Democrats could have more shutdown leverage than people realize

Analysis by Aaron Blake, CNN

There is a well-founded bit of conventional wisdom that government shutdowns never really work for the side making demands to keep things open. There are many such cases.

“I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to remind Democrat colleagues that taking basic government functions hostage for partisan demands never pays,” Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Wednesday on X.

And McConnell has actually been pretty consistent on this point, even dating back to when his side was arguably forcing the shutdowns.

But there is growing evidence that the current shutdown is somewhat different from its predecessors.

Democrats might never get what they’re asking for. But they seem to have significantly more leverage than the side refusing to vote for government funding usually does.

A new poll Thursday from the Washington Post tells the tale.

Democrats are the ones who withheld their votes from a “clean” continuing resolution to keep the government funded this week. And history suggests that’s the side that usually gets the blame. Americans have overwhelmingly said that shutdown debates are no place to try to force extraneous policy changes.

But at least initially, voters are actually blaming Republicans more.

The poll conducted on Wednesday, the day the shutdown began, showed 47% of Americans believed President Donald Trump and the Republicans were “mainly responsible” for the shutdown, compared to 30% who blamed Democrats.

That’s highly unusual in the context of past shutdown polling. Republicans were very much on the short end of the blame game when they forced shutdowns over things like defunding Obamacare and building the border wall last decade, for example.

The polling also offers a big hint as to why that might be: Unlike past shutdowns, the policy Democrats are pushing for is actually very popular.

The Post’s poll shows Americans said 71%-29% that they want to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that Democrats are holding out for.

And perhaps more to the point: 47% of Americans say they want to extend the subsidies and Democrats should continue demanding that “even if it continues the government shutdown.”

That’s not quite a majority, but it’s a very sizeable number. Notably, the poll gave people who supported extending the subsidies a middle-ground option of compromising to end the shutdown. People generally like at least the broad concept of compromise; 24% who wanted the subsidies extended supported that. But nearly half of Americans still opted for the harder-line approach.

The 47% who say Democrats should allow the shutdown to continue is unusual, compared to past shutdowns.

When Republicans demanded defunding Obamacare in 2013 before a shutdown, a New York Times/CBS News poll showed 38% of Americans supported defunding Obamacare, but only about 2 in 10 said it was worth risking a shutdown over.

When Republicans did it again over the border wall in 2019, a CBS News poll showed fewer than 3 in 10 Americans said that was worth a shutdown.

The wording of the questions and the pollsters were different. But support for this shutdown gambit appears significantly higher than it was back then.

And this isn’t the first poll to suggest Democrats could sustain this demand. A Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll in mid-September showed that Americans said 52%-36% that Democrats should withhold their votes unless “Republicans agree to restore funding for some government health care programs.” It also found that, even if this faceoff led to a shutdown, Americans would still blame Republicans more than Democrats, 35%-24%.

So that’s two polls showing very similar things.

It’s also become clear that Democrats’ demand has at least cast a spotlight on an uneasy issue for Republicans.

That’s evidenced by the GOP’s skirting of the issue. Rather than reject Democrats’ policy demand out of hand, they’ve instead insisted they’re willing to negotiate, just not while the government is shut down.

Democrats counter that insurers need to plan for the hike in premiums that would result if the enhanced subsidies aren’t extended and warn that notices could go out soon, so the time for talking is now. And some Republicans who support the subsidies at least seem open to negotiating in the short term.

The GOP has also taken to falsely arguing that the subsidies would provide health care to undocumented immigrants.

And finally, the Trump administration is increasingly threatening to bring the hammer down by making cuts to government employees and spending that Democrats won’t like. They’ve repeatedly suggested these cuts would be politically targeted. But even some Republican lawmakers appear uncomfortable with all that, worrying that such cuts would blow back on them much like the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts earlier this year.

“There’s the political ramifications that could cause backlash,” GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota told CNN’s Manu Raju on Wednesdsay, adding: “I just don’t like squandering that political capital.”

None of which means the Democrats are going to win this fight. As the shutdown drags on and the downsides of it come into focus, it’s quite possible Americans could lose patience with Democrats’ hard line – and revert to their skepticism of using shutdowns for leverage.

But it does appear Democrats have some leverage here. And that makes this fight unlike its predecessors.