Initially irate, now I’m OK with Democrats giving up on government shutdown

This would have been a very different blog post if I’d written it last night, after I heard that eight Senate Democrats had agreed to vote with Republicans to end the longest government shutdown ever.

I was so irritated, I felt like changing my party designation from Democrat to unaffiliated. After all, just a day before I’d written a post called “Democrats need to continue shutdown as long as it takes to get Obamacare subsidies.”

I didn’t believe that post would have any effect on what was going on in Washington D.C. But I figured that the shutdown would continue for longer than a single freaking day.

What galled me last night, and for part of today, was that Democrats had successfully raised the issue of unaffordable health insurance premiums to a much greater prominence, compared to pre-shutdown days. Polls showed that more Americans blamed the Republican party for the shutdown than the Democratic party.

Last week’s elections went wonderfully well for Democrats. People loved that Democrats were fighting back against Trump’s authoritarianism. And then the eight Senate Democrats threw in the towel and said, basically, We can’t win, so shutdown has to end.

However, as I was exposed today to more commentary on this subject, my attitude changed. Now I’m OK with Democrats giving up on the shutdown, even though I’m not wild about what happened. Here’s why, expressed in bullet points that are in no particular order of importance.

• Trump and his fellow Republicans were never going to agree to fund an extension of Obamacare subsidies. So not getting what almost certainly was never going to happen is unfortunate, but virtually unavoidable.
• The agreed-upon vote on the subsidies that Senate Democrats get by mid-December will fail. This will leave Republicans owning the massive increase in Obamacare premiums that will hit 20 million Americans in 2026. Bad for those people; good politics for Democrats in a midterm year.
• If the Democratic proposal to fund a single year of subsidies in 2026 had been accepted by Republicans, that would have been good both for Obamacare subscribers and for the Republican Party, as it would have taken an election year issue largely off the table for Democrats. Now it’s very much alive as an issue for the midterms.
• My biggest fear was that Democrats would agree to open up the government without getting anything in return. The bill that passed the Senate tonight contains some concessions by Republicans. Not a lot. Enough to turn a complete defeat into either a mild defeat or a mild victory, depending on whether you’re a glass half empty or glass half full Democrat.
• Schumer lost control of the Democratic caucus, given the eight defections. The sooner he’s replaced as Senate Minority Leader, the better. Hopefully Schumer’s shutdown mismanagement will hasten his departure.
• The Democratic surrender on the shutdown is a big story at the moment. In a few weeks it won’t be. By the November midterms, it will have faded into insignificance as other issues rise to the top of citizen concerns.
• Republicans have had about fifteen years to come forward with a viable Obamacare replacement. Now the word is that a Republican health care plan will be revealed at the same time the Senate votes next month on the Democratic subsidy bill. That plan will be so pathetic, so riddled with problems, so unworkable as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare will be strengthened as a result.
• If the shutdown had continued much longer, Thanksgiving air travel would have become a nightmare for travelers given the lack of air traffic controllers. Democrats then would have run the risk of overplaying their shutdown hand.
• In the past, the political party out of power that demands a significant policy concession from the party in power never succeeded in that quest. While I didn’t like hearing Republicans constantly say, “We aren’t going to negotiate while the government is held hostage,” I had to admit that when Democrats said the same thing in the midst of a GOP shutdown, my reaction was right on.
• The real enemy here is Donald Trump and his Republican enablers. The eight Senate Democrats (more accurately, Senators who caucus with Democrats, since Angus King is an independent) had decent reasons to vote to end the shutdown. It’s fine to criticize them, but not to vilify them.