as practitioners would say, of the health care issue so that as people's premiums come in very high. People will know to blame Republicans. But there's a lot of Democrats, Democratic voters, Democrats in Congress who see what's happening in the country right now as a direct threat to constitutional democracy in America. If that is the problem, then it's really important to drag Donald Trump's popularity down. And so division among Republicans on Capitol Hill who kind of march in lockstep with him. And ending the shutdown abruptly like this. does away with something that was having that effect. And so people are very frustrated by that. What about rewarding the pain that Donald Trump was inflicting on the country? The White House's main shutdown strategy was cutting off food for hungry people who you snap, making flights extraordinarily inconvenient, and firing a bunch of federal workers. Oh, you just lost your job. Direct pain on the American public. And... Unless you're careful, you can look at that situation and say all these eight Democrats just did, well, we don't want people to suffer under SNAP. We don't want people to suffer with affordability crisis. We don't want people to not be able to get home for Thanksgiving. We have to end this. Way to look at it is you're simply rewarding that type of inflicting pain strategy. Eva, have you been hearing anything about that? They will continue, no doubt. to have to explain themselves in the coming days and weeks, especially as we careen towards a similar episode in just a couple of months, because what are they going to do then? But I do find it curious. So one of the, quote, unquote, concessions that they got from the White House was to pay back furloughed workers. Well, if that was already part of the law, the White House should be following the law. You get that in every shutdown. Right, right. And so that begs the question.

question that, well, why was that even a part of the negotiation? And listen, it wasn't an easy resolution here, and they will continue to have to answer these tough questions. We're talking to Eva McKend, a national politics correspondent at CNN and Brian Boitler, author of The Off Message newsletter. We're also hearing from you. Holly emails, my understanding is that the eight senators who voted to stop the shutdown are either not up for re-election in 2026 or will not be running. Is that true? We've also said yes. It also seems to me that this is a smart move because Dems can take credit for ending the shutdown and the majority of them held strong for health care. The ball now seems firmly in the Republican court. But Fred says, what am I missing? Democrats created the ACA on their own without Republicans. Democrats need to fix the problem and not keep throwing ever-increasing massive subsidies at the problem. Brian, any thoughts because the Affordable Care Act? Some people call it Obama Care. It's called many things depending upon the state you live in. But is this bringing up larger questions about how well the ACA is working or not? I think at this point the Affordable Care Act is so it sort of is the health care system of the United States. And these subsidies that are expiring will make about 20 million people's insurance costs go up. I don't think that the people whose insurance... costs are going to go up dramatically, are going to be like, well, that vote that they took back in 2010 to pass the Affordable Care Act wasn't well thought out. They're going to see that over years this law has been amended, that Republicans have been incredibly hostile to it, that they are happy to see its integrity weakened by taking money out of the system. And what they're going to want is for the money to be restored at some point or another. Democrats can say now, look, like we tried very hard to get that money back to you. The only way to get it back to you you is for you to elect us. And I think that that's an argument that they're going to make. But as Todd was mentioning, the way they went about this has convinced Donald Trump or could easily convince Donald Trump that the way to get Democrats to do things that he wants them to do is to inflict pain on the public. And that he could do that at any time. It doesn't have to be in the context of a shutdown. He can just, he can try again to. get Democrats to do his dirty work for him by unilaterally doing things that violate the law. And there was a way, I think, out of this shutdown that would have left Democrats on stronger footing, where you say, look, they're not going to give you your health care back. The citizens of this country need a government. Donald Trump cannot be trusted with a full-year budget, so we are going to give them. a month of budget authority, and then another month. And if he keeps violating the law and harming citizens, the votes are going to be withheld and the government's going to shut down again. I don't know that they've missed their window to make that argument, but that was not how they went about it. They went about it the way we discussed, where these eight members may be working as cover for a larger group of Democrats caved and said, basically, we give up because fighting Donald Trump doesn't work.

Eva, I want you to sort of zoom out for us a little bit because the midterm elections are a year away. I know that's going to probably go more quickly than what we expect. But what do you think the election results, this shutdown fight indicate about what we might see between now and next November? I spoke to this before that. That the Democratic Party is a diverse and complicated coalition, that they all need each other to win, that... The utility of some of the cultural battles of the past are no more and that they have to figure out how to continue to speak to the things that really matter to most Americans. That includes immigration policy, which is linked to the economy and affordability. And... I think that it's messy. It is incredibly messy. Are those eight Democrats that everyone is so mad at? They still need their votes for the next issue and the next issue and the issue after that. I can't help but think after the presidential election in the days following when we're analyzing what happened, what happened, what happened. So many people made the argument that democracy was not. a strong platform for Democrats, that they didn't talk enough about affordability. Do you see that case shifting now that we're 10 months into the Trump presidency? Brian, I'll come to you first. I think that that was a little over-analyzed in the first place and that there were a large contingent of voters that saw clearly what was coming if Donald Trump won and that speaking of those concerns was a good idea, not a bad idea. Now I think it's crystal clear, right? I think that... An easy truce is now emerging in the wake of all that where Democrats realize that they can kind of split the discourse, talk about affordability on the one hand, also talk about checking Donald Trump and democracy on the other hand, that you don't need to have a wholesale purge of the party and rebuild it as a more moderate force. You can have Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in progressive places like New York, and you can have mainstream Democrats in places like... statewide in New Jersey and Virginia, people like Roy Cooper in North Carolina, and that the party can come together at times uneasily under that Big Ten. We got this email from Wayne who says, I'm glad to hear there's a possibility of the shutdown maybe ending because there's a lot of people suffering. But moreover, I'm really happy to see representatives actually think for themselves. Every representative in Congress should be representing their district, not the party line. Well, in this case, we're talking about states in the Senate. But all of this looking forward to the midterms.

Brian, there might also be a war within the party over Chuck Schumer's leadership now. And I noticed that you wrote last night that every Democrat who's running for Senate challenging an incumbent in this upcoming election should say they won't support Chuck Schumer for leader. You're one of the people who's actually sort of stoking. a revolt inside the party to get rid of this leadership. Yeah, because I sort of see these as two different things, right? The party needs good leadership. If it doesn't have it, it doesn't mean it can't win the midterms. The last time we saw a political situation. kind of like this. The parties were reversed. Republicans were very unpopular with their own voters. The Tea Party emerged. There were vicious fights within the Republican coalition, and Republicans won that midterm in 2010 by a landslide. So I don't think the question of whether Democrats air out all these internal fights now has much bearing on how the midterms will. will come about. And if they need better leaders, there's no time like the president. Well, Eva, oh, go ahead. I was just going to speak to something that one of the audience members said and that they liked that people were thinking for themselves. That's actually also key to electability. When you hear from voters, they want candidates that actually believe what they say. And that is clear to everyone involved, even if they don't necessarily agree with. their policy position. Except the people who said it in this case aren't up for re-election. That's the disconnect, right? Everything you said is true, but the people who went and just ended the shutdown or might end the shutdown, the question's not on them coming up next year. That's interesting. Well, we'll have to leave it there for now. That's Eva McKend, National Politics Correspondent at CNN. Brian Boytler, author of the off-message newsletter. Of course, one-A's Todd's Willick is with us each Monday. Eva, Brian? Todd. Thank you all. Thank you. Today's producer was Arfi Getty. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening. And we'll talk again tomorrow. This is One-A.

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