going to use it politically against the democrats in the midterm elections next year. this is a pure political calculation by mcconnell and by the other republican senators. mcconnell has indicated that if democrats were to put forward just the spending measure, the budget measure that would insure the government stays open in decouple it from the debt ceiling question, that they would win republican votes for that measure so the first step of course would be for republican senators to make good on that and, you know, agree to pass whatever it is the democrats come up with in terms of just the clean spending bill for later this week to avoid the shutdown but looking forward, this is all going to be a political game and mcconnell is trying to basically trap the democrats and show that they can't govern competently, that they have these majorities, thin majorities as they are, but majorities nonetheless, and yet they brought the country to the brink of a shutdown, and they're having trouble passing these