The Moral Cost of the Democrats’ Shutdown Strategy
The longest-ever government shutdown has ended with a negotiated whimper rather than a glorious Resistance victory, and many Democrats are furious at their leaders. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut argued on Bluesky that the Senate’s vote to end the suspension leaves President Donald Trump stronger, not weaker. Representative Ro Khanna of California wrote on X that leaders must pay. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he argued, “is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
There was, in fact, a strong moral case for ending this shutdown. The Democrats’ decision to back down, however painful, will save tens of millions of poor and working-class Americans who had lost food stamps from going hungry. Millions more travelers will be spared chaos at airports. Federal employees will no longer have to pay mortgages and bills without their salary. Had Democrats refused to make this compromise, which passed on the Senate floor last night and now heads to the House, they would have forced some of the nation’s most vulnerable to shoulder the greatest burden.
From the beginning of the shutdown, the Democrats’ challenge was one of optics and substance. Democrats pride themselves on being the party that defends the role of government and fights for the impoverished. But now they were bringing the government and its services to a stop. Substantively, they bet that they could weaken Trump, forcing a nihilistic president to compromise and restore subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire soon. Safe to say that the plan did not work out. Trump spoke in vengeful terms of the “radical” Democrats as he laid off federal workers and fought to withhold funding for food stamps, and as his transportation secretary announced a crisis in air-traffic control. And the president, of course, blamed the shutdown, rather than his own declining approval ratings, for the Republicans’ electoral losses last week.
[Jonathan Chait: Senate Democrats just made a huge mistake]
Democratic politicians, as well as liberal writers and activists, insisted over the past weeks that the party’s handling of the shutdown was a strategic success. Most polls showed that Americans, by a slender margin, blamed Republicans rather than Democrats for the stoppage. Many on the left argued that the Election Day victories of Democratic candidates in Virginia and New Jersey reinforced that advantage. “It would be very strange if, on the heels of the American people rewarding Democrats,” Murphy said, “we surrendered without getting anything.”
Some Democrats seemed to suggest that the suffering of American citizens might redound to the party’s benefit. Stories of families going without food stamps would, they hoped, shame Republicans. Thanksgiving loomed, and GOP lawmakers would face constituents angry about airplane delays and cancellations. In October, the House Democratic whip, Representative Katherine Clark, went on Fox News and described the overarching logic candidly, if unartfully: “I mean, shutdowns are terrible, and of course there will be, you know, families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leverage times we have.”
Democrats have framed their battle as grounded in principle. They wanted to extend Affordable Care Act premium subsidies that will otherwise terminate at year’s end, resulting in sharp hikes in health-care costs for millions of Americans. But that goal was always a long shot. Jim Manley, who once worked for Senator Harry Reid, told The New York Times yesterday: “I never could figure out how you could ever get Republicans to vote for the health care extension.”
For those many Democrats who claimed they wanted to battle on, what, then, was their end game? Too many of their arguments came to sound desperate, born of anger and frustration with their own impotence. When the deal to end the shutdown was announced, Representative Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, a former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, posted what amounted to a tantrum on X: “What Senate Dems who voted for this horseshit deal did was fuck over all the hard work people put in to Tuesday’s elections.” But many Americans might wonder if it was okay for the Democrats to do the same to them. Few middle-class workers have enough money on hand to survive six weeks without a paycheck, and few poor and working-class families can easily withstand the loss of food stamps.
[Read: Why the Democrats finally folded]
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal-employee union, usually supports Democrats. But he sounded like a man who had long ago grown tired of either political party using his workers as sacrificial lambs. There is, he wrote on his union’s website late last month, “no ‘winning’ a government shutdown.” And it is “long past time for our leaders to put aside partisan politics and embrace responsible government.”
For Democrats who opposed the shutdown deal, Schumer has become the ultimate symbol of fecklessness. When another shutdown loomed this past spring, he warned that to embrace it threatened chaos. “It’s a Hobson’s choice,” he told the Senate Democrats. “Either proceed with the bill before us, or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown.” Schumer chose the former. Yet as the year went on, and his members hankered for a fight, Schumer changed course and embraced a shutdown.
Through careful messaging, he and other members of the party leadership managed to shift a measure of blame onto Republicans, and perhaps helped Democratic candidates succeed last week. As matters began to look apocalyptic, eight centrist senators—who say they remained in touch with Schumer throughout—opted yesterday to make a deal with Republicans. The agreement reverses the layoffs of federal workers that the administration tried to enact during the shutdown. Senate Republicans also agreed to a vote on the ACA subsidies, which could set up a difficult decision for GOP members.
All of this describes a reasonably adept bit of legislative handiwork, but a painful one.
The Democrats’ anger and frustration with the Trump administration and the Republican Party is no doubt heartfelt. Trump has trampled democratic norms, gutted government programs, and insulted and intimidated his opponents. But the Democrats’ grand problem is not that centrist senators—most of whom hail from battleground states and none of whom is up for reelection in 2026—cut a compromise. It’s that they lost control of Congress and the presidency in the 2024 election and need to win back power again. Focusing on the 2026 midterm elections might not sound as emotionally satisfying as engaging in political war with Trump. But it offers the best and most productive path out of the party’s current nightmare.