‘Full of despair’: Senate Dems look to regroup after losing shutdown fight
Senate Democrats are bracing for a painful post-mortem as they try to avoid a September rerun of their latest government funding defeat.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and nine of his members helped get a House GOP-authored government funding bill to the finish line, saying a vote to advance legislation they loathed was the least bad option. The alternative, they argued, was allowing a shutdown that could empower Trump and Elon Musk to accelerate their slashing of the federal bureaucracy.
This was the first time since the start of Trump’s second administration that the party had real leverage to fight the president, as Republicans needed Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster. Democrats could have refused to put up those votes to avert a shutdown, but Schumer folded instead. This gambit is now raising internal questions about how Democrats will handle the next shutdown deadline at the end of September — and how they can avoid the same result.
Schumer’s strategy exposed major fissures within the party, marking for many of his members a disappointing retreat. It’s also raised questions among some Democrats about whether it’s time for the New Yorker to step aside — though no senators have publicly embraced those calls.
“We should do a retrospective,” said Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). Asked whether his party lost some of its clout by acquiescing to the GOP’s funding bill, Gallego said: “That was my concern.”
Senate Democrats have already started discussing privately how to avoid getting rolled again. They bet this month that House Republicans would never be able to pass a stopgap funding bill without Democratic support, and Democrats hoped they could leverage that failure into a bipartisan deal. That assumption backfired when Speaker Mike Johnson called their bluff, sending the Senate a funding patch that passed the House with only one Republican opposing it.
“We were just talking about that,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said when asked how the party will pursue the next funding fight. “We’ve got to come up with a plan.”
Some Democrats are now afraid that they inadvertently gave Republicans a playbook for government funding fights in the future: Cut Democrats out of the negotiations, muscle legislation through the House with only GOP votes and bet they can jam the Senate. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) pointed to that possibility as he laid out his frustrations after the Senate cleared the funding measure Friday night, warning that Democrats set a “really dangerous precedent” and questioned “why would Republicans work with us” going forward.
This isn't the first time Democrats have found themselves divided as they learn how to navigate the return of the Trump era. But with a second funding battle looming, not to mention a potential brawl over the debt ceiling, Democrats are warning that they need to quickly find a foothold that unites their caucus and its disparate voices while also delivering results.
Democrats say they need to have a blunt conversation about how much political risk they are willing to absorb to fight Trump, including blocking unrelated legislation or symbolic opposition to nominees. Some Democratic senators are floating holding a series of rallies and town halls to try to build public support for opposing Trump.
“I think our caucus needs to work through how we are going to coordinate a common message and approach,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.).
Senate Democrats spent a lot of time last week agonizing over how to handle the government funding fight in closed-door meetings; some became so heated that senators could be heard shouting in the Capitol hallways. Schumer gave his colleagues room to air their grievances, which included complaints about the lack of a clear strategy. But he also encouraged them to not outwardly lean into a shutdown threat in the lead-up to the House vote that he hoped would fail.
Many Democratic senators were frank in the final days before the vote that they were barreling toward a lose-lose situation. Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) called the two choices Democrats faced — supporting the House GOP bill or driving the government into a shutdown — “full of despair.”
A Senate Democratic aide, granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said there was a “very clear split in strategy” between Schumer and other senior Democrats ahead of Friday’s vote. The aide said that there needs to be a “reset” heading into the funding fight this fall.
“The leverage point still exists,” the aide added. “It’s just a matter of using it.”
Meanwhile, Republicans have been gloating over Schumer’s missteps. The Democratic leader warned from the Senate floor last week that the House bill did not have the votes to advance in his chamber, only to say the next day that he would help get it over a 60-vote procedural hurdle. Several Republican senators and even Trump complimented him for helping advance the funding bill, even as he ultimately opposed it on passage vote.
Schumer has defended his strategy, arguing that as leader of the caucus he has to make politically painful decisions to protect both his members and the country from what he viewed as a worse alternative: The possibility of a prolonged shutdown with Trump and Musk in the driver's seat. Schumer privately warned his members ahead of last week’s vote that if the government shut down there was not a clear offramp out of one, and that Republicans could potentially try to cherry pick which parts of the government to reopen.
Schumer, in a sit-down with reporters last week, acknowledged that Republicans could try to jam them again in September. But Schumer said he’s betting that Trump’s actions and policies will make him less popular, which could splinter congressional Republicans in the coming months and give Democrats a “decent chance” at more leverage heading into September negotiations. Other Democratic senators indicated they feel similarly.
“With the failed Trump economic policies, with a market that continues to wobble at best … I think a lot of this is going to start bubbling up,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).
Katherine Tully-McManus, Lisa Kashinsky and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.