Eight centrist Senate Democrats took the brave step of crossing their party’s rabid base to cut a deal with Senate Republicans and end the federal government shutdown Sunday night. If all goes smoothly, the House could vote on the new continuing resolution on Wednesday, and Washington could be open again by Thursday. This would be a big win for the public, a crushing loss for Democratic Party radicals, and a damning indictment of the miserable leadership of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
The Democrats accomplished nothing with the 40-day shutdown they imposed on America except the infliction of pain on millions of innocent people. The deal cut with Senate Republicans includes a new continuing resolution that funds the federal government through Jan. 30, 2026; the passage of bipartisan appropriations bills for agriculture, veterans affairs, and the legislative branch, which would have occurred anyway; a full funding of food stamps through Sept. 30, 2026; and a promise to vote on an extension of COVID-19 bonus Obamacare subsidies next month.
It is essentially the same deal Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) offered Democrats weeks ago.
Why take the same deal now that they rejected last month? The answer is partisan politics. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) admitted to reporters, “I was so focused on the Virginia elections, I wasn’t in this discussion on healthcare to see how dug in they were.” In other words, centrist Democrats did not want to depress turnout by caving on the shutdown before Election Day. But now that Democrats secured big wins in Virginia and New Jersey, at least some of them felt free to do their jobs and open the government.
But not all of them. The seven senators who caucus with Democrats joining Kaine were Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Dick Durbin (D-IL), John Fetterman (D-PA), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Angus King (I-ME), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). It is not a coincidence that everyone on this list is either retiring or not up for election until 2028. Senate Democrats know they cannot afford to anger their base if they are to avoid a primary challenge from their left next year.
It is that fear of angering radical Democrats that caused the shutdown in the first place. Schumer was mercilessly attacked by party activists after he voted with 10 other Democrats to keep the government open in March. His approval rating among Democrats has since fallen drastically, making him the only congressional leader to have a net-negative approval rating in his own party. Schumer can feel the more radical members of his caucus breathing down his neck, and instead of offering a positive alternative policy agenda, he caved to their intransigence.
Typical among those pushing his party further to the left is Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who recently divorced his wife and the mother of his two children to date a party activist. In a video posted after voting to keep the shutdown going, Murphy claimed, “Of course I want to end the shutdown too. But not at any cost.”
“Standing up to a tyrant who is willing to impose pain in order to compel loyalty or capitulation is hard,” Murphy continued. “Especially for people of good heart who never want to see people suffer. But there is no path to saving our democracy that doesn’t involve hard choices — some that involve enduring pain in the service of proving the demagogue’s bullying tactics do not work.”
What smug and self-righteous BS this presidential wannabe spouts!
In him and his ilk, we see the true pathology of the modern Democratic Party. The shutdown that they engineered did nothing to “save democracy”. Their initial demand was a 10-year extension of a half-trillion-dollar health insurance subsidy that they eventually whittled down to a single-year extension. One can debate the wisdom of subsidizing the early retirement of people with high incomes through free healthcare, but what no one can claim is that the scheduled expiration of the program, which Murphy himself voted to create, amounts to tyranny.
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The sharpest indictment of Schumer’s leadership is that his most fervent supporters are trying to defend him by pointing out that he wasn’t even in the room when the centrist Democrats were negotiating with Republicans on the final deal to end the shutdown. This underscores how powerless Schumer is.
The end of this shutdown is a victory for sanity over spite. Eight Democrats finally chose governing over grandstanding, exposing the moral and strategic bankruptcy of their party’s left wing. The public deserves better than symbolic suffering, and they can thank a handful of blue-party members for finally putting country before politics.
