Democrats were, I think, “winning” the US government shutdown. But they got tired of it. “Tired of winning,” I mean, to hijack a phrase. So they folded.
I say Democrats were winning not because November 4 went well for the party (although Election Day 2025 certainly did go well), but rather because Donald Trump’s made himself synonymous with American government, which means the psychological distillation process in which voters attempt to parsimoniously assign blame dead ends at his doorstep. That’s problematic when you’re only half an autocrat.
Becoming the government — manifesting it — is part and parcel of authoritarian rule. As an authoritarian, you become shorthand for your country’s politics in much the same way a nation’s capital serves as a linguistic shortcut for the government. When we say “Moscow” we might be referring to the city, but we may also be referring to the Russian government. We might also just say “Vladimir Putin.”
Saddam Hussein was the Iraqi government. Bashar al-Assad was the Syrian government. The Kim dynasty is the North Korean government. And so on. Larger-than-life authoritarians are their nation’s government incarnate.
Of course, that’s the worst kind of liability when you need to deflect blame for a bad outcome, but because tyrants aren’t beholden to public opinion, or anyway can’t be held accountable at the ballot box, that’s a moot point. Obviously, the war in Ukraine’s Putin’s fault, and while he has a lot of excuses and arguments for why it isn’t, at the end of the day it doesn’t so much matter because pushing the issue will get you lunch with Aleksei Navalny.
Trump’s not Putin, though. The US isn’t a full-on autocracy, let alone a dictatorship, which means public opinion still matters. And make no mistake: Voters were going to blame him for the shutdown sooner or later.
This is a man who hangs billboard-sized portraits of himself on federal government buildings in the style of the Kims, who’s seized for himself sweeping executive powers far beyond the scope of those imagined by even the most covetous of American presidents and who regularly claims to have solved the world’s most vexing problems overnight and singlehandedly (last month Trump thanked himself for ending “3,000 years” of war in the Mideast, for example).
Such a towering figure — a man who aspires to something like omnipotence and who works around the clock to perpetuate his own ubiquity — would have a very difficult time claiming powerlessness and ineptitude around something as comparatively trivial as an argument over extending health care subsidies. Not only does that undercut Trump’s pretensions to iron-fisted authority, it also flies in the face of common sense vis-à-vis what everyone knows to be true about the subservience of the Republican party to his every want and whim. It’s also diametrically opposed to the idea of Trump as history’s greatest dealmaker.
The juxtaposition between, one one hand, the persistence of a US government shutdown over domestic policy quarrels which pale in comparison to the disputes Trump claims to have successfully adjudicated abroad and, on the other, his insistence on being regarded as a dealmaker with no historical peers and, more to the point, a head of state commanding the authority of an emperor, poses a version of the God quandary for Trump’s support base: If He is indeed transcendentally preeminent, why the hell can’t he ensure the planes fly on schedule for Thanksgiving? Didn’t Mussolini make the trains run on time?
Trump was exhibiting signs of desperation in recent days even as a small cadre of Senate Democrats were in the process of abandoning the party’s one key shutdown demand (an extension of Obamacare subsidies) in pursuit of a piecemeal compromise to fund the government. Among other things, Trump floated cash handouts, both for families who might struggle with higher insurance premiums and for everyone in the form of a “tariff dividend.” That’s what happens when populists get nervous: They just hand out free money, and not as part of any well-considered social initiative, but rather as the large-scale equivalent of showing up at polling places and handing physical cash to people from a giant pocket roll.
But Republicans were able to depend on one key weakness among Democrats: They’re soppy. Even if Democrats realized on some level that voters would eventually (inevitably) blame Dear Leader for the shutdown, they couldn’t stomach the idea of disrupted Thanksgiving travel plans, let alone millions of low-income families going without food assistance. So, in a hopelessly myopic fold, a handful of them traded a deal to reopen the government for a GOP promise to hold a vote on the health care subsidies in December.
Maybe that vote will take place maybe it won’t, but tying the fate of Americans’ health insurance premiums to a GOP promise is a shaky limb to go out on, even when that promise comes from John Thune, a man of his word as far as Republicans go (note the emphasis). The Democrats who struck a deal with Thune will say they got enough in return to justify folding, but the inescapable bottom line is that, on the Democratic side, the shutdown was about winning an extension for health care subsidies. Republicans flat out refused that.
No, bleeding hearts, no one was going to “starve,” but the GOP was willing to let some low-income Americans go a little hungry, and they were willing to sacrifice Thanksgiving travel. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say Republicans knew Democrats weren’t willing to let low-income Americans go hungry, even a little bit, and couldn’t stomach the prospect of sharply curtailed holiday flights.
Ultimately, Democrats again demonstrated their ineluctable penchant for the saccharine and low tolerance for pain, a death knell when the opposing party prides itself on being sociopathically cynical. Democrats should’ve recognized that for a president determined to vest all power in his own person, the proverbial buck unavoidably stops with him.
Has Fetterman done his gaslighting routine yet? The one where he says Democrats are the crazy ones and Republicans expectations are perfectly reasonable?
I hate to be abrasive, but John’s crazy. Literally. Clinically. He shouldn’t be a senator. I say that as a crazy person myself.
As a longtime observer of Fetterman, I concur. I became a fan when he was Lt. Governor of PA. Bernie Sanders endorsed, incredible campaigner, huge union booster, and a social media game on par with AOC, he was one of my favorite politicians (an admittedly low bar). Then he had a stroke. While he may have “recovered,” the person occupying the Senate is someone else.
Fully agree. Back when he was Lt. Governor I often suggested to my friends that they should check him out as he was a great communicator who skewered his (former) opposition with upbeat, snarky humor. I donated a few coins to his senate campaign. That stroke shut down neural pathways essential for sane governance.
Being spineless isn’t a quality that voters back. It’s sad that the Rs know they can always wait them out and they’ll cave.
These Democrats having to be dumbest elected leaders on the planet or just plan delusional. They got a guarantee from Thune. What part of he’s not running anything don’t they understand? Only Orange has the last word. The only thing I like about this deal is that now the Dems won’t be saving the GOP on healthcare. Those subsidies will go up since all the GOP has ever wanted was to get rid of the ACA. Let the people feel the pain, half of them voted for it. Don’t save the GOP on healthcare!
This is the only explanation that makes sense to me. They think that the chaos in the healthcare market will be something they can use to beat republicans over the head in coming elections. Unfortunately, I doubt that’s the thought process used by the senators who caved.
It could also be that they didn’t want to ruin the holidays and will just shut it back down in January. Maybe Mike Johnson will even seat the rep from Arizona in the meantime (he won’t).
Seems like Republicans’ best allies are moderate Democrats from swing states who mostly aren’t seeking re-election.
What is the level of competition between dems and republicans over campaign finance? Are they both trying to woo the same donors with the very deep pockets? If so, it seems like a game where both sides appear on the surface to be opposed to the other, but in the end, they are really trying to accomplish the same general goals. Although the republicans are at bat, the dems don’t appear to be doing anything to piss off the republican donors. The republicans are just better at selling the product to the voting population.
And the Dims are letting Rs sneak in a ban on full spectrum hemp/CBD edibles and drinks, bowing to big alcohol. Not holding my breath for rescheduling.
To be fair, no CBD edible can conjure the same level of temporary bliss as half a bottle of bourbon. Of course, the latter will kill you eventually, but you know… we all gotta go someday.
Depends on where the pain is… Now I love a good bourbon to wash down the edible too, but this “we have to ban it to protect the kids” argument gets real old when we all know there’s way more death and destruction to kids from alcohol than THC/CBD. Hopefully, we still get proper rescheduling or de-scheduling, then I’ll drink to that!!
Soppy, love it. Rs can stay GOP. D’s can become SOP.
Well said. Dems wuss out. Again. Taking independents and moderate repubs with them.
I originally thought that the Dems really blew it but I have changed my mind. If they would have forced the Republicans to give some of the subsidies back, the Dems would have solved the problem for the next election cycle. With Trump equating himself with government I think that most people will blame Trump for the rates going up. I think enough people will show up the next cycle to overcome some of the gerrymandering.