If the Senate does not pass a funding bill by Oct. 1, the government will shut down. Because of the Senate’s archaic filibuster rules, any potential continuing resolution will require 60 votes to pass. This means that if every Republican votes for the bill, they will also need the votes of at least seven Democrats to keep the government open.
This gives Democrats one of the best opportunities that they have to negotiate for their legislative priorities, despite Republicans having a trifecta over the government, with control of the House, Senate and presidency. Right now, Senate Democrats are trying to use their leverage to extend the expiring healthcare subsidies that were originally part of the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans intend to let expire. However, Dems can only use the leverage that the potential shutdown will grant them if they aren’t afraid to actually shut the government down when Republicans try to call their bluff.
During the previous shutdown fight, Senate Democrats failed spectacularly. In April, as the government was approaching a shutdown, House Republicans refused to negotiate with Democrats at all, instead passing their own continuing resolution with no input from the minority party. All House Democrats, including those representing swing districts that Donald Trump also won in 2024, voted against the Republicans’ continuing resolution, demanding changes limiting the power of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and presenting a united front to give Senate Democrats some small amount of leverage. When Senate Republicans called a vote on the House bill, which swing-seat House members had risked their reelection prospects to oppose, Senate Democrats immediately caved. 10 Democrats, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, voted for the Republican bill, leading to outrage from the Democratic base and calls for Schumer’s removal. Schumer justified his vote by saying that a shutdown would have been worse than any of the damage that Musk could do and that voters might blame Democrats for a shutdown. Musk’s DOGE would go on to freeze cancer research funding, close Social Security Administration offices, end a government investigation into Musk’s company Tesla and access individual taxpayers’ IRS data.
Now, Senate Democrats find themselves in the same position. Instead of fighting against Musk, they’re fighting for healthcare. Once again, Republicans have passed a bill in the House without any input from Democrats. So far, only Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has said that he would support the Republican bill. The rest of the Dems appear united against it. However, many have expressed some concern about Democrats being blamed for a potential shutdown. Here’s why they shouldn’t worry about it.
The obvious case for why Democrats don’t need to worry about being blamed for a shutdown is simple: they probably won’t be blamed for it. Republicans have complete control over the government. If the Senate cannot pass a bill, the very large portion of voters who are unfamiliar with the Senate’s rules for ending a debate are more likely to blame the party that actually has control of the Senate. Additionally, Vice President J.D. Vance’s comments that “we’re headed to a shutdown” and the recently leaked White House memo explaining how Trump will use a potential shutdown to his political advantage through more mass-firings of government workers provide Democrats with plenty of talking points to try to shift any blame that they may receive back to the Republican Party. This explanation is one that I’ve heard both from Democrats and the media, and it does raise some valid points.
However, there’s an even bigger reason why Democrats shouldn’t be afraid of taking the blame for a government shutdown, and it’s one that is rarely discussed. Other than the near-shutdown from this spring, the closest parallel to the current situation is the government shutdown of 2013. House Republicans, convinced that the public would blame any government shutdown on then-President Barack Obama, refused to pass any government funding legislation unless the Democrats would agree to defund Obamacare, which at the time was still really unpopular. Democrats, who had been attempting to pass their own “clean” continuing resolution to keep the government open with no policy concessions, refused to back down. Once the shutdown started, polls showed that it was Congressional Republicans, not Democrats or Obama, that were being blamed by a majority of the public for the shutdown. After 17 days of government shutdown, House Republicans passed a Senate-approved continuing resolution with no cuts to Obamacare.
At the time, 53% of the public blamed Republicans in Congress for the shutdown, with the party’s approval rating dropping to a record-low 28%, compared to 43% for Democrats and 44% for Obama, according to a Gallup poll. 70% of the public disapproved of the way that Republican leaders had handled the shutdown, compared to just 51% for Obama, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll.
None of that mattered. The 2014 midterms, barely a year after the Republicans’ shutdown debacle, were considered to be a massive “red wave.” Republicans picked up nine Senate seats and 13 House seats, winning the popular vote by 5.7%. Republicans ended up with their largest majority in Congress since the Herbert Hoover administration. In exit polling after the election, the shutdown wasn’t even mentioned. Two years later, Republicans would retake the presidency, with Donald Trump pulling off a shocking win against Hillary Clinton.
So what can Democrats today learn from the 2013 shutdown fight as they prepare for their own? That getting blamed does not matter. They may see a drop in their poll numbers in the immediate aftermath of the shutdown, but it will only be a temporary drop. Midterm elections are a referendum on the incumbent president’s party, not on how effective the opposition was. Presidential elections are about the future. Taking the blame for a shutdown now will not be pleasant for the party, and the shutdown itself won’t be pleasant for America, but it won’t harm the Democrats’ chances on election day. When Democrats have an opportunity to extract concessions from the Republican party, they must take it without worrying about who voters will blame. Because getting blamed for a shutdown simply does not matter.
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