Copyright The New York Times
Sometimes, when you’re angry, you need to take out your aggression on something. Having a punching bag can be therapeutic. And while Chuck Schumer might look useless this week, he is in fact playing the useful role of punching bag to Democrats who are angry because they want something they cannot have: control over the policy agenda despite having lost the last national election. Democrats in both chambers of Congress are denouncing Mr. Schumer and this deal to end the government shutdown that their voters hate. But they offer no plausible account of how they would have done better, because there isn’t one. Senator Schumer had little choice but to lead his party into a shutdown fight. Democratic officials, activists, commentators and the base were insistent. But they also expected the shutdown to lead to some sort of significant public policy win for Democrats. There were a few problems with this, one of which was that there was no agreement among Democrats about what kind of policy change was needed to reopen the government: Congressional leaders focused on health care, ultimately demanding an extension of subsidies for Affordable Care Act exchange health plans, at a cost of about $23 billion for 2026. But other Democrats were focused on President Trump’s undermining of the bipartisan appropriations process or had broader concerns about authoritarianism that could not be addressed through any obvious concession other than Mr. Trump’s resignation. The government shutdown as we know it is a relatively recent phenomenon, following a series of early 1980s Justice Department memos saying the government has to close if appropriations lapse, and no modern government shutdown has produced significant policy concessions to the party that was making policy demands. Shutdowns haven’t worked for Republicans, who hoped to defund Obamacare in 2013, or Democrats, who in early 2018 demanded legislative protections for Dreamers. They always end the way the one this week appears to be ending, with no concessions or some minor wins for the party making demands — in this case, the reversal of layoffs during the shutdown and a prohibition on new ones through January, as well as the funding of some smaller Democratic priorities, like the continued funding of the Government Accountability Office. This time, there was an extra-strong reason a shutdown couldn’t work: Republicans did not actually need Democratic votes to reopen the government. At all times during this shutdown, Republicans had three options: They could keep the shutdown going, they could bend rules to reopen the government without Democrats’ votes or they could agree to extend the enhanced A.C.A. subsidy program they oppose. If at any time they ran out of patience with the first option, they could move to the second option; at no time did they have to agree to Democrats’ policy demands. Indeed, Republicans’ total control was a core part of the Democratic message during the shutdown: Democrats kept pointing out that Republicans held the majority and therefore the shutdown was all their choice. If you keep telling people that Republicans don’t need your help to reopen the government, why would you expect them to make a major policy concession to you in exchange for your help reopening the government? Many of the people bemoaning the Democrats’ retreat offer no convincing theory of how the shutdown should have come to an end. The most convincing columns, like one from Jonathan Chait, argue that Republicans would have eventually walked through Door No. 2 (reopen the government without Democrats’ votes) and that Democrats should have made them do this, likely by weakening the filibuster, because Democrats stand to gain in the long run from rules that make it easier to pass legislation. Strong evidence that Democrats could have forced this outcome is that it already happened once this year: To meet President Trump’s specifications for the One Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans disregarded rules in the Budget Act that restrict how the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process may be used, setting a filibuster-weakening precedent that Democrats might use in the future to greatly expand public spending. I agree this strategy might well have worked — though Americans would have had to suffer in the meantime many more weeks of delayed flights, withheld benefits and, in the case of furloughed federal employees, withheld pay. Alternatively, when Mr. Trump grew sick of the shutdown, he might have just forced his attorney general to reject the 1980s shutdown memos and restarted many government operations without authorization from Congress. Either way, these are somewhat odd outcomes for Democrats to seek — they would have forced a shutdown that would have ended with Mr. Trump amassing even more power, either by asserting broader executive powers to spend unilaterally or getting the Senate to change its rules in a way that would make it easier to pass his legislative agenda. Taking the long view on the filibuster — let Republicans pass more bills now, and we’ll do even more later — is fine if you think we’re engaged in normal politics. But a lot of the pro-shutdown rhetoric has focused on the abnormality of the situation we are in with President Trump and the need to contain him in the near term; weakening the filibuster obviously does not serve that goal. The key thing here is that Democrats were never going to get the outcome their voters craved: either a substantial change from Republicans’ desired health care policy or a broader change in the nature of the Trump administration. The only available outcomes were this one, or another one that would have saved Democrats from a tough vote but also would have left Mr. Trump with more power than he entered the shutdown with. So while Senator Schumer pleased nobody — he did not really lead here at all and did not deliver one of the votes to end the shutdown — I do not see what happier outcome a stronger Senate leader might have produced. Fortunately for Democrats, they had some wins along the way that should not be discounted. They raised the salience of soaring health insurance premiums and sent the message that Republicans made the policy that caused them. They goaded Mr. Trump into making unpopular moves to withhold food stamps that appear to have hurt his poll numbers. It’s possible the shutdown has still been a net political gain for the Democratic Party despite its necessarily ignominious end. Looking ahead, the political solution for Democrats is to win control of at least one chamber of Congress in the next election, so they actually have some control over the policy agenda. And I have very good news about that: Election results last week, notably in New Jersey and Virginia, showed base Democrats don’t need to feel good about national party leadership in order for the party to perform strongly in an election. This week’s infighting and recriminations will be ancient history before Democrats go to the polls again. The sort of Democrats who are maddest at Senator Schumer are the same sort of Democrats who would crawl across broken glass to vote for Democrats — it doesn’t matter if they’re displeased. And Chuck Schumer won’t be on anyone’s ballot next year. In the meantime, Democrats can be grateful that Chuck Schumer was here to absorb the rage — somebody had to do it.
