President Trump wants Congress to pass a clean continuing resolution that keeps the government open through late November. That resolution has already made it through the House. But Senate Democrats appear dug in, ready to deny Republicans the (at least) seven votes needed to break a filibuster and move the bill to the president’s desk.

It’s a showdown Democrats would probably regret. You shut down government only when you’re sure you have the public on your side and the ability to explain clearly why you’re taking such a drastic step. In this case, the Democrats can’t really claim to have either.

If you’re looking for polls that indicate voters would blame Republicans for a shutdown, they’re out there. If you’re looking for polls indicating that they’d blame Democrats, you can find those too.

More interesting, perhaps, is a poll conducted by YouGov and Americans for Prosperity. Among its findings: 61 percent of voters think shutdowns hurt Congress’s ability to help the country succeed. And therein lies the Democrats’ problem: Americans want Congress to fix our country’s problems, not reflexively battle across the political aisle.

Less than a year ago, Americans decisively elected Mr. Trump based on, among other things, his promises to cut taxes and do away with wasteful government spending. After enacting the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act just a few months ago, Congress has the relatively simple task of keeping the government open without larding on billions for Medicaid spending.

Yet congressional Democratic leaders seem determined to close the government to try to force Republicans to agree to just that.

It’s a misreading of the public’s skepticism of bloated government and yet another example of the Democrats’ terrible messaging, something that characterized Joe Biden’s presidency and Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

There are ways to win government shutdowns. Not long after I became speaker, presiding over the first Republican House majority in 40 years, we closed the government twice: For five days, from Nov. 14 to Nov. 19, 1995, and for 21 days, from Dec. 16, 1995, to Jan. 6, 1996.

Our reason for doing it was the opposite of the strategy being pursued by Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leaders in the Senate and the House. We closed the government as an opening gambit in a long campaign to reduce spending, reform welfare and balance the federal budget. The American people did not like the shutdowns, but Republicans believed, rightly, that they deeply supported our broader goals.

Many political analysts were convinced we were making an enormous mistake that would cost us our majority. After all, no House G.O.P. majority had been re-elected since 1928.

But we calculated that by going toe-to-toe with President Bill Clinton we were demonstrating that we were serious about cutting spending and balancing the budget. And less than a year after we closed the government, we were re-elected.

To get a sense of how big an earthquake this was, it is useful to remember that Republicans’ four consecutive balanced budgets, from 1998 to 2001, were the first in decades. Yes, in 1996, Mr. Clinton was re-elected, but that same year we pushed through welfare-to-work legislation, known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, that was the most significant social conservative reform in modern times.

The sense that House Republicans kept their word created a lasting shift in American politics. From 1931 to 1995, Democrats held the House for 60 years and Republicans held it for just four years. Since 1995, Republicans have held the House for almost 23 years and the Democrats for just eight.

The key to the 1995-96 shutdowns working politically was that we were demanding things the American people wanted.

By contrast, and by many accounts, Democrats are poised to shut down the government in order to look like they’re willing to “do something” — anything — to thwart Mr. Trump. That might be what their base wants, but it’s not how you go about trying to win back the House majority.

In a sense, Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries are acting like the Obama-era G.O.P., with its nebulous cry of “no more spending.” Those Republicans also dutifully trekked to the Oval Office to try negotiating with the president. But they consistently struggled to explain how they were going to deliver a better future, or how shutdowns were going to achieve it.

Without a clear strategic reason to close the government, doing so comes off as incompetent. Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries are insisting that this is all about funding for health care, an issue that once was a Democratic strong suit. But if Americans wanted Democrats’ prescription for health care, their party’s favorability rating wouldn’t be languishing at around 30 percent, and less than a year ago, they wouldn’t have handed control of the executive and legislative branches of government to Republicans.

John Thune, the Senate majority leader, has an opportunity to tell Americans that Republicans want to keep the government open.

Democrats really don’t have a coherent response. Don’t be surprised if their approach leads to frustration and defeat.

Newt Gingrich, a Republican, was the speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. He represented Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District from 1979 to 1999.

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