When Senate Dems Cave, We Organize (Special Edition)
Don't Just Get Mad, Take Action
What happened on Sunday?
First, we had a great turnout for our big Fall Fiesta on Sunday! We collected food donations and volunteers brought that food and monetary donations to the Utica Food Bank. Leftover fajita food went to Cornerstone Church's Morrow Warming Center. Thank you to everyone who contributed.
We heard from a few 2025 candidates about their victories and their experiences running for office (Thanks for joining us Betsey, Heather, and Jacob!), and also gave a shout out to those who have sent their appreciation for our support but were unable to attend. Then we filled big Post It sheets on the wall with all our impactful actions over the past year. There were so many! From Hands Off and No Kings to Good Trouble and Disappeared in America rallies, from our work with allies and partners in the community, to our new action and community groups. We brought in thousands of new political activists from across the Mohawk Valley.
We also brainstormed 2026 goals--local, state, and federal level, as well as for our group and for the pro-democracy, No Kings Indivisible movement overall. It was a "post-election high" community building event and people left feeling pumped up and excited to take action in 2026 to win elections, build our movement, and fight the MAGA Turmp cruelty and chaos.
Then on Sunday night, eight Senate Democrats defected and capitulated to Republicans in return for almost nothing. All that pain for nothing. Even after Democrats soared to election and ballot initiative victories on a wave of affirmation for holding strong on the fight against Trump. Even after an increasing majority of the public was blaming Republicans and not Democrats for the shutdown and the harm to working people. Eight Democrats caved. It was crushing. At the bottom of this email you can read Indivisible's response and plan for action, according to Ezra Levin's Monday email.
For now, what can you do with your rage? We say, as we always do, that the best thing to do immediately is call your members of Congress and tell them what you think. It's especially important to call Sen. Schumer, and let him know your disappointment that he did not hold his caucus together.
Sen. Schumer's Syracuse office: (315) 423-5471
Sen. Schumer's DC office: (202) 224-6542
Next, if you live in NY22 (Rep. Mannion), call him today and tell him not to be a party to this surrender. He has been strong for months, and has repeatedly called out the undemocratic and cruel actions of Trump and his Republican House colleagues. We want to let him know that he is doing the right thing (you can bet he gets calls from the other side and we need to make sure our perspective wins the daily constituent call math!) Yes, Republicans can likely pass this through the House without Democratic votes, but Dems don’t need to make it easier for them or put their names on a bill that betrays their constituents. Every Democrat in the House must vote no.
If you can, write a Letter to the Editor and express your opinion of the way that Republicans held food and healthcare hostage for weeks just to get more power. They are the real problem, of course.
Finally, don't be alone! It just makes it worse. Instead, gather with others. Show up for a Rally:
New Times & Locations of Rallies This Week
Even if you can only come for 20 or 30 minutes, put on your boots and coat and join a rally.We have new times to share this week. It's getting dark early post-time change.
Thursday, Nov. 13, 3:00-4:30 pm (new time) New location: Corner of Burrstone Road and French/Champlin Ave. Park at Zion Lutheran Church (630 French, New Hartford). This is the weekly Utica rally that moves around. No special theme, but let's call attention to the way that Republicans threw 21 million Americans under the bus by trashing their affordable healthcare subsidies.
Friday, Nov. 14th, 3:30-4:30 pm (new time) Join the Kirkland Dems for a monthly rally on the Clinton Village Green.
Saturday, Nov. 15th, 12:00-1:30 pm, Black River Boulevard & Erie Blvd. near Fort Stanwix in Rome. This group has been gathering weekly--now for the 17th week in a row!
Dress for the weather. We continue to build connection and community by showing up together regularly and we let the public know that there is strong opposition to Trump. MAGA, and Project 2025 authoritarian policies.
Sarah Reeske's Social Media Masterclass
You heard about it at the Fall Fiesta on Sunday. Now we're asking you to sign up. Indivisible One NYS is hosting a training series for people who want to learn how to use social media more effectively for politcal messaging. Sarah has been working on this training for a while--and New Yorkers are the first in the country to get these workshops. Here's the link for interested folks to sign up for the masterclass. It is designed for people to go through the entire track--not just one session.
Session 1 will be recorded instead of done live and sent to everyone who fills out the form. All sessions will be recorded. Registration links for live Zoom calls will be sent to those who fill out the form.
Here are the dates:
Session 1 -Watch the video on your own. Understanding how social media works and the 5 platforms we'll be focusing on
Session 2: Wed, 11/12 @ 7-8pm- How to use social media engagement tools, and share your story
Session 3: Tuesday, 12/2 @ 6-7:30pm- Video editing skills workshop
Session 4: Wednesday, 12/10 @ 7-8pm- How to support your Indivisible group's social media accounts and participate in a social media day action
Sign up here if you want to commit to this important learning opportunity.
Statewide Indivisible Call: NY Health Act
On Wednesday, November 19th from 7-8pm Sarah Reeske is hosting a statewide call focusing on the New York Health Act, facilitated by Executive Director Melanie D'Arrigo of the Campaign for NY Health. Come learn about the bill that would create a single payer healthcare system for our state as well as the campaign's organizing plan to get it moving through the 2026 legislative session. Register here.
Indivisible's Message & Plan After the Senate Vote
In case you did not see Ezra Levin's email on Monday, you can read it below. Or skip to the bottom to take action. He wrote: "What I am about to write may sound calm and collected, but know that I am channeling my searing hot incandescent rage in an effort to explain what went down, and what it requires of all of us next.
1. This was a surrender.
We didn’t just get a “bad deal” -- we got essentially nothing. The original Dem demands were threefold:
Permanent extension of the ACA subsidies
Medicaid funding restored
No more blank checks for the regime (rescission/impoundment restrictions)
Democrats dropped the Medicaid funding demands immediately after making them. They then stopped talking about rescission and impoundment. They dropped from “permanent” to “multi-year” to, finally, “one year” of ACA subsidies this week. A one-year extension -- Schumer's offer on Friday -- is actually the same demand as front-line Republican House members scared about reelection. But they couldn’t even hold the line there -- they surrendered without even getting that.
2. The vote itself was a bit of Kabuki theater.
Conveniently for them, none of the eight Senate Dems who voted for this are up for reelection next year. That’s by design. There’s going to be a lot of well-deserved anger directed at those specific eight Dems, but make no mistake -- this vote was stage-managed.
The way this works is that a critical mass of Dems within the caucus decides they’re going to surrender, they look at the number of votes they need to do it (eight), and they agree on eight Dems who don’t have to face voters anytime soon. That’s why Senators like Mark Warner can vote against it, even though they were widely known to be drivers behind the surrender.
This is not true of literally every Senate Dem -- we know that a bunch of folks, like Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, Bernie Sanders, and Chris Van Hollen were arguing strongly against it behind closed doors. But many who voted no publicly helped engineer this surrender privately.
3. Schumer and Dem Senate leadership broadly failed.
Chuck Schumer, Brian Schatz, and Kirsten Gillibrand all voted for the March surrender, but voted against this surrender. Is that a meaningful shift? No.
Even aside from the Kabuki theater aspect of all this, it's the leadership's job to unify the Dem caucus to fight the fascists. That’s it. Their individual votes are irrelevant. If the Dem caucus fractures and fails to unify against the Bad Republican Bill, then that’s a failure of both the individual senators who caved and leadership for failing to lead the caucus.
We do not know now and will never know for sure if Schumer orchestrated this (my suspicion) or if he simply lacked the leadership skills to prevent it (also possible). But we don’t have to know the reason -- it is just factually true that he and the rest of the leadership team failed to hold their own caucus together.
Combine #3 with #2 above, and it leads here: If you’ve got a Senate Dem who is not calling for new leadership, they’re part of the problem. We should no longer trust Senate Dems who decline to come out against the leadership that led us here. Until proven otherwise, we should assume they were in on the game to fool their own supporters. It is easy to disabuse us of that assumption -- they just have to publicly make the popular call for new leadership.
4. This is bad policy.
The Republican budget guarantees that healthcare premiums will continue to skyrocket, rural hospitals will close, more people will go without healthcare, and more people will die. It does nothing to stop Trump from treating the federal budget as his personal piggybank.
The “win” some Dems are claiming is bullshit. They got a pinky-promise agreement from Republicans for a vote on ACA subsidies 40 days from now. They do not have the votes to win on that with serious concessions in both the House and Senate. It’s fake.
5. This is bad politics.
Senate Democrats surrendered when they had maximum leverage and were winning the fight. This surrender came weeks after the largest protest in American history, and days after the best election night in a decade or more. The public opinion polling showed Democrats were winning the fight, and the party’s own approval ratings were rising in response to them keeping up the fight.
We know where Indivisibles were on this. We polled them after last week’s "What’s the Plan?"call asking if Dems should take a GOP deal to reopen the government, or if they should continue fighting for ACA subsidies. 98.67% wanted to continue the fight!
This week, for the first time all year, Democrats were riding high. The regime was on the ropes. We had just clobbered them last Tuesday -- crushing the regime electorally everywhere. To surrender now is a message to all rank-and-file Democrats: "We don’t care that you want us to fight." I agreed with Brian Beutler’s take last night: the surrender in March felt like a reflection of “poor morale and low self-confidence.” This surrender is “throwing the fight.”
If the Senate leadership’s goal was to demobilize and depress rank-and-file Democrats, they could not have played their cards better.
6. The surrender will embolden the regime to do more damage.
The threat from Trump and Republicans is real and existential. They are violently attacking our communities, looting our services to serve their billionaire buddies, and shredding the Constitution. They’re behaving like they won’t ever be out of power again, because that’s their plan. There is nothing more urgent than ensuring they do not succeed.
By surrendering so utterly and completely at a moment of their maximum leverage and momentum, Senate Democrats teach Trump and his cadre an important lesson: do enough damage, and your opponents will buckle. This is an extremely dangerous lesson for Trump to learn as he ramps up his attacks on blue states and cities and prepares to steal the midterm elections. Because of this surrender, our democracy is more imperiled now than it was before.
7. The only path to a real opposition party is through a cleansing primary season.
We have spent a year now trying to convince the Democratic Party to unify and fight back. It started as a lonely fight shortly after the election, but our numbers grew. We’ve seen some Democrats lead from the beginning, some come around, and some do their best to at least perform resistance. There’s been real progress -- in large part because of our collective work.
But at some point, you gotta either change your leaders’ minds or you gotta change your leaders. And the time for changing minds is over.
After this week, we should expect more fecklessness unless we demand a change. You don’t demand that change in a general election -- you do it in primaries. And conveniently, primaries are right around the corner.
This isn’t about left vs right. This is about fighting back vs losing. The regime’s threats are too real and the stakes are too high to settle for the feckless, loser version of the Democratic Party we saw this week. As we head into the midterms next year, we need a Democratic Party that inspires and instills pride. In this moment when the fascists are on the march, we need a Democratic Party with a spine.
Our primary program will include both the House and Senate. We will work with Indivisible groups to identify key races, provide support on the ground, and tap into movement energy across the country to boost candidates with a spine. One thing we can say for sure: We will not back any Senate primary candidate unless they call for Schumer to step down as Majority Leader.
And after the primary, whatever happens, we will rally behind the winner, and crush the regime electorally in the midterms just like we did this last week."
ACTION: Sign up to be part of the Indivisible campaign to rebuild the Democratic Party today.
Democracy is not a spectator sport.
When we fight, we win.
Breathe, then push.
Website: indivisiblemv.org
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