A party that champions government workers and the poor was willing to sacrifice them.
The longest-ever government shutdown has ended with a negotiated whimper rather than a glorious Resistance victory, and many Democrats are furious at their leaders. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut argued on Bluesky that the Senate’s vote to end the suspension leaves President Donald Trump stronger, not weaker. Representative Ro Khanna of California wrote on X that leaders must pay. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he argued, “is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?”
There was, in fact, a strong moral case for ending this shutdown. The Democrats’ decision to back down, however painful, will save tens of millions of poor and working-class Americans who had lost food stamps from going hungry. Millions more travelers will be spared chaos at airports. Federal employees will no longer have to pay mortgages and bills without their salary. Had Democrats refused to make this compromise, which passed on the Senate floor last night and now heads to the House, they would have forced some of the nation’s most vulnerable to shoulder the greatest burden.
From the beginning of the shutdown, the Democrats’ challenge was one of optics and substance. Democrats pride themselves on being the party that defends the role of government and fights for the impoverished. But now they were bringing the government and its services to a stop. Substantively, they bet that they could weaken Trump, forcing a nihilistic president to compromise and restore subsidies for the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire soon. Safe to say that the plan did not work out. Trump spoke in vengeful terms of the “radical” Democrats as he laid off federal workers and fought to withhold funding for food stamps, and as his transportation secretary announced a crisis in air-traffic control. And the president, of course, blamed the shutdown, rather than his own declining approval ratings, for the Republicans’ electoral losses last week.
