Do The Senate Democrats Face The Illusion of a Choiceless Choice or The Real Thing?
November 14, AD2025
United States Senator from Virginia, Timothy Michael Kaine’s recent op-ed defending his vote to end the 38-day government shutdown presents his narrative of pragmatic leadership in the face of mounting human suffering.1 Kaine describes the problems of federal workers going without pay, food banks running low, and air traffic becoming dangerous. What he is arguing is basically clear: when faced with present harm and no realistic path to better terms, responsible leaders - like himself - must choose to end the suffering. Okay. But this framing, however emotionally persuasive at first glance, obscures a more troubling reality: the fight has been postponed not ended. The eight senators who broke the unity of the anti-MAGA opposition in the Senate made a choice that leaves many Democrats and conservatives wondering what was the point of the shutdown?
Kaine’s central claim is that holding out for healthcare concessions was essentially impossible. He invokes his presence at negotiations support this assessment. But the Wall Street Journal’s reporting reveals something more complex: the secret meetings that produced this deal appear to have deliberately bypassed Senate Minority Leader Charles Ellis Schumer, who believed a better deal was possible if Democrats held firm.2 Senators Cynthia Jeanne Shaheen, Margaret Wood Hassan, and Angus Stanley King Jr. met with Republicans like Majority Leader Sen. John Randolph Thune and Sen. Susan Margaret Collins while Schumer argued that President Donald John Trump would eventually engage and Democrats would secure better terms. Others see a more cynical outcome, believing that the Eight essentially took the fall for Schumer and those in the caucus who wanted to cave. It is a sign of how low Schumer’s stature has fallen with the Democratic Party base. But Kaine is also taking a risk: many federal employees in Virginia were willing to keep going to get a better deal and feel like they suffered from nothing now. Kaine does not face another election until 2030, whereas his colleague, Mark Robert Warner, Virginia’s senior US senator and also a Democrat, faces the voters next year and voted no. The division in the delegation may reflect the understanding that Kaine’s argument will be a hard sell to their voter base.
This matters because Kaine’s assessment of what was possible depended entirely on which negotiating track you were following. The centrists declared the strategy wasn’t working after 38 days, despite their party having just won a landslide electoral victory across the country last week, demonstrating public support for their position and opposition to the GOP. The WSJ notes that Republicans were surprised Democrats had held out as long as they did, suggesting the pressure was working, not failing. When Kaine claims there was no realistic path to better terms, he’s describing his subjective assessment that conveniently aligns with his preference to end immediate, visible suffering rather than endure it in pursuit of larger goals. Again one wonders if the suffering was ended or merely postponed.
There were real human costs to the shutdown lasting as long as it did. Federal workers without paychecks and many still working to sustain critical services because they would not let the country down despite the fact Congress was doing that, and SNAP families going hungry. And yet, goes the response to Kaine, what about the suffering that will come when the Affordable Care Act subsidies expire and millions see their health insurance premiums increase because the Republicans have for fifteen years failed to come up with a replacement for Obamacare but continue to complain about it?
Kaine acknowledges that Democrats got no guarantees on healthcare—only a promise to hold a vote. The WSJ is more blunt: Democrats got virtually nothing, and Republicans merely committed to voting by mid-December without promising any particular outcome. Senator Shaheen’s backup plan to trigger another shutdown in January when much of the funding expires is frankly odd, and maybe naive. If these eight senators could not hold out for 38 days in October and November, what makes anyone think they’ll hold firm in January or that the Republicans should take them seriously. The promise of a vote is asking to postpone your defeat if there is no indication that enough Republicans would vote for it or that Trump would not veto it. The deal is not good enough to justify the pain that has already been inflicted.
This is where Kaine’s argument collapses entirely. He’s created a dangerous precedent: Democrats will cave when human costs become visible, and Republicans need only wait them out. And that means that if Democrats are going to cave, then the Republicans can claim that they are responsible for the pain and are doing it for show. It undermines their entire approach.
Kaine warns that continuing the shutdown might have led Republicans to eliminate the Senate filibuster, but this threat rings hollow. If Republicans were willing to blow up the filibuster, they could have done so at any point. The nuclear option is in fact a legitimate tactic whether done by the Democrats or the Republicans. Since the GOP did not do so for the same 38 day period, that means it was not their preferred solution and the Democrats might have been able to hold out longer, in fact the GOP Senate leadership did not cave to President Trump asking them to kill the filibuster.3 But in polarized times, it may be wiser to return to the Constitution’s strict requirement of a mere majority being necessary to pass bills in the Senate with the vice president breaking ties.
The concept of the choiceless choice refers to situations where people face impossible decisions with no morally acceptable options. Was Kaine’s situation like this? He faced a difficult choice with clear strategic logic on both sides. He could have chosen to endure short-term, concentrated suffering in pursuit of long-term structural gains regarding healthcare. Instead, he chose promises about votes that may never deliver results. I think that is what bothers people most about the reopening: this could have happened three weeks ago with the result and no one had to miss a paycheck or a meal.
Kaine and his seven colleagues may have been motivated by genuine compassion. In doing so, they may have condemned millions to suffering that will unfold gradually in hospital billing departments rather than airport terminals. In January, when the funding runs out again and the healthcare vote has failed, we will discover whether these eight senators faced a choiceless choice or simply made a choice Democrats will come to regret. In the meantime many federal workers and families in Virginia feel like that they played the part of Tim Kaine’s Abel.