Democratic caucus chairman Pete Aguilar, left, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and minority whip Katherine Clark descend the House steps last Wednesday. Photo / Demetrius Freeman, The Washington Post
Democrats’ defiant approach to the current United States Government shutdown reflects a party mood that has shifted dramatically as a growing number of Democrats inside and outside Washington are embracing all-out confrontation with President Donald Trump.
Only a few months ago, some leading voices in the party, stunned by Trump’s broad election win, were counselling against picking unnecessary fights or appearing to reject the voters’ will.
But in this shutdown battle - and a growing number of political fights around the country - it is harder to find Democrats arguing against forceful resistance.
“I’m not naming anyone in particular, but some were slow to recognise that Trump posed a direct threat to our Constitution and our democracy,” said Senator Chris Van Hollen (Democrat-Maryland).
“He was moving at warp speed and some were in low gear. But I think that has changed.”
He added: “There is a growing understanding that you should never try to appease a bully”.
Many Democrats outside Washington say party leaders took far too long to adopt this more combative approach.
“Our base is looking for reasons to fight. Democrats are tired of going along with this,” said Wesley Harris, chairman of North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County Democrats.
“If it takes the Government being shut down for a couple [of] days to make sure we have a government that functions for the people and invests in our people, then we’re willing to do that.”
Trump himself has contributed to the Democrats’ changed attitude since some hoped they could wait for his initial flurry of action to subside. He has made it increasingly clear that is not going to happen.
And Democrats say their efforts to co-operate with the White House have only been met with redoubled aggressiveness, whether it’s the Administration cutting funds after a bipartisan Budget deal or sending troops into states whose Democratic governors have avoided criticising him.
“Many of my colleagues have now realised that the old rules - the old norms, the old ways of doing things - are gone and are not used at all by this president,” said Representative Dan Goldman (D-New York).
“Trying to work with him and acquiesce only fuels his aggression and makes him even more lawless and ruthless in trying to get what he wants.”
Republicans, however, say Democrats are making a big mistake if they think they can unify their party by summoning their troops to a battle they are destined to lose.
Before agreeing to a new spending bill, Democrats are demanding the extension of pandemic-era enhanced tax subsidies passed under President Joe Biden to help pay for health insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
The enhanced subsidies are set to expire at year’s end. Republicans say they are willing to discuss that, but not under duress.
GOP pollster Whit Ayres said the Democratic base will only be angrier when they realise Republicans, who control Congress, are not backing down.
“Eventually, the Democrats are going to end up folding, because they don’t have any real leverage,” Ayres said.
“Fighting without leverage is fruitless. And what they’re doing is fruitless, because they’re going to end up caving, and they’re going to antagonise their base even more.”
Yet many in that base are signalling that they want Democrats to put up a fight regardless of the consequences.
Ezra Levin, co-founder of the activist group Indivisible, said that after Trump’s election, “the conventional wisdom was resistance is dead, defiance is stupid, and Democrats need to show how reasonable they are by working with Trump”.
“And we disagreed and thought he was an authoritarian who should be confronted.”
Since then, protesters have turned out by the millions for events like “Hands Off Day” in April and “No Kings Day” in June.
Constituents have shown up to berate lawmakers at town hall meetings.
Activists embraced Democratic legislators for leaving Texas when Republicans pushed through a redistricting plan.
Some have begun pushing for Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), a hero of the party’s left flank, to begin a primary challenge against Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer.
That energy explains why Senate Democrats are refusing to pass a Republican spending Bill today, when they did so in March, Levin said.
“The difference is, they understand where the rank and file and grassroots are,” he said.
While the Democrats in Congress are newly unified, a small number of dissenters remain.
In the Senate, John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) and Angus King (I-Maine) voted with the Republicans on their stop-gap spending measure.
In the House, the lone Democratic holdout was Representative Jared Golden of Maine, who argued that his party’s defiant position was largely performative.
“This government shutdown is the result of hardball politics driven by the demands far-left groups are making for Democratic Party leaders to put on a show of their opposition to President Trump,” Golden posted on social media.
Outside Washington, California Governor Gavin Newsom exemplifies the party’s shift.
After Trump took office, as his state was battling wildfires, Newsom called for “finding common ground” with the President and urged “partnership, a shared commitment to facts and mutual respect”.
He went on to host several Trump-friendly figures on his podcast, giving them a platform that infuriated many progressives.
In May, Newsom offered to work with the President on a film tax credit, saying California was “eager to partner with the Trump Administration to further strengthen domestic production and Make America Film Again.”
Newsom’s tone changed sharply after Trump sent federal troops to Los Angeles in June.
California sued the President and Newsom said Trump “wants to be bound by no law or constitution”. Since then, Newsom’s social media posts on Trump have alternated between hard-hitting and mocking.
Newsom’s highest-profile move has been his push to create more Democratic congressional districts in California, an effort to offset the GOP-friendly redistricting that Texas undertook at Trump’s behest.
A similar trend is evident among other Democrats.
After Trump’s election, Maryland Governor Wes Moore said he would not be “the leader of the resistance”. After Trump called Baltimore a “hellhole” and threatened to send the National Guard there, Moore adopted a more confrontational tone, telling the President to “keep our name out of your mouth”.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker - who has been more combative from the outset - recently urged his state’s residents to stand up to federal agents dispatched to his state by recording their activities on cellphones, posting the videos, asking for badge numbers, and requesting identification.
In the shutdown fight, Democrats have united around a single message: They are fighting to preserve access to affordable healthcare.
Earlier this year, Democrats were splintered over whether to challenge Trump on his anti-democratic moves, his struggles on the economy, his treatment of migrants, or some other issue.
The current battle arguably marks the first time since Trump’s election that the party has had a consistent message.
Several Democrats cited a video by Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) explaining the party’s position on the shutdown and the importance of the ACA subsidies.
They said it was especially notable because Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have been critical of Obamacare in the past - both advocating for a single-payer healthcare system instead - but are strongly backing the Democrats’ position.
State and local Democrats acknowledge that they are worried about the potential impact of a drawn-out shutdown, especially given Trump’s vow to target projects and agencies that he says benefit Democrats. Most said they said they see little alternative.
“I think what we see right now within our Democratic leadership is a different spirit than what was shown previously, a spirit that should have been adopted earlier,” said Thomas Dixon, a pastor who is chairman of the Charleston County Democratic Party in South Carolina.
“Our current president is a bully, and one way I know you deal with bullies is you fight them. They’re not going to understand anything but strength.”
He added, “It’s time to fight. It’s time to do what’s necessary to stop this madness.”
Some of the party’s elder statesmen have been offering support from the sidelines.
Former President Barack Obama, who remains one of the most popular figures in the party, said over the weekend that Republicans would rather shut down the Government “than help millions of Americans afford healthcare”.
Former Vice-President Kamala Harris wrote on X, “Let me be clear: Republicans are in charge of the White House, House, and Senate. This is their shutdown.”
All of this represents a 180-degree shift from March, when Senate Democrats, led by Schumer, helped Republicans pass a six-month spending bill to avert a government shutdown.
That, however, produced no compromise in Trump’s approach to spending. In August, for example, he announced that he was unilaterally cutting US$5 billion ($8.5b) in foreign aid funds that had been allocated by Congress but that he deemed “woke, weaponised, and wasteful”.
“He is just not going to give an inch,” said former Democratic congressman Steve Israel of New York, who chaired the House Democrats’ campaign committee during a 2013 government shutdown.
“The Democrats in the Senate did the responsible thing early on and kept the government open, and what was the reward? Six months later, he is shutting it down again.
“This is the consequence of an Administration that has an entirely maximalist position at all times.”
When the White House recently threatened massive government layoffs if Democrats allowed a shutdown, top Democrats dismissed the warning, essentially saying that Trump was doing what he wanted anyway. Trump has been “firing federal workers since day one”, Schumer noted.
Democrats in March still did not fully grasp Trump’s hold on congressional Republicans, said Jim Kessler, executive vice-president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think-tank.
“The drama in March really began with a series of miscalculations on the power that Trump would have on Republicans in Congress,” Kessler said.
Third Way did not take a position on the March shutdown fight but encouraged Democrats this summer to make the current shutdown about healthcare.
In previous shutdowns, one party or the other has felt pressure to come to the bargaining table as polls began to show which side was getting blamed. Democrats’ newfound unity could depend on how public sentiment plays out.
Democrats were buoyed by a Washington Post poll released on Friday that found significantly more Americans blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown. But almost one-quarter of respondents said they were not sure who was at fault.
And this shutdown may not resemble its predecessors in any case, given the impassioned positive and negative feelings many Americans have about Trump.
Levin said the coming days and weeks will show how serious Democratic leaders are about their demands.
“We have seen performative shutdowns before. That is a thing,” Levin said. “The real question is, are Democrats doing this just to say, ‘Well, we tried, what more do you want from us,’ or are they in it to win it?”
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