Wanted: Democrats with the guts to shut down the government on September 30

As painful as it is for me to say this, congressional Democrats bear a lot of resemblance to the pitiful Oregon State football team that lost a game to Fresno State yesterday it should have won.

Unorganized. Mistake-prone. Divided. Listless.

After recording the game and watching enough of it to realize how bad Oregon State was playing, I fast-forwarded my way through most of the rest of the game, because it was so painful to watch a team I wanted to win perform so poorly.

This also is how I feel about the Democrats in the House and Senate.

They have no viable game plan to fight Trump. They’re looking ahead to the next political contest, the 2026 midterms, instead of leaving it all on the field, as the saying goes, in the current battle for democracy. Their strategy, such as it is, is overly cautious.

In politics as in football, I never feel bad if my chosen team fights hard to win but comes up short on the scoreboard. That’s the nature of life. You win some, you lose some. What really matters is the effort, not the outcome, because often outcomes are the product of unpredictable and uncontrollable factors.

Currently Democrats can’t match Republican power in Washington, D.C. The GOP controls the House, Senate, White House, and the Supreme Court.

I don’t expect Democrats to win many political battles at the federal level. What I do expect is them using what limited power they have to fight Trump on behalf of the American people.

This is why, when the New York Times shared a link on my iPhone to an opinion piece by Ezra Klein, “Stop Acting Like This Is Normal,” I instantly clicked on it when I read the piece’s description — which I recall was in line with this description in the online edition.

In a few weeks the government’s funding will run out. If Democrats vote for a new spending bill, they will be funding Trump’s autocratic takeover — and I don’t see how they can.

Klein, a moderate Democrat who I generally agree with, makes a strong case for why the Democrats should refuse to provide the votes in the Senate to avert a government shutdown by passing a funding bill that has the requisite 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. (Seven Democrats would have to vote yes.)

In other words, Democrats need to be willing to shut the federal government down in order to wring policy concessions from Republicans that will undo some of the damage Trump is doing to our country.

Here’s some excerpts from Klein’s opinion piece, which warrants a full reading (I’ve shared a gift link from my New York Times subscription). I agree with everything Ezra Klein says. Now is the time to show the American people that Democrats have the guts to fight Trump’s authoritarianism, even if it means shutting the government down.

In about three weeks, the government’s funding will run out. Democrats will face a choice: Join Republicans to fund a government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.

Democrats faced a version of this choice back in March. DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, was chain-sawing its way through the government. Civil servants were being fired left and right. Government grants and payments were being choked off and reworked into tools of political power and punishment. Trump was signing executive orders demanding the investigation — I would say, the persecution — of his enemies. He had announced shocking tariffs on Mexico and Canada. We were in the muzzle velocity stage of this presidency. And Democrats seemed completely overwhelmed and outmatched.

I often heard people complain that Democrats lacked a message. What Democrats really lacked was power. They didn’t have the House or the Senate, but they did have one sliver of leverage: To fund the government, Senate Republicans needed Democratic votes. And not just one or two. They needed at least seven Democrats to reach that magic 60-vote threshold. House Democrats wanted a shutdown. But Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, didn’t. He voted for the funding bill and encouraged a crucial number of his colleagues to do the same. The bill passed.

To many Democrats, this seemed insane. Some began openly calling for Schumer to resign or face a primary challenge. This was Democrats’ first real opportunity to fight back against Trump, and they had folded. What were they good for?

…If you had forced me to choose, I would have said Schumer was probably right. It wasn’t the time for a shutdown — in part because Democrats weren’t prepared to win one.

But the bill that passed back in March funding the government runs out at the end of this month. And so we’re facing the question again: Should Senate Democrats partner with Senate Republicans to fund this government?

I don’t see how they can.

…I want to be very clear about what I am saying here. Donald Trump is corrupting the government — he is using it to hound his enemies, to line his pockets and to entrench his own power. He is corrupting it the way the Mafia would corrupt the industries it controlled. You could still, under Mafia rule, get the trash picked up or buy construction materials. But the point of those industries had become the preservation and expansion of the Mafia’s power and wealth. This is what Trump is doing to the government. This is what Democrats cannot fund. This is what they have to try to stop.

…I was talking with a Democratic senator I respect, and he asked me a good question: Everything you say about what Trump is doing might be true. Everything you say about the kind of emergency this is might be right. But is a government shutdown the answer? Or is it a desire for emotional catharsis that might be self-defeating? Sometimes the best strategy is restraint.

The case for a shutdown is this: A shutdown is an attentional event. It’s an effort to turn the diffuse crisis of Trump’s corrupting of the government into an acute crisis that the media, that the public, will actually pay attention to.

…Right now, Democrats have no power, so no one cares what they have to say. A shutdown would make people listen. But then Democrats would have to actually win the argument. They would need to have an argument. They would need a clear set of demands that kept them on the right side of public opinion and dramatized what is happening to the country right now.

In my head, the argument is something like this: Trump won the election. He is the legitimate president. But the government has to serve the people and be accountable to the people. ICE can conduct legitimate deportations, but there can’t be masked agents roaming the streets refusing to identify themselves or their authority. The Trump family cannot be hoovering in money and investments from the countries that depend on us and that fear our power and our sanctions. There have to be inspectors general and JAGs and career prosecutors watching to make sure the government is being run on behalf of the people rather than on behalf of the Trump family.

Democrats would have to pick a small set of policies and stick to that. They would have to choose those policies wisely. They would have to hold the line even when it got tough.

And right now, Democrats have not picked those policies or settled on that message. Right now, they are no more prepared for a shutdown than they were in March. There is a huge debate inside the party on whether they should talk about Trump’s corruption and authoritarianism or instead say that armed troops in Washington are a distraction from the price of groceries and health care. And there is the reality that Democrats’ best issue is health care, and Trump looting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts is the kind of thing they should never let voters forget. I don’t think it’s impossible to turn this into one message.

…I’m not going to tell you I am absolutely sure Democrats should shut the government down. I’m not. At the same time, joining Republicans to fund this government is worse than failing at opposition. It’s complicity.

I’m not a political strategist. I hope somebody has better ideas than I do. But it’s been about six months since Schumer decided that it wasn’t the time for a fight, that neither he nor the country was ready. Democratic leaders have had six months to come up with a plan. If there’s a better plan than a shutdown, great. But if the plan is still nothing, then Democrats need new leaders.