A group of eight mostly moderate Senate Democrats defected from the party line and struck a deal with Republicans on Sunday to set in motion a likely end to the federal government shutdown. MSNBC reports that the emerging deal “mirrors what Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., floated weeks ago during an interview with MSNBC: Reopen the government now, and Republicans will later give Democrats a vote on extending the expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies.”
This isn’t a good deal for Democrats. The point of the shutdown was not to force a symbolic vote on extending ACA subsidies, but to get Republicans to agree to support a real extension. There are other elements of the deal as well, including back pay for furloughed federal workers and the rehiring of laid-off workers, but those provisions are mostly cleanup after the shutdown and don’t relate to the premise for triggering it in the first place.
Trump has observed that enough Democrats will crack under enough pressure.
Democrats appear to have achieved the worst of all possible worlds with this conclusion. Their refusal to vote to fund the government set off the longest government shutdown in history, and they held the line long enough that the slowdown of government operations and services became extremely visible. Air traffic dipped due to staffing shortages, and Trump refused to appropriately distribute emergency funds for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially known as food stamps, to tens of millions of poor Americans. Yet now Democrats have basically nothing to show for it — and have infuriated the parts of the base eager for a sustained fight with President Donald Trump.
Marisa Kabas, an independent reporter, posted on social media that a SNAP recipient wrote in an email to her: “We’ve been put through hell for weeks, constantly having our ability to simply feed ourselves dangled in front of our faces, our survival used as a bargaining chip, told it was for a reason. Our suffering would prevent even more suffering and that it would be temporary and worth it to save healthcare for millions. And now it’s all for nothing.”
Attempting a government shutdown was always risky business — usually the party that tries to leverage the government’s closure for a policy win loses the battle of public opinion.
The argument for Democrats staying the course was that it looked like Democrats were bucking that trend: Several recent polls showed that Republicans were getting more blame for the shutdown and that, by historical standards, Democrats were receiving unusually high levels of support for their role in the shutdown, in part because their cause — health care access — seemed worthwhile.
The argument for ending the standoff was that Trump, by attempting to use reduction of food stamps as a political weapon, had demonstrated a cold willingness to cause more harm than Democrats would ever be able to stomach. “Waiting another week, or another month, wouldn’t deliver a better outcome,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H, said, explaining why she moved toward making a deal with Republicans. “It would only mean more harm for families in New Hampshire and all across the country.”
Regardless of where you come down on what Democrats should have done, this was a difficult position for the party to be in. The ethics in this situation are blurry — the cause of protecting health care access is noble, but so is the cause of protecting hungry Americans. And while the Dems were faring a bit better than Republicans politically, this fight was always going to get ugly, and it’s possible that Shaheen is right that this concession would ultimately have come no matter what, but after a lot more suffering. Everyone with a conscience has their limits when participating in activist measures to secure a win.
Worst of all for Democrats, strategically speaking, is that this likely rules out the possibility that the party will be able to leverage a government shutdown to try to secure a policy extraction ever again during Trump’s presidency. Trump has observed that enough Democrats will crack under enough pressure. And he’s demonstrated, as plain as day, an indifference to Americans’ suffering, even if it costs him in approval ratings, in order to secure a political win.
