\n<\/p>\n
In the <\/span>hours before Democrats\u2019 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 \u201cradical left\u201d 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.<\/p>\n All of that changed as the vote totals rolled in. Democrats\u2019 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats have looked pretty weak for most of this year and, over the last month, we have shown strength for the first time,\u201d Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told us. Tuesday\u2019s results \u201care proof that people like it when Democrats stand up for what they believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n Even as back-channel negotiations among moderate Democrats and Republican senators quietly intensified, Murphy said it would be a \u201cconfusing\u201d disservice to voters to cut a shutdown deal that fell short of the Democratic Party\u2019s 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\u2014and the associated missed paychecks, diminished food benefits, and airport chaos\u2014until Thanksgiving, or even Christmas, he did not reject the idea outright.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we choose to get rolled by Donald Trump because the shutdown is hard, I worry that that\u2019s a significant step towards the ultimate unwinding of our democracy,\u201d Murphy said.<\/p>\n 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\u2014under pressure from employee unions and other traditional allies who have raised alarms about how the shutdown is hurting a large number of Americans\u2014have argued that Tuesday\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n The election results substantiated polling showing that Democrats\u2019 \u201cemphasis on health care and costs was resoundingly supported by voters,\u201d Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster, told us. Last week, she presented data to a group of dozens of House lawmakers highlighting that the party\u2019s decision to take a stand on health care was electorally popular. In the meeting, which was reported earlier by CNN\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s reaction to Tuesday\u2019s 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\u2019s losses as the first real political setback of his second term\u2014that to this point, in Trump\u2019s eyes, he had piled up political wins and largely outdueled Democrats with the help of a compliant Congress and courts.<\/p>\n \u201cThe president is angry. He only wants to see wins,\u201d the person said.<\/p>\n After previously welcoming the funding lapse as an \u201cunprecedented opportunity\u201d to slash the federal workforce and insisting that Democrats were \u201cgetting killed on the shutdown,\u201d the president appeared to publicly acknowledge that his party was getting the blame. \u201cIf you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for Republicans,\u201d Trump told GOP senators yesterday. Democrats seized on a case of apparent regret from a president who wears Trump Was Right About Everything<\/span> hats.<\/p>\n The rest of Trump\u2019s remarks showed little in the way of self-reflection. He sought to dodge any blame for the results, saying he was \u201chonored\u201d 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.<\/p>\n But Senate Majority Leader John Thune\u2014who on Tuesday had said he was \u201coptimistic\u201d that the shutdown was nearing its end\u2014has made clear that he doesn\u2019t have the votes (or the desire) to get rid of the filibuster, no matter how often Trump demands it. \u201cIt\u2019s not happening,\u201d 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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n Democrats say that Trump\u2019s plans to lower prices have failed, allowing them to focus their electoral message on affordability and Trump\u2019s shattering of norms\u2014including his moves to dispatch masked ICE agents to target migrants, deploy the National Guard to American cities, and knock down the White House\u2019s East Wing for a massive new ballroom. (The construction project has taken up a large share of his focus lately.) But Trump\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2014including major hubs such as Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International and Dallas\u2013Fort Worth International\u2014to 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an act of self-immolation,\u201d he told reporters yesterday. \u201cAnd there are so many challenges in our world; we don\u2019t need this.\u201d<\/p>\n Russell Berman contributed reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the hours before Democrats\u2019 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 \u201cradical left\u201d activists had their say at the polls, moderate lawmakers would have enough political cover to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[558,8321,365,3982],"class_list":{"0":"post-32513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-government","9":"tag-reopen","10":"tag-week","11":"tag-wont"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}