https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/01/democrats-shutdown-livestream-00591178
‘Gen Z Is in the House!’ and Other Cringe Moments in the Democrats’ Shutdown Marathon
Democrats promised to livestream the shutdown battle until (almost) the bitter end. We watched so you didn’t have to.
he shutdown won’t be livesteamed, with apologies to Gil Scott-Heron. At least not continuously live, as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries promised when he logged on around 2 p.m. yesterday from a drab Capitol office. Instead, there were stops and starts and some tech glitches.
In the earliest hours of the shutdown, Jeffries’ YouTube channel featured a rotating cast of Democratic House members and influencers, from MeidasTouch co-founder Ben Meiselas to progressive Gen Z political YouTuber Jack Cocchiarella to Carlos Eduardo Espina, who has 13.3 million followers on TikTok. Their mission: to win the shutdown messaging battle. It did not go off without a hitch. In fact, there were many hitches. At times, just a few dozen viewers were watching the YouTube stream, making it an almost instant joke among Republicans and a source of embarrassment among Democrats — even if some Democrats admitted it was, technically, a smart thing to do, if a failure of execution.