In the hours before Democrats’ electoral victories Tuesday night, the end of the government shutdown seemed near. Several Democratic senators had spent the day quietly discussing a potential bipartisan settlement. Republican leaders had expressed confidence that once the “radical left” activists had their say at the polls, moderate lawmakers would have enough political cover to cave and reopen the government. President Donald Trump had been saying that Democrats were to blame for what is now the longest shutdown in U.S. history and would pay the price politically.
All of that changed as the vote totals rolled in. Democrats’ resounding statewide victories in Virginia, New Jersey, Georgia, and elsewhere highlighted a more robust repudiation of Trump and his party than politicians from either side of the aisle had expected. Now both parties are recalibrating their shutdown strategies while the White House weighs a more direct role in cutting a deal. Any prospect of the government reopening this week appears to be slipping away.
Some Democrats feel like they have finally landed a clean punch after nine months of taking body blows from a pugilistic president. Letting up now, they are telling their more moderate colleagues, would be akin to surrender after voters gave their party its first burst of political moxie since Trump won a return ticket to the White House 12 months ago.
“Democrats have looked pretty weak for most of this year and, over the last month, we have shown strength for the first time,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told us. Tuesday’s results “are proof that people like it when Democrats stand up for what they believe in.”
Even as back-channel negotiations among moderate Democrats and Republican senators quietly intensified, Murphy said it would be a “confusing” disservice to voters to cut a shutdown deal that fell short of the Democratic Party’s original demands of extending health-care subsidies for millions of Americans. When we asked him if that meant Democrats should be prepared to withhold their votes even if doing so extended the government closure—and the associated missed paychecks, diminished food benefits, and airport chaos—until Thanksgiving, or even Christmas, he did not reject the idea outright.
“If we choose to get rolled by Donald Trump because the shutdown is hard, I worry that that’s a significant step towards the ultimate unwinding of our democracy,” Murphy said.
A meeting of Senate Democrats today pitted the views of those like Murphy against the perspectives of at least a dozen senators who have been trying to negotiate a compromise. Some of those lawmakers—under pressure from employee unions and other traditional allies who have raised alarms about how the shutdown is hurting a large number of Americans—have argued that Tuesday’s election results offer a convenient opportunity to move on from the funding fight. Democrats emerged from the meeting saying that they were unified but offering little insight on their next steps.
The election results substantiated polling showing that Democrats’ “emphasis on health care and costs was resoundingly supported by voters,” Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster, told us. Last week, she presented data to a group of dozens of House lawmakers highlighting that the party’s decision to take a stand on health care was electorally popular. In the meeting, which was reported earlier by CNN’s Jake Tapper, the lawmakers saw polling showing that a majority of voters thought that preventing huge spikes in health-care costs for millions of Americans was more important than ending the shutdown. Democrats have even more reason to believe that after Election Day, Murphy said.
Trump’s reaction to Tuesday’s results is one reason Democrats feel that they have leverage to win the shutdown fight. A Trump aide, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations, told us that the president viewed Tuesday’s losses as the first real political setback of his second term—that to this point, in Trump’s eyes, he had piled up political wins and largely outdueled Democrats with the help of a compliant Congress and courts.
“The president is angry. He only wants to see wins,” the person said.
After previously welcoming the funding lapse as an “unprecedented opportunity” to slash the federal workforce and insisting that Democrats were “getting killed on the shutdown,” the president appeared to publicly acknowledge that his party was getting the blame. “If you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for Republicans,” Trump told GOP senators yesterday. Democrats seized on a case of apparent regret from a president who wears Trump Was Right About Everything hats.
The rest of Trump’s remarks showed little in the way of self-reflection. He sought to dodge any blame for the results, saying he was “honored” to hear that his name not appearing on the ballot had contributed to Republican defeats. After the press pool left the room, Trump reinforced his belief that the GOP was on the losing end of the shutdown debate and again called for Republican senators to end it by terminating the filibuster, an official in the room told us afterward.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune—who on Tuesday had said he was “optimistic” that the shutdown was nearing its end—has made clear that he doesn’t have the votes (or the desire) to get rid of the filibuster, no matter how often Trump demands it. “It’s not happening,” he told reporters yesterday in a rare moment when the GOP was willing to defy the president. Other Republicans also quietly noted that Trump was sidestepping responsibility after being MIA on domestic-policy matters in recent weeks. He didn’t travel to Virginia or New Jersey to campaign with Republican candidates and has largely been disengaged from shutdown talks. Speaking in Miami yesterday, Trump blamed Republicans for not doing more to tout his economic agenda on the campaign trail.
Democrats say that Trump’s plans to lower prices have failed, allowing them to focus their electoral message on affordability and Trump’s shattering of norms—including his moves to dispatch masked ICE agents to target migrants, deploy the National Guard to American cities, and knock down the White House’s East Wing for a massive new ballroom. (The construction project has taken up a large share of his focus lately.) But Trump’s aides told us they believed that he would likely only double down on the policies he thinks were key to his 2024 victory, and that will keep his base happy.
Trump has told aides that although he welcomes the idea of intervening to make a deal on health-care subsidies, he believes the government needs to reopen first so that he can claim some sort of win.
Meanwhile, the ramifications of a closed government continue to hurt a growing segment of the public. Food banks and nonprofits are straining for resources after millions of Americans have spent most of the past week without the food-stamp benefits that did not go out as scheduled on November 1. Military troops are slated to miss their first paycheck next week. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said yesterday that staff shortages will force dozens of airports—including major hubs such as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International and Dallas–Fort Worth International—to close a portion of their airspace beginning tomorrow. Federal employees who are furloughed or on their second month of working without pay are experiencing severe harm, says Max Stier, the head of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that aims to strengthen the federal bureaucracy.
“This is an act of self-immolation,” he told reporters yesterday. “And there are so many challenges in our world; we don’t need this.”
Russell Berman contributed reporting.
