Why Democrats Finally Caved In The Government Shutdown Fight

WASHINGTON — In the end, some Democrats just didn’t have the stomach for a drawn-out fight with Donald Trump.

They underestimated his apathy and ruthlessness in denying health care and food aid to millions of Americans, including his own voters. The fact that he went so far as asking the Supreme Court to block a court order directing his administration to disburse the benefits made it clear they were outmatched.

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“I think that the Republicans were counting on the idea that we care about people more than they do,” Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) said Monday.

Trump’s actions were “beyond craven,” he said.

Publicly, Democrats projected a unified front for 40 days. But behind the scenes, they were anything but together. They spent weeks agonizing about their strategy, poring over polling and debating how long to keep going. That they held out as long as they did is a surprise in itself, given the dueling factions inside the caucus.

Moderate New Hampshire Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan opposed their party’s strategy to deny funding at the start and had to be dragged into the fight by their colleagues, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation. This included a last-minute intervention by Democrats on the Senate floor on the eve of the shutdown, without which the fight would have been over before it even began.

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“They were skeptical of the strategy and that it was worth the fight,” one Senate Democratic aide told HuffPost. “They got just enough pushback from everyone in the caucus who were like, ‘If we’re not willing to fight on health care, what are we willing to fight on?’”

Although eight members of the Democratic caucus ultimately ended up voting for the deal to reopen the government, the bare minimum needed to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, those who backed the deal said more Democratic senators privately agreed — they just couldn’t or didn’t want to take the heat for joining them.

“There were a lot more than eight that were really happy that the eight of us voted … the way we did,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), one of those eight, said Monday on CNBC.

This is the story of the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, according to a dozen lawmakers and aides involved in the standoff, and one that ended like every shutdown before it: with those making the demands failing to get what they wanted.

Democrats walked away with the promise of a symbolic vote on health care that’s almost certain to fail, no extension for enhanced subsidies for people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act, and no guardrails to stop Trump from ignoring the law and withholding more funds passed by Congress. Their hope now is to count on a public backlash to Trump’s ruthlessness next November. 

The public blamed Republicans for the standoff and Trump’s approval rating began to plummet, but the abrupt end to the shutdown means Democrats are now consumed with intraparty bloodletting, largely aimed at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

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Schumer voted against the deal but is getting blamed for his party’s failed strategy. Progressives’ rage at Schumer is only adding to his political problems, and raising the specter of a primary when he runs for reelection in three years.

Though, for the moment, his job appears safe.

“I think that he has a really hard job, and that we clearly have a repeating problem in our caucus, that the minority of members are reaching deals with Republicans,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “That’s a problem that the whole caucus has to solve, that would be difficult for any leader to manage.”

SNAP Broke Democrats

The start of November was a turning point in Senate Democrats’ fight — the day millions of low-income people and families were cut off from receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as the funding standoff dragged on.

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Moderate Democrats were already looking for an off-ramp to the shutdown before food aid ran dry, negotiating for weeks with Republicans on a solution before the Nov. 1 start of enrollment in Affordable Care Act health insurance exchanges. But the expiration of SNAP benefits, alongside increasing flight delays related to staffing woes at the Federal Aviation Administration, was a key factor that accelerated Democrats’ path to a deal.

“Nov. 1 was a watershed moment because it showed just how much pain Donald Trump was willing to inflict on Americans by canceling SNAP funding,” another Senate Democratic aide told HuffPost. “It showed there was no bottom. It became clear that by staying the course and not putting an end to Trump’s cruelty, we were hurting the people we were trying to help.”

It was obvious that Senate Democrats, by refusing to vote for a basic “continuing resolution” to keep federal agencies running, were the ones who had caused the government to shut down. But at several points, the Trump administration took direct action to make the shutdown worse.

Instead of just putting federal workers on furlough, the White House ordered thousands to be permanently fired, infuriating Democrats. Instead of tapping a contingency fund to pay SNAP benefits, the administration said it would pay no benefits at all in November, actively preventing poor people from obtaining food.

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Trump went so far as to appeal court orders, fighting all the way to the Supreme Court to avoid having to distribute food assistance. This position hurt Trump politically, but Democrats did not have the stomach for it.

“I think we may have underestimated how aggressively President Trump would resist conceding anything on health care, including suing all the way to the Supreme Court to be able to deny kids food,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told HuffPost.

Progressives Mobilized

Progressive senators successfully rallied their moderate colleagues into the fight, persuading them that another failure to stand up to Trump on funding the government would demoralize their base and further damage the Democratic Party brand ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

But they were wrong that Trump and Senate Republicans were the ones more likely to cave in the end. And there were early signs things weren’t going in their direction, weeks before the standoff ended.

Conversations between rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans, particularly among senior appropriators, got more serious about a week before the Nov. 4 elections in Virginia, New York and New Jersey. Democrats’ sweeping victories in these elections delayed the eventual deal — caving immediately after the results would have looked terrible for the party — but the writing was on the wall before they took place.

A big indication of the coming fold by Democrats was a Nov. 1 opinion piece by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), warning his colleagues not to back off their health care demands amid the shutdown fight. Its timing was curious as most Democrats at the time, including moderates, had made no public indication they were backing down at that point.

In a rare turn of events signaling the divisions in their caucus, Sanders then crashed Schumer’s postelection news conference on Nov. 5 at the Capitol, taking over Schumer’s lectern to speak while the New York Democrat was running late to address reporters about his party’s big night. This aggressive tactic is sometimes done by members of opposing parties, but never by those on the same side.

“I know there is some discussion about bipartisan negotiations … but there has to be a commitment that the speaker of the House is on board,” Sanders warned at the press conference, while also knocking Democratic leaders for refusing to back progressive candidates in New York and Maine.

The stunt peeved Schumer, who is notoriously territorial about his microphone and camera, according to one source. (A spokesman for Schumer denied this characterization.) But Sanders kept at it, showing up to a meeting Schumer convened with other Democratic senators the following day.

Asked Monday if he had confidence in Schumer, Sanders said only that the two have “very fundamental disagreements” about the Democratic Party’s future.

“If Schumer steps down, who is going to take his place?” Sanders told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “The truth is, progressives in the Senate are right now — I think there are about eight or nine of us. We are pretty much of a minority.”

The moderates who cut the deal argued that a vote on extending enhanced ACA subsidies was the best they could get, even though GOP leadership had already offered that vote weeks earlier. They cited the quick rejection of a one-year extension of the subsidies, which was offered by Schumer last week, as proof it was time to move on. But Republicans weren’t likely to agree to that deal anyway. Its failure just gave the moderates more of a reason to cut loose. 

“Nothing was happening,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who negotiated the deal with Shaheen and Hassan. “There was no evidence that another week or another two weeks or Thanksgiving or Christmas was suddenly [going to result in] Republicans coming to us to say, ‘Oh, we want to now talk about the ACA.’”

Schumer Laid Low

According to Shaheen and the other moderates who negotiated the deal, Schumer was kept informed of their talks with Republicans but never tried to dissuade them from cutting a deal. And instead of taking an active role, he allowed the moderates to drive the conversation. Shaheen was “given a platform in caucus to speak ad nauseam as to her position, which, you know who runs those meetings,” one Senate Democratic aide told HuffPost.

Schumer voted against the deal, but he’s taking heat for it anyway. His response has been to tout the political victory for Democrats in exposing Trump’s opposition to protect health care and his worsening approval ratings. The president is now at a second-term low and struggling to address voters’ concerns about the cost of living.

“The American people have now awoken to Trump’s health care crisis,” Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor. “Health care is once again at the forefront of people’s minds. People now see that premiums are about to skyrocket. They’re terrified about how they’re going to pay for insurance.”

“Republicans had their chance to fix this, and they blew it,” he added. “Americans will remember Republican intransigence every time they make a sky-high payment on health insurance.”

Trump seems to have reached the opposite conclusion from the standoff. He and Republicans now know all they have to do is maximize pain on the public, and wait for Democrats to fold.

“I think he made a mistake in going too far. ... He just went too far,” Trump said Monday of Schumer, in a Fox News interview. “He thought he could break the Republicans, and the Republicans broke him.”

Democrats are looking ahead with hope that the anger in their party boils over so they can focus on hammering Republicans over health care. Next month, Republicans will give Democrats a vote on extending the enhanced ACA subsidies. It will almost certainly fail, and Republicans are preparing an alternative plan they can put on the floor to vote for instead. Nevertheless, it will give Democrats another opportunity to go on offense.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said while it’s “definitely a disappointment” the shutdown didn’t end with the outcome Democrats preferred, people should be directing their anger at those imposing higher health care costs on Americans.

“I think people are furious and are correct to be furious, but we just have to remember who the villains are here,” he told HuffPost.

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