‘A righteous fight’: Democrats hold fast on healthcare but also use shutdown to pummel Trump

Finally, after nine months of Donald Trump running rampant over much in the government they hold dear, Democrats in Congress have found the ground on which to fight.

Pressed to vote for a Republican plan to keep the government open through mid-November, Democrats balked, and instead laid out a series of demands that amounted to the undoing of much of what the GOP has accomplished over the past year.

It was a nonstarter for Republicans and, after days of bluster and fruitless voting, the government tipped into a shutdown just after midnight on Wednesday. For Democrats, that may have been the point – pummeled by voters last November, the party has been looking for opportunities to remake its case to Americans.

“This is a righteous fight. There is no fight better than this fight right now,” said Massachusetts’s Elizabeth Warren on a live stream with other Democratic senators convened shortly before the chamber’s final, futile votes on Tuesday evening.

On the surface, Democrats are waging a battle over healthcare, long a signature cause for the party. They want cuts to Medicaid that Republicans approved earlier this year reversed, along with premium tax credits for health plans under the Affordable Care Act – the signature Barack Obama achievement and constant Republican target – extended, funding to public media outlets like PBS and NPR restored, and a prohibition on Trump’s backdoor attempts to cut foreign aid.

But it is also about standing up to a president whom they see as uniquely dangerous, at a time when he may be especially vulnerable. Trump’s approval ratings are well underwater, lower than even Joe Biden’s at this point in his term. Inflation has not been quelled in the way the president promised it would, while the job market is looking shaky. And the issue of free speech – dominated in recent years by Republicans who have railed against “cancel culture” – appears up for grabs by Democrats, after Trump and his officials demonized those who did not toe their line on Charlie Kirk, the murdered conservative activist.

“People are going to get hurt by a shutdown, but they’re also going to get hurt if their premiums go up by 75% when everything else is going up, the cost of car repairs, the cost of food, the cost of school supplies,” the Connecticut senator Chris Murphy said. “And people are going to get hurt by a government that’s … lawless, because if you can’t speak your mind in this country without repercussions, that comes with a cost as well.”

Bernie Sanders, the progressive independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats and convened the live stream, reminded viewers: “You have a president who doesn’t believe in the constitution, doesn’t believe in the rule of law, lies all of the time.”

The Senate is the arena for this fight because the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation to advance gives Democrats leverage they lack in the House of Representatives. The party could have made this stand in March, when government funding last expired, but the Democratic leader Chuck Schumer balked, leading to a substantial backlash from its base.

Schumer is onboard this time, and so are the groups that rally his voters – a fact noted with some bitterness by Republicans on Tuesday night, after the parties blocked each other’s plans to continue funding.

“Senate Democrats have sacrificed the American people to Democrats’s partisan interests. I hope it will be some comfort for Americans dealing with shuttered government services to know that MoveOn.org and other far-left organizations are happy with this vote,” the Senate majority leader, John Thune, said.

Previous shutdowns have seen federal workers go unpaid and services the public relies on – such as government offices and national parks – close down.

Trump’s bureaucrat-averse office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, has vowed to make this shutdown even more damaging by using it as an opportunity to fire government employees – something the administration has already been doing since January.

Yet there are already signs that Democrats are nervous about that threat. Three voted for a Republican bill to continue funding on Tuesday evening, with concern for what Trump might do during a shutdown being a common thread.

“Many feel that this was an opportunity to stand up to Donald Trump, to vote no and to fight back. The irony, the paradox is, by shutting the government, we’re actually giving Donald Trump more power,” said Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats.

The hard reality for Democrats is that shutdowns in the past have rarely succeeded in winning concessions for the side that instigates them. Republicans likely need only five more dissenters from the minority to get their bill through the chamber, and say they will continue holding votes in a bid to exploit the Democratic angst that could already be seen on Tuesday night.

“I’m not comfortable with anybody’s strategy right now,” said New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen, whose retirement next year will force Democrats to defend a Senate seat in a competitive state. “I think that what’s been lacking has been a commitment from the president, who’s in charge of all three branches of government, and he doesn’t seem to be interested.”