The Democrats have announced their table stakes with respect to a possible government shutdown. Work with us to extend Obamacare tax credits, they’ve told Republicans, or you won’t get our votes, and the government will be shuttered by the October 1 deadline.
There are two good things to say about this. The first is that it sounds now like they’re more willing to roll the dice on a shutdown than they were in March, when Chuck Schumer decided against the move and gave Donald Trump and the Republicans a few Senate votes to avoid a shutdown. It was, under the circumstances, a defensible decision—but it came at a time when Trump and Elon Musk were shredding the federal government. The Democratic base, which desperately wanted their leadership to take a stand, was furious at the result. Famous last words, I know, but Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries seem to understand this today.
The second good thing is that there’s substantive merit to the position. The tax credits were extended on a temporary basis by Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2021. They’re due to expire. Their expiration would mean that more than 20 million who receive these subsidies would have to pay more for the health care coverage, in some cases a lot more. So, all that is good.
But … why am I yawning? I’m yawning because this plan just sounds so safe and poll-tested. I’m yawning because it is essentially playing defense (again)—and defending something they had already won. And mostly I’m yawning because Donald Trump is not merely a threat to the health care subsidies of a comparatively small minority of Americans—he’s a threat to our way of life, on countless levels.
What might happen if the Democrats made the government shutdown about that?
Imagine Schumer and Jeffries and other Democrats saying something like the following:
“In eight-plus months, Donald Trump has been on a rampage to use the powers of his office and the powers of the executive branch to turn this country into a much meaner, crueler, and less democratic place. He’s rounding up people—good and decent people, trying to work and raise their families—and putting them in detention camps where they live in cages, never see daylight, don’t even know what time of day it is. He’s sending others off to countries they have no connection to, with no due process, no hint of when or how they might return. His agents wear masks, break the car windows of people who are completely innocent, run armored caravans through the streets of working-class neighborhoods.
“He’s using the Justice Department and other agencies to pry into the lives of Americans he’s targeted as enemies. They’re rifling through people’s mortgage documents. And then knowingly spreading lies about what they found far and wide. The president is trying to claim the right to fire all manner of federally appointed commissioners and agency heads. No such right exists in this country. Yet lawlessly, he is claiming it, wreaking havoc with these dedicated servants’ lives, and destroying the important work of these agencies.
“He’s using the executive branch to dramatically curtail our freedoms and the independence of our institutions. Lawyers and their firms should be devoted to their vision of the practice of law. They should not be intimidated into making deals with the administration. Our great universities should be able to teach what they, and their administrations and boards of governors, decide they want to teach, not what Donald Trump wants them to teach.
“Across all the agencies of the executive branch, the Trump agenda, the Project 2025 agenda, is to radically remake our society into one of greater ease and comfort for the rich and powerful, and of hardship and struggle for everyone else. From cuts to health care and food stamps and so much more to protections for corporate cheaters and monopolists and others who don’t treat their workers with respect, Trump is using the executive branch to hand this country over to the megarich.
“This is all being perpetrated through the agencies of the executive branch—through the cronies and loyalists and ideologues he’s hired to run and staff these agencies without regard to their actual qualifications.
“We’ll be honest: We don’t know how much of this we can stop by shutting down the government. We won’t begin to pretend we can stop all of it. But if we can prevent 10 percent of it; if we slow this mayhem down by a few weeks, then by God, that is what we’ll do. Donald Trump wants to convert our democracy into a dictatorship, with him playing the role of dictator. Well, we don’t have dictators in this country. We don’t have kings. And that is the line in the sand we’re drawing. This is the ‘No Kings’ shutdown.”
There are, the Democratic professional political class will be quick to tell me, a dozen reasons not to do something like this. Michael! they’ll exclaim, it’s too risky. It’s dangerous. Swing voters don’t feel these passions. It’s this. It’s that.
I am convinced that this position is much less risky than these people—who’ve been advising Democrats not to take chances ever since the Iraq War—believe it is. Rank-and-file Democrats want to see their leaders take a stand. Not a stand on behalf of Obamacare, important though that is. A moral stand grounded in an idea about what our society is and should be. This is not about percentages. It’s about human dignity and freedom and preserving a system of government that, however deeply imperfect, has done a better job of advancing dignity and freedom than any other.
Recent history suggests that the party that sets a government shutdown in motion will get blamed for it. That has been true under normal circumstances. But these circumstances are not normal. And the American people know it—they’re out marching in the streets every chance they get. Trump isn’t popular. His priorities and performance so far are not popular, except on border control; but other than that, he’s underwater on everything.
That makes this situation, at least potentially, unlike all preceding shutdown showdowns. Trump isn’t just trying to cut the odd government program or zero out some domestic budget line items. He’s taking steps every day to ensure that autocracy takes root. Democrats, whether they like it or not, are locked in mortal philosophical combat. And they, whether we like it or not, are the people on whom the future of the republic depends. Those are the stakes in play; they are rather more consuming than the future of some health care subsidies. If the Democrats can make that clear to the public, there’s every chance that a majority of voters will say: Yes, indeed, the Democrats precipitated this shutdown. And good for them.
