Democrats left bruised after historic shutdown yields little

After 43 days, the longest government shutdown in US history is coming to an end.

Federal workers will start getting paid again. National Parks will reopen. Restricted or completely suspended public services will restart. Air travel, which has been a nightmare for many Americans, will now go back to being just plain annoying.

After the dust settled and the ink was dry on President Donald Trump’s signature on the funding bill, what did this record-breaking shutdown accomplish? So what did it cost?

Despite being a minority in the chamber, Senate Democrats were able to trigger the shutdown by using the chamber’s filibuster to refuse to comply with a Republican measure to temporarily fund the government.

They drew a line in the sand, demanding that Republicans agree to extend health insurance subsidies for low-income Americans that are set to expire at the end of the year.

When a handful of Democrats broke ranks Sunday to vote to reopen the government, they got almost nothing in return: the promise of a vote on subsidies in the Senate, but no guarantee of Republican support or even a necessary vote in the House.

Members of the party’s left wing have been furious ever since.

They accused Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, who did not vote for the funding bill, of being secretly complicit in the reopening plan or simply incompetent. They felt their party was closing down, even though their off-year election success showed they had the upper hand. They feared that their sacrifices for the lockdown were in vain.

More mainstream Democrats, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, also called the shutdown agreement “pathetic” and a “capitulation.”

“I’m not here to punch anyone in the face,” he told The Associated Press, “but I’m not happy that we’re still playing by the old rules of the game in the face of this invasive species that is a total game changer, Donald Trump.”

Newsom has 2028 presidential ambitions and could be a good barometer for the mood of the party. He was a staunch supporter of Joe Biden, defending the then-president even after his disastrous June debate performance against Trump.

If he’s running for pitchforks, that doesn’t bode well for Democratic leaders.

According to Trump, since the end of the Senate impasse on Sunday, the mood has shifted from cautious optimism to celebration.

He congratulated congressional Republicans on Tuesday and called the vote to reopen the government a “huge victory.”

“We are opening our country,” he said at the Veterans Day commemoration ceremony at Arlington Cemetery. “It should never have been closed.”

Perhaps sensing Democrats’ anger toward Schumer, Trump joined the pileup during a Fox News interview Monday night.

“He thought he could break the Republican Party, and the Republicans broke him,” Trump said of the Senate Democrat.

Although there were times when Trump caved in — he scolded Senate Republicans last week for refusing to throw out the filibuster to reopen the government — he ultimately emerged from the shutdown with little compromise.

Even though poll numbers have fallen over the past 40 days, Republicans are still a year away from facing voters in the midterm elections. And barring some kind of constitutional rewriting, Trump doesn’t have to worry about ever running for office again.

With the closure over, Congress will return to its regularly scheduled schedule. Even though the House of Representatives has been effectively undecided for more than a month, Republicans are still hoping they can pass some key legislation before next year’s election cycle begins.

While many government departments will be funded through September under the deal ending the shutdown, Congress will need to approve spending for the rest of the government by the end of January to avoid another shutdown.

Licking their wounds, Democrats may be longing for another chance to fight.

Meanwhile, the issue they’re fighting over — health care subsidies — could become a pressing concern for tens of millions of Americans who will see their insurance costs double or triple by the end of the year. Republicans ignore addressing such voter pain at their own political peril.

That’s not the only danger facing Trump and the Republicans. A day that should have been highlighted by the House government funding vote was spent dwelling on the latest revelations regarding the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Later Wednesday, Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn into her congressional seat, becoming the 218th and final signer of a petition that would force the House of Representatives to hold a vote on requiring the justice department to release its full files on the Epstein case.

This was enough to prompt Trump to complain on the Truth Social website that his success in government funding was being overshadowed.

“Democrats are trying to bring up the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax again because they will do anything to ignore how poorly they did on the Shutdown and so many other issues,” he wrote.

All of this was a stark reminder that the best-laid plans and political strategies can be derailed in an instant.

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