The House can be expected to pass the government funding bill tonight, which, after President Trump signs it, will end the shutdown. The eight senators — seven Democrats and an independent — who voted for cloture to end the shutdown have been widely condemned. “America deserves better,” likely presidential candidate Gavin Newsom declared. But in my opinion, the eight senators did the right thing and did the Democratic Party a favor.
Senate Democrats had based the shutdown on the failure of the Republicans to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that would have benefited families who made between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty level. In their absence, these families will face spiraling costs for health care. Extending the subsidies is a totally worthy cause, but the Democrats knew they weren’t going to get it. Odds were the Senate Republicans wouldn’t go along, and it was almost certain that the House Republicans would not.
Like a criminal case that is based on a malefactor’s provable wrong, such as tax evasion, but is motivated by his larger misdeeds, the Democrats’ case was equally, if not principally, aimed at combatting President Donald Trump’s contempt for democratic norms. And it was intended to show that the Democrats, in the words of Twisted Sister, “were not going to take it.” Democrats were also unlikely to change the Trump administration’s approach to governance through the shutdown, but they plowed ahead anyway. There was never a plausible endgame.
The Democrats reveled in polling numbers that showed the public was more likely to blame Trump and the Republicans for the shutdown, but the numbers had begun to trend against them. The most recent extensive poll showed that 32 percent blamed the Democrats, 35 percent the Republicans, and 28 percent both sides equally. But the percentage blaming the Republicans had fallen four points from two weeks before.
I believe that as the shutdown dragged into Thanksgiving, and as more jobs were lost, social services suspended, and planes grounded, the public would have begun blaming the Democrats more because — let’s face it — they had initiated the shutdown. The polls also showed that far more Democrats than Republicans felt affected by the shutdown. The senators themselves were hearing from their constituencies. I was hearing from friends out of town who were not partisan activists.
I agree with Josh that the termination of the shutdown will not hurt the Democrats politically. It has put the Republicans’ indifference to the public’s access to health care on the political agenda. It will be an issue in the 2026 election. I very much doubt that the shutdown will be. If you look back to the Republicans’ 2013 shutdown over the ACA, which the Democrats and the Obama administration were perceived to have “won,” in the November 2014 election, the Republicans flipped the Senate, winning nine seats, and solidified their hold over the House of Republicans by flipping 13 seats. What mattered was what came afterwards.
The one aspect of the Democrats’ ending the shutdown that leaves a sour taste was the absence of the minority leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, from the negotiations. That allowed commentators and the Republican leadership to define the event. It was another indication that Schumer has lost his effectiveness. The Senate and House leaders have never been effective public advocates — Nancy Pelosi was a snooze on television — but they have been able to command their caucus and publicly define their objectives. Schumer failed to do this.
The Democrats should have come together to say they were ending the shutdown to prevent the President from doing further harm to the country. Instead, they presented the picture of a party in disarray and mired in recrimination. That’s the result of a failure of leadership. But believe me: by next November, the disarray over the shutdown will be forgotten.
