OP-ED: What did Democrats gain in shutdown?
What did Democrats gain in shutdown?
By Kent James
Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, because evidently, Democrats don’t like to be in power. I shouldn’t say “Democrats,” because it’s actually a small group of senators (including John Fetterman), so it’s not fair to characterize the entire party this way. Unfortunately, their actions will be attributed to the entire party.
More than a month ago, the Democrats refused to give the Senate Republicans enough votes to pass a new budget and keep the government open. I’m not a fan of either the filibuster or government shutdowns, but they are the tools available to the Democrats to have a say in government, because currently the Republicans hold majorities in both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court (although ostensibly, justices are not supposed to be partisan), as well as the presidency. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer refused to shut down the government in the spring (which frustrated many Democrats), but that was before the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, which retained tax cuts for the wealthy but dropped the subsidies for Obamacare.
After many months of President Trump’s daily depredations, even Schumer was able to find enough energy to fight back, as the Democratic base has wanted for months. The massive turnouts for the “No Kings” protests probably helped Schumer reach that conclusion (which is one of the reasons protests matter).
While government shutdowns do have a negative impact on many people, so will the loss of subsidies for Obamacare, and in this case, the shutdown was working. Usually the party that instigates the shutdown suffers politically, but most polls show that most people blame the Republicans. Probably because the Republicans have been tone deaf, with Mike Johnson sending the House home (probably to avoid releasing the Epstein files) and Trump posting videos of him as a king piloting a plane that drops excrement on protestors.Trump also posted pictures of the remodeling of a bathroom in the White House, tearing down the East Wing of the White House (without permits, reviews or input from anyone else, and after promising he wouldn’t touch it), and hosting a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago the day before people were scheduled to lose their SNAP benefits (food stamps).
Additionally, the Trump Administration went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight having to use existing money to fund SNAP. The ads write themselves: “Republicans, living large but still having the energy to fight hard to prevent poor people from accessing food.”
Republicans try to blame the Democrats for the shutdown, and they’re right to a degree; Senate Democrats’ refusal to vote for a budget that only funds Republican priorities did shut down the government. On the other hand, Republicans can end the shutdown anytime they want by using their Senate majority to end the filibuster and pass the budget by a simple majority. Or they could negotiate with the Democrats and make some concessions to overcome the filibuster.
Last week’s Democratic wave was a clear signal that the shutdown was not hurting the Democrats. Polls are not always accurate, but election results are where the rubber meets the road, and Democrats won “bigly” across the board. Evidently, people are tired of Trump’s authoritarian impulses (increasing tariffs on Canada because he doesn’t like an ad they ran? Putting tariffs on Brazil because they’re prosecuting Trump’s buddy for an attempted coup?) and wanted to send a message.
The ironic thing is that Democrats were holding out to make a Republican approach to medical care functional. Obamacare is essentially Mitt Romney’s plan (when he was the Republican governor of Massachusetts) that subsidizes private insurers instead of the plan favored by Democrats, having the government do it, like almost every other economically advanced country. Trump (and other Republicans) are right to criticize Obamacare for subsidizing the high profits of insurance companies, but there are basically two alternatives to that: going back to the era before Obamacare, when many people simply went without insurance as insurance companies denied coverage to those who might actually use it, with those denied going bankrupt when they got sick (and having their care subsidized by people who did have insurance), or some variation of government provided health care (e.g., single payer) favored by the Democrats. This dilemma is why Trump first promised in February 2017 to reveal his health care plan that was better than Obamacare in a “couple of weeks,” but more than eight years later has yet to reveal the plan.
While the Democrats agreeing to open the government in exchange for a vote in the Senate (no promises of passage, and not even a promise of a vote in the House) is a mistake, maybe the Democrats are playing three-dimensional chess. I was not sure that shutting down the government to save the subsidies for Obamacare was a wise move because those subsidies are very popular, and the fact that Republicans are cutting those subsidies to average Americans in order to pay for a tax cut for the wealthy is something that will damage the Republicans politically. If your political opponent is digging a hole, you don’t take away the shovel. Unfortunately, the spineless eight simply were not that politically savvy; they just couldn’t handle the pressure created by the shutdown.
One reason the eight Democrats caved was they didn’t see any way to end the shutdown, but there were at least two. The simplest would be for the Republicans to eliminate the filibuster and open the government on their own. The other would have been to get real concessions (such as no clawing back spending, no masked and badgeless ICE agents, etc.) other than the subsidies, but allow the Republicans to eliminate the subsidy.
Neither would have prevented the Republicans from eliminating the subsidies, but at least the Democrats would have gotten something for their troubles.
Kent James, of East Washington, has a doctorate in history and policy from Carnegie Mellon University.