As we’ve been discussing for a week there’s a big argument among Democrats about the looming shutdown fight. Senate Democrats seem set on making it a negotiation about Obamacare subsidies, the biggest part of the BBB cuts that kick in before 2026. Meanwhile, you have a growing chorus of people who aren’t Senate Democrats saying this is wrong. It’s not time for small-bore policy revisions. You’ve got to do something dramatic to rein in Trump’s increasingly dictatorial rule. I also see Lakshya Jain and Matt Yglesias saying that yes, maybe it’s time for a confrontation. But if you’re going to have a confrontation, you need to make that stand on the issue where your issue advantage is the greatest. And that’s on the health care subsidies. And at least on the first part of that I absolutely agree. Tariffs are actually pretty salient too. But let’s set that aside for a moment. Because there’s an unspoken part of this equation that makes all the difference.

So let’s get that clear and on the table.

I was very pleased to see that Ezra Klein has joined the ranks of those who think that Democrats need to gird themselves for a fight in the budget showdown coming at the end of this month. I have various disagreements with Klein, some rooted in policy and others more attitudinal, temperamental. But his influence within the Democratic elite is unrivaled. His words really matter. They matter enough to make me think Senate Dems may actually shift in time to make a difference here. His essential point is irrefutable. None of the arguments for standing down from back in March, which were at least arguable then, hold up anymore. (It’s this column at the Times that I’m talking about in case you haven’t read it or read about it.)

There are a couple of follow-up points I’d like to make about this. One is the idea that the Democrats are making a decision to “shut the government down.” In a sense this is a semantic point. But some semantic points are extremely important, and this is one of them. You really need to get this right. If Democrats do what a growing number of outside observers say they should and indeed must, they’re not making a decision to shut the government down. In fact, they would very much like to avoid that. Sometimes when there’s a shutdown standoff a lot of Republicans really do want to shut the government down in and of itself because they’re hostile to most of the things government does. None of that applies to Democrats. They’d much prefer that Trump agreed to their demands and the threat of a shutdown never materializes.