{"id":197790,"date":"2025-10-02T18:54:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:54:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/197790\/"},"modified":"2025-10-02T18:54:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T18:54:04","slug":"democrats-could-have-more-shutdown-leverage-than-people-realize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/197790\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats could have more shutdown leverage than people realize"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n There is a well-founded bit of conventional wisdom that government shutdowns never really work for the side making demands to keep things open. There are many such cases<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI can\u2019t count the number of times I\u2019ve had to remind Democrat colleagues that taking basic government functions hostage for partisan demands never pays,\u201d Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Wednesday on X<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n And McConnell has actually been pretty consistent<\/a> on this point, even dating back to when his side was arguably forcing the shutdowns.\n <\/p>\n

\n But there is growing evidence that the current shutdown is somewhat different from its predecessors.\n <\/p>\n

\n Democrats might never get what they\u2019re asking for. But they seem to have significantly more leverage than the side refusing to vote for government funding usually does.\n <\/p>\n

\n A new poll Thursday from the Washington Post<\/a> tells the tale.\n <\/p>\n

\n Democrats are the ones who withheld their votes from a \u201cclean\u201d continuing resolution to keep the government funded this week. And history suggests that\u2019s the side that usually gets the blame. Americans have overwhelmingly said that shutdown debates are no place to try to force extraneous policy changes.\n <\/p>\n

\n But at least initially, voters are actually blaming Republicans more.\n <\/p>\n

\n The poll conducted on Wednesday, the day the shutdown began, showed 47% of Americans believed President Donald Trump and the Republicans were \u201cmainly responsible\u201d for the shutdown, compared to 30% who blamed Democrats.\n <\/p>\n

\"Speaker<\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s highly unusual in the context of past shutdown polling. Republicans were very much on the short end of the blame game when they forced shutdowns over things like defunding Obamacare and building the border wall last decade, for example.\n <\/p>\n

\n The polling also offers a big hint as to why that might be: Unlike past shutdowns, the policy Democrats are pushing for is actually very popular.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Post\u2019s poll shows Americans said 71%-29% that they want to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that Democrats are holding out for.\n <\/p>\n

\n And perhaps more to the point: 47% of Americans say they want to extend the subsidies and Democrats should continue demanding that \u201ceven if it continues the government shutdown.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s not quite a majority, but it\u2019s a very sizeable number. Notably, the poll gave people who supported extending the subsidies a middle-ground option of compromising to end the shutdown. People generally like at least the broad concept of compromise; 24% who wanted the subsidies extended supported that. But nearly half of Americans still opted for the harder-line approach.\n <\/p>\n

\n The 47% who say Democrats should allow the shutdown to continue is unusual, compared to past shutdowns.\n <\/p>\n

\n When Republicans demanded defunding Obamacare in 2013 before a shutdown, a New York Times\/CBS News poll showed 38% of Americans supported defunding Obamacare, but only about 2 in 10 said it was worth risking a shutdown over<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n When Republicans did it again over the border wall in 2019, a CBS News poll showed fewer than<\/a> 3 in 10<\/a> Americans said that was worth a shutdown.\n <\/p>\n

\n The wording of the questions and the pollsters were different. But support for this shutdown gambit appears significantly higher than it was back then.\n <\/p>\n

\n And this isn\u2019t the first poll to suggest Democrats could sustain this demand. A Strength in Numbers\/Verasight poll<\/a> in mid-September showed that Americans said 52%-36% that Democrats should withhold their votes unless \u201cRepublicans agree to restore funding for some government health care programs.\u201d It also found that, even if this faceoff led to a shutdown, Americans would still blame Republicans more than Democrats, 35%-24%.\n <\/p>\n

\n So that\u2019s two polls showing very similar things.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s also become clear that Democrats\u2019 demand has at least cast a spotlight on an uneasy issue for Republicans.\n <\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s evidenced by the GOP\u2019s skirting of the issue. Rather than reject Democrats\u2019 policy demand out of hand, they\u2019ve instead insisted they\u2019re willing to negotiate, just not while the government is shut down.\n <\/p>\n

\n Democrats counter that insurers need to plan for the hike in premiums that would result if the enhanced subsidies aren\u2019t extended and warn that notices could go out soon, so the time for talking is now. And some Republicans who support the subsidies at least seem open to negotiating<\/a> in the short term.\n <\/p>\n

\n The GOP has also taken to falsely arguing<\/a> that the subsidies would provide health care to undocumented immigrants.\n <\/p>\n

\n And finally, the Trump administration is increasingly threatening to bring the hammer down by making cuts to government employees and spending that Democrats won\u2019t like. They\u2019ve repeatedly suggested these cuts would be politically targeted. But even some Republican lawmakers appear uncomfortable with<\/a> all that, worrying that such cuts would blow back on them much like the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts earlier this year.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThere\u2019s the political ramifications that could cause backlash,\u201d GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told CNN\u2019s Manu Raju on Wednesdsay, adding: \u201cI just don\u2019t like squandering that political capital.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n None of which means the Democrats are going to win this fight. As the shutdown drags on and the downsides of it come into focus, it\u2019s quite possible Americans could lose patience with Democrats\u2019 hard line \u2013 and revert to their skepticism of using shutdowns for leverage.\n <\/p>\n

\n But it does appear Democrats have some leverage here. And that makes this fight unlike its predecessors.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a well-founded bit of conventional wisdom that government shutdowns never really work for the side making…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[28,147,530],"class_list":["post-197790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}