General Discussion

Be as frank as you want, it's a free country. Speak your mind, I'll speak mine. If you don't wanna "digest" it, take it on face value, and walk away, no harm, no foul, since there's no offense intended.

Of course we're different from Republicans, and this strategic means of ending the shutdown showed that. Why would you belabor the obvious? Dems already know that the entire Democratic Party is never good with other people's suffering and Republicans couldn't care less. If that position somehow leads to blaming the five who changed positions in order to alleviate suffering, then compromising total unity was worth it. Seriously, which is more important..

I live (in exile) in Florida, whose governor is tight with your state's governor, so we live in somewhat flammable political environments. Yep, I agree they'd let the country go up in flames.
Example: Here, Florida lit the match and cheated first in 2000 and SCOTUS allowed it. FL's been a vote count cheating state ever since.

So while our states' parties might demand Democratic unity, our state standard shouldn't be the standard for the rest of states, because senators live in very different states with very different kinds and scales of suffering. We should take that into account.

And then to say Dems started this shutdown makes no sense from the get-go, when Repubs are the majority party who literally wrote in the hunger games for Americans that almost all Democrats refused to vote for.
What the five Dems' compromise vote did was strategic, because they won much for Americans in spite of Dems being in minority status. The five even took the hit so party unity would still exist "in principle" by their principled compromise stance that forced the maga trumpcult party to give up on their evil hunger games.

Ya know, I'll be frank, too. Too much of what passes for discussion in GD is a kind of mutual validation of OP positions, some thought/feeling one-liner that doesn't enlighten fellow Democrats as much as just make them feel collectively right; in other words, high feels, no information. That right there I don't take seriously, unless it's an attack on Dems or their allies.

This country's in a terrible place, and imo, Dems need to stop indulging in finger pointing/circular firing squad ego impulses, like
-- scapegoating some one person for the party's loss; or
-- rethugs cheated even though we can't get the evidence; or
-- habitually letting a first wave of corporate headlines cause knee-jerk distrust of our party leaders.
That and a bus token gets them across town. It does the party no good, only the poster's ego.

Argue? Having opposing positions isn't about arguing. Constructive arguing isn't about fault finding or feelings, but pointing out logic error and/or finding mutual ground for solving real problems, not personal ones, or off-the-top feelings problems, or corporate defined problems.
No worries. I'm not offended. We're good, hamsterjill. (love your cute name, since my kids had hamsters)

Okay, my longwinded response is over. Have a good rest of your day.