Democrats thought they had a winning strategy when they voted to shut down the government. They assumed they could pin it on Republicans, rally their base, and walk away with political momentum. Instead, what they’ve created looks like a textbook self-own, handing the GOP a golden opportunity while leaving themselves with little to show for all the drama.
Democrats initiated the shutdown, blocked a clean continuing resolution in the Senate, and now they’re left holding the bag for a political stunt that backfired in ways they never imagined. In fact, even MSNBC is reporting that some Democrats are already wanting to cave.
“The government is now in its first shutdown since 2019 — and there is little sign that either party will soon give in to the other side’s demands and turn the lights back on. There are already signs some Democrats may want to cave, however,” the network reported. “While other Senate Democrats voted against the GOP’s spending bill Tuesday night, several other Democrats could quickly grow uncomfortable with their party’s strategy as the shutdown drags on.”
Meanwhile, even The Washington Post editorial board is calling out the Democrats, and accusing the radical left of “forc[ing] Democratic leaders to walk into a trap laid by President Donald Trump.”
“Left-wing Democrats, like the Freedom Caucus before them, enter this shutdown in a position of weakness,” the editorial board wrote. “President Donald Trump and his budget director, Russell Vought, now have extraordinary authority to choose which agencies to close, what spending to prioritize and even which government workers to lay off. As Trump warned on Tuesday, ‘We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible.’”
Expect him to follow through in a way that maximizes pain for Democrats, who will probably face pressure from their allies in government labor unions after employees are fired and others are forced to work without pay. While congressional Democrats have so far put up a mostly unified front, coalescing around a demand to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year, there’s no guarantee the party’s resolve will last.
The board also acknowledged that the chances “are slim that the two parties could ever come to terms that Democratic activists would view as a decisive victory. Yet the party’s base wants them to fight anyway, even if it means holding the government hostage.”
Ouch.
Even The New York Times gets that the Democrats own this shutdown. Its own polling shows that a majority of Americans oppose the move by the left to hold the government hostage. When one of the most reliably liberal outlets is reminding its readers who’s to blame, you know the effort to shift blame onto Republicans has collapsed.
From a practical standpoint, this is even worse for Democrats, but one of the big side effects is that Trump gets another chance to slim down the bloated bureaucracy, potentially sending hundreds of thousands of nonessential government workers packing, and Democrats can’t do anything about it.
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