There is a well-worn point of view in progressive politics that ultimately the material interests of voters are all that matters. Cultural issues are “distractions,” would-be opiates of the masses. Concerns about the Constitution and the laws or the functioning of democracy are pointy-headed insider elitist hobby-horses. What many “economic populists” took away from the 2024 elections is that Americans were happy to restore to power a convicted felon who contemptuously rejected any limitations on his power because they vaguely remembered the economy doing well during his first term and Democrats failed to offer them more money in their pockets. The lesson going forward was that a majority of voters were okay with a little fascism if it meant lower grocery and gasoline prices.
Donald Trump is now well on his way to breaking his campaign promises about living costs, and his party will likely pay a price for that in next year’s midterms. But he’s breaking a lot of other things as well, and Democrats are fundamentally divided as to whether their alarm over his wild power grabs and generally authoritarian demeanor is something they should prominently share with voters. It is not a theoretical issue, as it happens: it’s at the center of how Democrats should explain their position on the federal government shutdown that is scheduled to begin at midnight on September 30.
Democrats clearly do understand the need for unity during the shutdown crisis. Their divisions last time stopgap spending authority ran out in March left them looking weak and completely ineffectual. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, whose caucus had the rare power to deny Republicans a stopgap bill via a filibuster, talked tough and then folded when a shutdown grew nigh, enraging Democratic activists and creating the appearance that Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries weren’t on the same page.
This time around they’re united going into the shutdown, with their position on what it would take to earn their votes to reopen the government contained in legislation that covers the waterfront of Democratic concerns. They are demanding an extension of Obamacare premium subsidies that expire at the end of the year (left out of the One Bill Beautiful Bill Act because a critical mass of Republicans hate anything associated with Obamacare); the repeal of key Medicare cuts enacted in the OBBBA; the cancellation of arguably illegal clawbacks of already appropriated federal funds via rescissions; and restraints on future executive-branch encroachment of congressional spending authority. So Democrats are in theory placing equal weight on popular government benefits Republicans are seeking to cut, and on the administration’s authoritarian conduct.
But if you look at the issues Democratic voices are emphasizing, it’s all about money money money. The Democratic National Committee’s talking points on the shutdown are 100% focused on health care provisions:
At midnight tonight, Donald Trump and Republicans will be solely responsible for the government shutdown because they are hellbent on making health care more expensive for working families. Trump would rather raise health care costs for more than 22 million Americans and keep disastrous Medicaid cuts as part of his billionaire-first budget than work with Democrats on a common-sense proposal that safeguards health care for working families.
One reason for this focus is the knowledge that there is some congressional Republican support for extending the Obamacare subsidies to avoid big premium spikes as early as November for millions of largely middle-class beneficiaries. The clearest way to a deal to reopen the government would be a Trump-imposed compromise on the subsidies that Democrats could claim as a victory. A repeal of OBBBA-enacted Medicaid cuts, however, is not happening in a million years. But if (a) this is really all about the Obamacare subsidies and (b) Republicans have their own incentives for a deal on them, and an emperor-king who might force them to swallow them, then why do Democrats need a government shutdown to make that happen? Why not just keep the government open and negotiate with Trump on their one realizable goal, knowing that if a deal doesn’t happen the president and his party will totally get blamed for the premium spikes?
The reason is pretty simple: the shutdown is not simply about health care. It’s about a congressional minority seizing on the one bit of leverage they have to address the issue that has it in an absolute panic: the complicity of congressional Republicans in Trump’s authoritarian power grabs. The radical position of the Trump administration is that the president’s 2024 “mandate” should give him plenary authority over the executive branch of the federal government, including funding levels for federal programs and the number and deployment of all federal employees. The chaotic DOGE raids on the “deep state,” Russell Vought’s spending freezes and clawbacks, and Vought’s future threats to conduct mass layoffs of federal employees in case of a government shutdown are all part of the plan to give Trump quasi-dictatorial powers. His allies in Congress may privately grumble about being reduced to a choir singing his everlasting praises, but they aren’t doing anything about it.
Democrats can and should point out the material costs to Americans of the GOP’s reverse-Robin-Hood economic agenda, which is a tale as old as time. But they shouldn’t fool themselves into thinking voters are too stupid or narrow-minded to understand the threat being posed to their own right of self-government by a trifecta regime bent on consolidating all power in a corrupt, hateful and egomaniacal old man. One reason parties controlling the White House generally do poorly in midterm elections is that a significant segment of the electorate instinctively wants to place a curb on power-hungry presidents. If there was ever an opportunity to evoke this healthy impulse, Democrats have it right now.