Good stuff, and I mostly agree (I’m a veteran of the ‘95-96 shutdown). My best guess is a “framework” for the upcoming approps bills in exchange for a clean CR. I hope the “deal” includes Sen. Lankford’s bill to eliminate future shutdowns.
Polls showed that most Americans (80%+) disapproved of the shutdown and just over 50% blamed republicans. They failed to obtain real concessions and got two weeks of blisteringly bad press for their troubles. It didn’t cost them the election, but it was a gambit that gave them a marginal harm with zero benefit. I think something similar is likely to be the outcome for Democrats, though their worst case is likely worse; the 2013 GOP was budget hawkish and wasn’t losing sleep over the principle of furloughing federal workers — the 2025 Democratic Party is going to have more to lose from the optics of keeping federal workers from getting paid.
What it did do was motivate their base and help to unify the idea of the GOP as a fighting party. Years later this bore fruit. The Dems have no fighting muscles and right now they’re being asked to demonstrate that they have them. It’ll be hard and they probably won’t win, but a good fight will help bring the base back to the party and that’s really what the Dems need now. It’ll also help them to develop some opposition skills, which they’ve badly under delivered on.
It will have absolutely no effect on the midterm elections next year among swing voters, so there’s no actual political downside except the increased enthusiasm they’ll need to drive turnout.
Eh, maybe. The calculus with the Democrats now is different because there seems to be a real threat of a rebellion and so it may in fact be optimal for them to shut down the government (at least for Schumer and Jeffries keeping their jobs). In 2013 2/3 of Republicans and Independents ultimately opposed the shutdown so it was extremely unpopular inside the party as well, that’s probably less true now with increased polarization, but I’m not sure that that it even did that much good internally for the GOP in 2013.
I guess my cautions would be this. 1) The knee jerk urge to do *something* is often a bad one. Doing something just so you can say you’re doing something is almost never optimal. 2) The people who feel the strongest about the democrats doing something are the people who already detest Trump the most. I’m not sure that these are the people that you need to motivate to come out to vote for you. If you make them feel better, but turn off swing voters in the process you’ve benefitted not at all. 3) the 2013 GOP had clear messaging, they were trying to defund the (then highly unpopular) ACA. Public sentiment still skewered them for it. It didn’t cost them in the election, but it didn’t help them either, it made the GOP look (more) like an obstructionist party with no policy of their own. The Democrats don’t have a clear message or verbalisable victory conditions, that’s going to make it even harder for a public that doesn’t like government shutdowns to sympathise with them. 4)The Democrats have the benefit of looking like the mature adults who just want to keep things running responsibly, this is why their downside is worse than the GOP’s was in the past. If they’re going to run in the midterms on being the responsible ones, there will be a GOP super PAC that airs ads with pictures of closed monuments, parks, and sad, furloughed employees painting the Democrats as callous obstructionists who hate America and the GOP as the kindhearted saviours that saved the country. I don’t know that that ad moves the needle, but giving your opponent ammunition to undermine your best electoral argument with your own words is certainly not wise. And most importantly 5) the Democrats are going to have to back down, in 2013 the GOP admitted they lost, Boehner didn’t even pretend he won because the senate GOP and his house caucus rebelled against him. The Democrats may well have to do the same thing. When they do, are the people in the base that are demanding they shut down the government going to be happy? Or are they going to be upset that the Democrats caved to Trump? I strongly suspect it’s the latter.
So yeah, we may be in a place where politically Schumer and Jeffries have their hands tied, but the actual upside for Democrats is low AND the downside could actually be bad enough to hurt them in the election. I think it’s likely we all forget about this by then, but it’s a losing gamble they don’t have to take.
I think a lot of the damage Republicans are hoping to do will be quickly undermined by the Trump folks, who are already publicly salivating at the idea of firing the furloughed Federal employees. It’s hard to run a “sad Federal employees” ad campaign when the headline is “Trump administration fires X Federal employees” which has been the headline for the past nine months, and will likely be the headline next month.
Second, while I hate that the Dems are making temporary ACA subsidy extensions a part of their ask, there’s a big caucus of GOP reps who desperately want to extend the subsidies. It’s a huge electoral liability for them that a bunch of voters are going to have their health insurance yanked right before the midterms, so they want that to happen after the vote. That makes this an eminently “winnable” shutdown. Moreover even if the Dems “lose”, then they get to go to the midterms with 7.3 million people getting thrown off of their ACA coverage (and another 3.1m due to Medicaid cuts) and, by the way, “that unpopular shutdown you all hated? That was us fighting like goblins to try to prevent your family losing coverage.”
PS I think it’s dumb that the Dems are making this their ask. Not because they can’t get it! They very well might. But because winning on this issue does a huge electoral favor to the GOP. So “trying your best and failing to succeed” is now the optimal course from a political perspective. Let’s see if the GOP is dumb enough to lob them that outcome.
Yeah, I mean, I think my root issue is that if your strategy relies on your opponents screwing up, it may be time to reevaluate. I agree that the *likely* outcome is that this ends up being (mostly) a wash, there’s plenty of time before the election and betting on the GOP/Trump to make an unforced error isn’t a particularly risky bet, it’s just the worst case is worse for Democrats than it was for Republicans historically.
The other issue is that the people the Dems want to defect from the GOP are the same people who are going to most resent the shutdown being used as leverage. You’re asking the people who ultimately defected to refund the government when their side used the same tactic to support the “other side” using the same tactic. Maybe this ends up working out in the “try, but fail” sense you’re talking about, but I’m just not sold on Democrats borrowing the Tea Party’s playbook being a wise strategy towards appealing to voters who are on the fence about voting for democrats.
My view is that the Dems have never gone on the offense before and so the received wisdom is “there’s no evidence it will work.” At some point we have to try things. Maybe next month we’ll all be licking our wounds and agreeing never to do it again. Maybe we’ll be surprised at the energy it generated.
Playing everything safe has been an unmitigated disaster, so let’s use this downtime to experiment and take some risks.
Awesome post, thank you for summarizing all the great writing you've put out over the past few weeks!
My one prediction is that we will see at least one Republican rhetorically break from the pack to try to stand out (a la MTG on Israel or Ted Cruz on FCC censorship).
Example: an MTG-type saying that the government should just stay shut down forever to "save tax dollars", "curb abuse", "flush out the woke mind virus", etc. Of course, they'll all vote however Trump wants them to, but this is an opportunity to present some increasingly extreme ideas as a platform for 2028.
There are two elements to this shutdown that genuinely are different: (1) The Dems, rather than the GOP, are instigating it, and (2) the instigating party is using the filibuster rather than control of a full chamber.
Taken together, I think these give you the Democratic theory of the case: voters will blame the GOP for a shutdown because the GOP is the party of shutdowns, and “but the filibuster” is a boring excuse for why the GOP can’t get a bill through a Congress they control.
Will it work? Wouldn’t have been my gamble, but it really does make this time different.
Good stuff, and I mostly agree (I’m a veteran of the ‘95-96 shutdown). My best guess is a “framework” for the upcoming approps bills in exchange for a clean CR. I hope the “deal” includes Sen. Lankford’s bill to eliminate future shutdowns.
If you have 10 reasons for a shut down, you have none. Dems are cooked.
Very frustrating that there is nothing that can be done to stop a lawless presidency. This shutdown argument feels very fatalistic.
I also would like more explanation of why the 2013 shutdown was decisively bad for the GOP when they did well in the 2014 elections.
Polls showed that most Americans (80%+) disapproved of the shutdown and just over 50% blamed republicans. They failed to obtain real concessions and got two weeks of blisteringly bad press for their troubles. It didn’t cost them the election, but it was a gambit that gave them a marginal harm with zero benefit. I think something similar is likely to be the outcome for Democrats, though their worst case is likely worse; the 2013 GOP was budget hawkish and wasn’t losing sleep over the principle of furloughing federal workers — the 2025 Democratic Party is going to have more to lose from the optics of keeping federal workers from getting paid.
What it did do was motivate their base and help to unify the idea of the GOP as a fighting party. Years later this bore fruit. The Dems have no fighting muscles and right now they’re being asked to demonstrate that they have them. It’ll be hard and they probably won’t win, but a good fight will help bring the base back to the party and that’s really what the Dems need now. It’ll also help them to develop some opposition skills, which they’ve badly under delivered on.
It will have absolutely no effect on the midterm elections next year among swing voters, so there’s no actual political downside except the increased enthusiasm they’ll need to drive turnout.
Eh, maybe. The calculus with the Democrats now is different because there seems to be a real threat of a rebellion and so it may in fact be optimal for them to shut down the government (at least for Schumer and Jeffries keeping their jobs). In 2013 2/3 of Republicans and Independents ultimately opposed the shutdown so it was extremely unpopular inside the party as well, that’s probably less true now with increased polarization, but I’m not sure that that it even did that much good internally for the GOP in 2013.
I guess my cautions would be this. 1) The knee jerk urge to do *something* is often a bad one. Doing something just so you can say you’re doing something is almost never optimal. 2) The people who feel the strongest about the democrats doing something are the people who already detest Trump the most. I’m not sure that these are the people that you need to motivate to come out to vote for you. If you make them feel better, but turn off swing voters in the process you’ve benefitted not at all. 3) the 2013 GOP had clear messaging, they were trying to defund the (then highly unpopular) ACA. Public sentiment still skewered them for it. It didn’t cost them in the election, but it didn’t help them either, it made the GOP look (more) like an obstructionist party with no policy of their own. The Democrats don’t have a clear message or verbalisable victory conditions, that’s going to make it even harder for a public that doesn’t like government shutdowns to sympathise with them. 4)The Democrats have the benefit of looking like the mature adults who just want to keep things running responsibly, this is why their downside is worse than the GOP’s was in the past. If they’re going to run in the midterms on being the responsible ones, there will be a GOP super PAC that airs ads with pictures of closed monuments, parks, and sad, furloughed employees painting the Democrats as callous obstructionists who hate America and the GOP as the kindhearted saviours that saved the country. I don’t know that that ad moves the needle, but giving your opponent ammunition to undermine your best electoral argument with your own words is certainly not wise. And most importantly 5) the Democrats are going to have to back down, in 2013 the GOP admitted they lost, Boehner didn’t even pretend he won because the senate GOP and his house caucus rebelled against him. The Democrats may well have to do the same thing. When they do, are the people in the base that are demanding they shut down the government going to be happy? Or are they going to be upset that the Democrats caved to Trump? I strongly suspect it’s the latter.
So yeah, we may be in a place where politically Schumer and Jeffries have their hands tied, but the actual upside for Democrats is low AND the downside could actually be bad enough to hurt them in the election. I think it’s likely we all forget about this by then, but it’s a losing gamble they don’t have to take.
I think a lot of the damage Republicans are hoping to do will be quickly undermined by the Trump folks, who are already publicly salivating at the idea of firing the furloughed Federal employees. It’s hard to run a “sad Federal employees” ad campaign when the headline is “Trump administration fires X Federal employees” which has been the headline for the past nine months, and will likely be the headline next month.
Second, while I hate that the Dems are making temporary ACA subsidy extensions a part of their ask, there’s a big caucus of GOP reps who desperately want to extend the subsidies. It’s a huge electoral liability for them that a bunch of voters are going to have their health insurance yanked right before the midterms, so they want that to happen after the vote. That makes this an eminently “winnable” shutdown. Moreover even if the Dems “lose”, then they get to go to the midterms with 7.3 million people getting thrown off of their ACA coverage (and another 3.1m due to Medicaid cuts) and, by the way, “that unpopular shutdown you all hated? That was us fighting like goblins to try to prevent your family losing coverage.”
PS I think it’s dumb that the Dems are making this their ask. Not because they can’t get it! They very well might. But because winning on this issue does a huge electoral favor to the GOP. So “trying your best and failing to succeed” is now the optimal course from a political perspective. Let’s see if the GOP is dumb enough to lob them that outcome.
Yeah, I mean, I think my root issue is that if your strategy relies on your opponents screwing up, it may be time to reevaluate. I agree that the *likely* outcome is that this ends up being (mostly) a wash, there’s plenty of time before the election and betting on the GOP/Trump to make an unforced error isn’t a particularly risky bet, it’s just the worst case is worse for Democrats than it was for Republicans historically.
The other issue is that the people the Dems want to defect from the GOP are the same people who are going to most resent the shutdown being used as leverage. You’re asking the people who ultimately defected to refund the government when their side used the same tactic to support the “other side” using the same tactic. Maybe this ends up working out in the “try, but fail” sense you’re talking about, but I’m just not sold on Democrats borrowing the Tea Party’s playbook being a wise strategy towards appealing to voters who are on the fence about voting for democrats.
My view is that the Dems have never gone on the offense before and so the received wisdom is “there’s no evidence it will work.” At some point we have to try things. Maybe next month we’ll all be licking our wounds and agreeing never to do it again. Maybe we’ll be surprised at the energy it generated.
Playing everything safe has been an unmitigated disaster, so let’s use this downtime to experiment and take some risks.
Awesome post, thank you for summarizing all the great writing you've put out over the past few weeks!
My one prediction is that we will see at least one Republican rhetorically break from the pack to try to stand out (a la MTG on Israel or Ted Cruz on FCC censorship).
Example: an MTG-type saying that the government should just stay shut down forever to "save tax dollars", "curb abuse", "flush out the woke mind virus", etc. Of course, they'll all vote however Trump wants them to, but this is an opportunity to present some increasingly extreme ideas as a platform for 2028.
There are two elements to this shutdown that genuinely are different: (1) The Dems, rather than the GOP, are instigating it, and (2) the instigating party is using the filibuster rather than control of a full chamber.
Taken together, I think these give you the Democratic theory of the case: voters will blame the GOP for a shutdown because the GOP is the party of shutdowns, and “but the filibuster” is a boring excuse for why the GOP can’t get a bill through a Congress they control.
Will it work? Wouldn’t have been my gamble, but it really does make this time different.