The End of the Shutdown

Well the shutdown is substantially over as 8 Democratic Senators voted to reopen the government on Sunday. They were promised a vote on Obamacare subsidies and that all fired federal workers would be rehired with back pay.

Just about every Democrat has blasted this resolution as caving to Republicans. Ro Khanna called for Chuck Schumer’s ouster saying, “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight to stop healthcare premiums from skyrocketing for Americans, what will you fight for?” Gavin Newsom said, “America deserves better . . . now is not the time to roll over.” Even generally moderate voices like Chris Murphy said, “This CR is a major mistake . . . we were building momentum to help save our democracy.” Calls to primary Schumer were everywhere online, with polling showing that AOC would beat him if she were to challenge him.

So why give in? “I came to the conclusion that they were not going to cave on that red line [of healthcare subsidies]” said Tim Kaine, Senator of Virginia. Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire observed, “Waiting another week or another month wouldn’t deliver a better outcome.” Abigail Spanberger, who just became governor-elect of Virginia, called for the government to reopen. Not coincidentally, Virginia is home to 187,000+ federal employees who had been missing paychecks. Indeed, the federal employee union, which had initially backed the shutdown, called for Dems to reopen the government last week.

That’s when I knew it was going to end; when your biggest allies who are getting impacted say, “Hey guys, enough is enough,” you are going to pull the ripcord.

The real-world harms were rippling out from the shutdown. Millions were unsure of when their SNAP benefits were going to resume or how much they would get. Thousands of flights were getting canceled, and FAA retirements and dropouts from training were up. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees were going without paychecks and some were laid off. It was going from bad to worse day by day.

As you can tell, I think ending the shutdown was the right move if your goal is a functioning government and, say, reliable air travel or food stamps. The only reason you could argue that it was a mistake is if you knew that, in another 24 or 48 hours, Trump and the Republicans were going to capitulate on healthcare. Do you see that? The opposite was true, as Trump dug in over the weekend, suggesting a completely different pay-for measure.

Some people are arguing that Schumer made the decision to reopen the government, as all 8 Dem Senators who voted for the measure are not on the ballot next year. I’m sure that’s right. Chuck looked up and said, “Okay, we’re not going to get what we want. We’d better call this before people get irreversibly hurt.” He gave the Dems a way out.

I find this to be a reasonable path to take. I was always dubious that the shutdown was going to meaningfully change the approach on healthcare – shutdowns don’t accomplish their policy goal - but I was confident it would do real-world harm and reduce institutional integrity. The Democrats are, in theory, the party of good government. That includes funding the government and things like food stamps.

Unfortunately, the blowback that Schumer is getting, including being lambasted by dozens of Dems whom I ordinarily regard as pretty reasonable, shows that the Democratic base has more of a thirst for combat and victory than they do sizing up a tough situation, looking out for the people being hurt and making difficult choices. It’s easy to shit talk and say, “We need fighters!” It’s harder to, say, hold a primary for your 81-year-old incumbent when the insiders are quashing dissent or accept that you didn’t have a winning hand in a confrontation. There’s groupthink and then there’s leadership. We need the latter, but the former is getting louder and louder.

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