What Democrats gained from the shutdown, and could lose by giving in
CBC
Democrats in Congress managed to stand firm against U.S. President Donald Trump long enough to force the lengthiest federal government shutdown in the country's history.
But now that a handful of Democratic senators have agreed to a deal that would end the shutdown, the party risks throwing away some of the political advantage they've gained over the past six weeks.
Polls consistently showed the Democrats winning the public opinion showdown over the shutdown. Solid majorities of voters were telling pollsters they blamed the Republicans in Congress or Trump himself more than the Democrats for what was happening.
Those same polls also suggested most voters were on-side with the Democrats on the issue at the crux of the standoff in Congress: the looming expiration of health insurance subsidies, poised to drive up the cost of premiums for tens of millions of Americans.
Yet all the Democrats have in hand on that after 40 days and 40 nights of the shutdown is a Republican promise to hold a vote in the Senate on extending the subsidies — a promise that had been on the table for weeks, for a vote the Democrats are almost certain to lose.
The Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was gloating about it, complete with a Seinfeld reference.
"It really was a shutdown about nothing." Johnson said Monday evening in an interview on CNN. "I don't think Chuck Schumer [the Democrat minority leader in the Senate] got anything out of this other than a political show."
It would be tough for the Democrats to make a case that they got anything tangible out of the shutdown.
Beyond the vote on extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies, the other major commitment they obtained from the Republicans is really just a return to the pre-shutdown status quo: reinstating the more than 4,000 federal workers whose jobs were eliminated.
That has led to a sharp backlash from many prominent Democrats outside the Senate who wanted the leadership to keep playing hardball:
But could the Democrats make a case that they achieved something intangible?
Since losing the presidency, the House and the Senate last year, the Democrats have been searching for a political path forward
For months, the party struggled for traction amid Trump's fast-paced push to slash federal agencies, hit imports from around the world with sky-high tariffs, send troops into U.S. cities to bolster his immigration enforcement blitz, redraw election maps to favour the Republicans and generally push the limits of presidential powers.
The Democratic leadership faced mounting criticism from left-leaning grassroots members that it needed to do more to stand up to the Republican president.
