The longest government shutdown in American history, 40 days of furloughed feds and finger-pointing, whimpered to an end Sunday night. Eight Senate Democrats, weary of their own party’s lack of a credible path to victory, crossed the aisle to hand Republicans a clean win, invoking cloture on a House funding bill by the slimmest of margins: 60-40.
What isn’t in the bill? Obamacare subsidy extensions and a restoration of health care subsidies for illegal aliens—the ostensible reason for the shutdown. Rather, the bill was just a straight-up funding for military construction, the Department of Agriculture, and the legislative branch through Sept. 30, 2026, with the rest of the bloated bureaucracy limping along to Jan. 30, with federal workers getting backpay, in many cases, for work not done.
Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine said of the marathon effort to leverage policy gains from majority Republicans that “The evidence… is almost seven weeks of fruitless attempts to make that happen. Would it change in a week? Or another week? Or after Thanksgiving? There’s no evidence that it would.”
Translation: Democrats blinked because they didn’t have a viable plan.
The list of defectors, except for Democratic Senate Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, reads like a roll call of battleground-state survivors: Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and King.
Durbin’s main claim was that the bill “would reverse the mass firings the Trump Administration ordered throughout the shutdown”—firings that were largely seen as a White House pressure tactic. Evidentially, it worked.
Of course, the Democrats’ ascendant progressive left wing was apoplectic. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts thundered on X that the deal “does nothing to make health care more affordable,” labeling it a “mistake” in a health care “emergency.” She might have said, “of our own making” but that would require an admission of guilt that Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, wasn’t about affordability or care.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont decried the vote as a “horrific mistake” and “a very bad night” that waves a white flag to Trump’s “authoritarianism.”
Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona warned of “sticker shock” for 24 million Americans facing doubled premiums — again, due to Obamacare, while Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York branded it an “unconditional surrender.”
The Democratic infighting escalated to a full-blown internecine internal skirmish, with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California piling on Schumer: “Senator Schumer is no longer effective and should be replaced. If you can’t lead the fight… what will you fight for?” The irony here is that Khanna is what passes for a moderate in the Democratic Party these days — thus, his critical remarks likely have more to do with inoculating himself from the left than having any practical effect on a chamber in which he has no vote.
Sure, Democrats got a pledge from Majority Leader John Thune for a December vote on extending COVID-era Obamacare credits, but as even Kaine admits, it’s a long shot without GOP buy-in.
Progressives bet the farm on voter backlash, but while the shutdown likely boosted the vote in the odd year election in Virginia and New Jersey, the real prize — the 2026 midterms — is a political eon away, with the Senate vote handing Trump a PR win while exposing Democrats’ fractures. Thus, the shutdown cave-in telegraphs Democratic weakness just as Republicans gear up for midterms that will determine whether Trump will truly get a full term at full effectiveness.
Shutdowns are Washington’s version of mutually assured destruction — nobody wins, but one side always loses more. Democrats, egged on by their far-left wing, gambled that pain would force GOP capitulation on health care. They failed.
And congressional Republicans, for once, played their cards right: letting Democrats go all in on bluff — and then calling the hand only to see a pair of deuces.
As the national government flickers back to life — take a moment to savor the irony — the party of “resistance” resisted itself into impotence.
Chuck DeVore is Chief National Initiatives officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He served in the California State Assembly and is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. He’s the author of “Crisis of the House Never United.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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