The moment that really made Democrats give in in the shutdown fight

WASHINGTON — In the end, some Democrats simply didn’t have the stomach for a prolonged fight with Donald Trump.

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

“I think 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 cowardly,” he said.

Publicly, Democrats projected a unified front for 40 days. But behind the scenes, they weren’t together at all. They spent weeks agonizing over their strategy, poring over polls and debating how long to continue. That they have held out this long is a surprise in itself, given the dueling factions within the caucus.

New Hampshire’s moderate Democratic senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, opposed their party’s strategy of denying funding at first 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 Senate Democrats on the eve of the shutdown, without which the fight would have ended before it even began.

“They were skeptical about the strategy and thought it was worth fighting for,” a Senate Democratic aide told News themezone. “They got enough pushback from everyone in the caucus saying, ‘If we’re not willing to fight for health care, why are we willing to fight?’”

Although eight members of the Democratic caucus ultimately ended up voting in favor of the deal to reopen the government, the minimum needed to clear the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, backers of the deal said more Democratic senators privately agreed; They simply couldn’t or wouldn’t handle the pressure to join them.

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

This is the story of the longest government shutdown in American history, according to a dozen lawmakers and aides involved in the standoff, and one that ended like all previous shutdowns: Those who made the demands failed to get what they wanted.

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Democrats walked away with promises of a symbolic vote on health care that is almost certain to fail, no extension for enhanced subsidies for people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act, and no barrier to stopping Trump from ignoring the law and withholding more funding approved by Congress. Their hope now is to have a public reaction to Trump’s cruelty next November.

The public blamed Republicans for the confrontation and Trump’s approval rating began to plummet, but the abrupt end of the shutdown means Democrats are now consumed by bloodshed within the party, much of it directed at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Schumer voted against the deal, but is blamed for his party’s failed strategy. Progressives’ anger against Schumer is only compounding his political problems and raising the specter of a primary when he runs for re-election in three years.

For now, though, his job seems secure.

“I think he has a really tough job and we clearly have a recurring problem in our caucus: that minority members are making deals with Republicans,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “That’s a problem that the entire caucus has to solve and that would be difficult for any leader to handle.”

SNAP broke the Democrats

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

Moderate Democrats were already looking for a way out of the shutdown before food aid ran out, negotiating for weeks with Republicans on a solution before enrollment on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges began Nov. 1. But the expiration of SNAP benefits, along with mounting flight delays related to staffing problems at the Federal Aviation Administration, was a key factor that accelerated Democrats’ path to a deal.

“November 1 was a defining moment because it showed how much pain Donald Trump was willing to inflict on Americans by defunding SNAP,” another Senate Democratic aide told News themezone. “It showed there was no bottom. It became clear that by staying the course and not ending Trump’s cruelty, we were harming 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 caused the government shutdown. But at various points, the Trump administration took direct steps to worsen the shutdown.

Instead of simply laying off federal workers, the White House ordered the permanent layoff of thousands, angering Democrats. Instead of tapping into a contingency fund to pay SNAP benefits, the administration said it would not pay any benefits in November, actively preventing the poor from getting food.

Trump even 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 the Democrats did not have the courage to do so.

“I think we may have underestimated how aggressively President Trump would resist granting anything on health care, including suing all the way to the Supreme Court to deny food to children,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) told News themezone.

Mobilized progressives

Progressive senators managed to rally their moderate colleagues in the fight, persuading them that another failure to take on Trump on government funding would demoralize their base and further damage the Democratic Party’s brand ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

But they were wrong to say that Trump and Senate Republicans were the most likely to concede in the end. And there were early signs that things were not going in the direction they expected, weeks before the standoff ended.

Conversations between rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans, particularly among top appropriators, grew more serious about a week before the Nov. 4 elections in Virginia, New York and New Jersey. The Democrats’ sweeping victories in these elections delayed the eventual agreement (giving in immediately after the results would have seemed terrible for the party), but the writing was on the wall before they were carried out.

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A big sign of the Democrats’ next fold was a Opinion article from November 1 by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), warning his colleagues not to back down on their health care demands amid the shutdown fight. His timing was curious, as most Democrats at the time, including moderates, had given no public indication that they were backing down at that point.

In a rare turn of events that signals divisions in his caucus, Sanders crashed Schumer’s Nov. 5 post-election press conference on Capitol Hill, taking Schumer’s lectern to speak as the New York Democrat arrived late to address reporters about his party’s big night. This aggressive tactic is sometimes carried out by members of opposing parties, but never by those on the same side.

“I know there’s some discussion about bipartisan negotiations… but there has to be a commitment that the Speaker of the House will agree,” Sanders warned at the news conference, while criticizing Democratic leaders for refusing to endorse progressive candidates in New York and Maine.

The stunt upset Schumer, who is notoriously territorial about his microphone and camera, according to a source. (A Schumer spokesman denied this characterization.) But Sanders stuck with it and showed up at a meeting Schumer called with other Democratic senators the next day.

Asked Monday if he trusted Schumer, Sanders said only that the two have “very fundamental disagreements” about the future of the Democratic Party.

“If Schumer resigns, who will take his place?” Sanders he told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “The truth is that the progressives in the Senate are progressives right now; I think there are about eight or nine of us. We are practically a minority.”

The moderates who sealed the deal argued that a vote on extending the ACA’s enhanced subsidies was the best they could get, even though GOP leaders had already offered such a 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 that it was time to move on. But Republicans were unlikely to accept that deal anyway. Its failure only gave moderates one more reason to take action.

“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 two weeks or Thanksgiving or Christmas were suddenly [going to result in] “Republicans come to us and say, ‘Oh, now we want to talk about the ACA.'”

Schumer took a backseat

According to Shaheen and the other moderates who negotiated the deal, Schumer was kept informed of his conversations with Republicans but never attempted to dissuade them from making a deal. And instead of taking an active role, he allowed moderates to direct the conversation. Shaheen “was given a platform in the caucus to talk endlessly about her position, and you know who runs those meetings,” a Senate Democratic aide told News themezone.

Schumer voted against the deal, but is taking heat for it anyway. Their response has been to trumpet the Democrats’ political victory by exposing Trump’s opposition to protecting health care and its getting worse approval ratings. He President is now at the lowest point of his second term and is struggling to address voters’ concerns about the cost of living.

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

“Republicans had a chance to fix this and they blew it,” he added. “Americans will be reminded of Republican intransigence every time they make a huge payment for their health insurance.”

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Trump seems to have reached the opposite conclusion to the confrontation. He and the Republicans now know that all they have to do is maximize the pain on the public and wait for the Democrats to concede.

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

Democrats look to the future with the hope that anger in their party boils over so they can focus on criticizing Republicans over health care. Next month, Republicans will vote with Democrats on expanding the ACA’s enhanced subsidies. It will almost certainly fail, and Republicans are preparing an alternative plan that they can bring to a vote. However, it will give Democrats another chance to go on the offensive.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said that while it is “definitely disappointing” that the shutdown did not end with the outcome Democrats preferred, people should direct their anger toward those imposing higher health care costs on Americans.

“I think people are angry and they’re right to be angry, but we have to remember who the villains are here,” he told News themezone.