Democrats won the shutdown fight

It was always going to end like this, but it turned out much better than expected

The government shutdown is ending! Was it worth it? Did Democrats blow it by caving? Time for some takes!

1. When the government reopens later this week, it will put an end to what has become the longest shutdown in history. On the face of it, Democrats don’t have much to show for the whole experience. The deal that tempted eight Senate Democrats to break ranks and vote for reopening doesn’t give their party very much. It funds a few agencies and programs for a full year, but the rest of the government will run out of money again in January - forcing another shutdown fight. And all that Republicans have committed to on healthcare subsidies - the issue that this whole thing was supposedly about - is to hold a vote in the Senate in December. There’s no guarantee any Republicans will vote to extend the subsidies, or that the House will take up the bill even if they do.

2. (Democrats also “got” a few other things, like the guarantee that federal workers fired at the start of the shutdown will be rehired - but those firings were illegal in the first place. Ditto their claim that they got food assistance fully funded is not really a “win” - it’s just getting Trump to follow the law).

3. Viewed another way, I’m not sure that this sort of policy calculus is the right way to judge the shutdown. From the beginning, there was essentially zero chance that Democrats were going to achieve their goal of having the Obamacare subsidies extended. Not once in the history of American politics has the party using a shutdown to gain leverage over a policy goal ever achieved its policy goal. It’s hard for me to believe that Democratic leadership in the Senate thought this time was really going to be different.

4. Instead, we ought to weigh this all up as a matter of politics. And things unfolded in a much better way than I would have expected on that front. The public seems to blame Trump and the GOP for the shutdown much more than they do the Democrats, and Trump’s approval rating has been tanking even lower over the last two to three weeks. Last week’s elections show that the Democrats have the wind at their backs in terms of electoral politics, too.

5. Another encouraging sign from this whole saga is that it revealed that Trump’s political instincts are as weak as ever. He gleefully attempted to maximize the pain that the shutdown caused Americans, banking on the public blaming the Democrats. A more savvy politician would have explained with a heavy heart that they really wished they could make welfare payments, but unfortunately obstructionist Democrats wouldn’t let him. Instead Trump actually went to court to prevent families from getting food stamps, and floated the idea of ignoring the court if it ruled against him. I’m no Republican political strategist but I somehow think that making “feeding starving children” the issue on which you finally shred the constitution entirely and defy the courts is not a winning move.

6. And while it’s easy to be cynical about the Obamacare subsidies vote, at the very least it’s going to be politically painful for the GOP and for Trump. Voter anger about affordability is extremely high, and now Republicans have to go on record as refusing to help people out with skyrocketing healthcare costs just weeks before those costs, well, skyrocket. I’m skeptical they might actually give in on the policy substance, but it’s going to hurt them.

7. On the downside, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and the eight Democratic senators who voted to end the shutdown are now bearing the brunt of extreme anger from the party base. That was the problem with this whole strategy from the beginning: it was inevitably going to lead to disappointing the base because there was a near-zero chance of actually getting the subsidies extended.

8. On the other hand, the base would have been even angrier if Dems had just voted to fund the government 40 days ago we never forced a shutdown in the first place. And at the end of the day, these things go in cycles - everyone was also extremely mad at Schumer for not forcing a shutdown when he had a chance to do so the first time earlier this year. Then he did force a shutdown the second time, and Democratic partisans loved it and even warmed up to him a little bit. It’s not like this is some sort of final surrender - other fights lie ahead.

9. Still, Schumer’s days might be numbered. We’re soon entering midterm year, and Democratic candidates are going to have to answer questions about his leadership. He’s not popular, even with Democratic voters. Minority leader is a pretty impossible job right now, because you have very few tools to actually stand up to Trump and face relentless demands from activists that you do. He might be doing other rising Democratic stars a favor by absorbing the political costs that come with occupying this position before he heads for a graceful exit. But that exit probably ought to come sooner rather than later.

10. All in all, this was a dispiriting if inevitable end to a week in which Democrats had a string of otherwise very good news. This is one more twist in the road, and in the long run probably not a very important one. If anything, more than anything else it exposed Trump and the GOP’s political weaknesses. Democrats would be well served by trying to keep the fratricide to a minimum and focus on the next opportunity to strike a political blow. They’re still on a roll.