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A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. The likely end to the longest-ever government shutdown has Democrats turning on each other in searing anger. The prevailing opinion appears to be frustration that eight senators freelanced a deal with Republicans. While it does not guarantee the extension of expiring enhanced subsidies for Obamacare health insurance plans, it does guarantee there will be a Senate vote on that subject. In addition, the deal funds SNAP benefits through 2026. Sen. Tim Kaine, who helped finalize the deal, defended it on CNN Monday. Kaine noted that the White House had pledged to rehire federal workers fired during the lapse in government funding and to bar further reductions in force at least until January 30. That’s not good enough for many Democrats who were feeling powerful after victories in mostly blue-state elections last week. They wanted to hold out for more guarantees from the White House, even as the nation’s air travel system started to buckle under the strain of air traffic controllers not being paid and people who rely on the government for assistance buying food went without. There’s no guarantee that House Speaker Mike Johnson will allow a House vote on extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, but Kaine argued that if senators pass it with bipartisan support and Johnson ignores it, the GOP will pay a political price. “Their midterm election next year would look a lot worse even than the shellacking they got last week in Virginia and elsewhere,” Kaine said. The expiring enhanced subsidies, according to analysis by KFF, will be felt more in states that voted for Trump in 2024, and could result in millions of people opting not to have health insurance at all. Americans will now be able to see the debate over health insurance subsidies play out without the “background noise” of the shutdown. Nobody in Washington is exactly popular these days, but polling suggests Republicans and President Donald Trump have taken the lion’s share of the blame over the shutdown, even though Democrats sparked it by refusing to allow votes on spending bills in the Senate. Kaine pointed to the elections last week as the thing that jolted Trump and got the White House involved in trying to end it. “It was like Rip Van Winkle suddenly woke up,” he said. This shutdown, assuming it ends and is not repeated in January, won’t be top of mind for voters in midterm elections next year, but it’s still worth taking a look at what happens at the ballot box after a shutdown. After the ‘13 Obamacare shutdown, Republicans took control of the Senate The most similar previous example could be the Obamacare shutdown in October of 2013. Republicans at the time admitted to losing the fight in this shutdown. They had wanted to strip funding for Obamacare. But they ultimately relented and allowed the government to reopen. Even if Republicans shouldered some blame for the shutdown in its immediate aftermath, a year later they did extremely well in Obama’s second midterm election. Republicans picked up nine Senate seats and took control of the chamber. In the House, Republicans built up their majority and picked up 13 seats. There were some interesting undercurrents in the GOP, which was in the process of molting before Trump, riding a wave of populism, would take the party over starting in 2016. After Trump’s ‘18-‘19 shutdown, Democrats took control of the Senate The shutdown during Trump’s first term is more associated with the election that preceded it. Trump started his first term, like his second, with Republicans in control of the White House, House and Senate. But in the 2018 midterm, Democrats netted 41 House seats and took control of the chamber. The 2018 shutdown got underway in the period between that election and January of 2019, when Democrats took control of the House and made Nancy Pelosi speaker for the second time. Trump sparked the shutdown by insisting that lawmakers send him funding for a border wall they did not want built. Trump ultimately relented. A lot would happen before the next election, in 2020, which was conducted during the pandemic and which Trump lost. Democrats twice impeached him, for instance, which felt more immediate to that election than the shutdown. Trump lost the White House, and Republican lost a net of three Senate seats, handing control of the Senate to Democrats. But Republicans gained a net of 12 House seats, which was not enough to take the majority away from Democrats. After the Clinton and Gingrich shutdowns in ‘95 and ‘96, the GOP held the House These two shutdowns, which combined for 28 days, are now viewed as largely helping to revive Clinton’s presidency even though he did agree, with stipulations, to Republican demands that the budget be balanced within seven years. The next election was the 1996 presidential election and Clinton easily won reelection against Sen. Bob Dole. But Republicans picked up three new Senate seats, in Alabama, Arkansas and Nebraska. They lost a seat in South Dakota for a net gain of two. In the House, Republicans suffered a net loss of three seats, but it’s important to put that in context of the 1994 election, commonly referred to as the Republican revolution, when the GOP gained control of the House for the first time in generations. What does this all mean? It’s not at all clear that shutdowns play a key role in the elections that follow them, even though the conventional wisdom has been that one side or the other — usually the one that causes the shutdown — shoulders blame from the voting public. The ‘13 Obamacare shutdown was generally viewed as a disaster for Republicans, but it came before a successful midterm. Democrats, despite their internal anger at ending this shutdown without extending Obamacare premium subsidies, will be hoping for the same kind of result next year.
