In the strictest sense, Democrats can’t “win” the government shutdown conflict that now hangs over Washington, at least not completely. When it’s over, President Donald Trump will continue to ravage the federal government, undermining its ability to serve the public, while, at best, Democrats will only have garnered some of the policy concessions they are seeking. Much as we might like it to be otherwise, a refusal by Democrats to sign on to a budget bill would stop few of the horrors we’re likely to experience over the next three years.
But there are better losses and worse losses — and the worst would be congressional Democrats folding without exacting the highest price they can.
There are better losses and worse losses.
To the surprise of no one, a White House meeting Monday afternoon with the president and leaders from both parties produced no progress. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said afterward that Democrats wouldn’t agree to a bill that “continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans,” while Vice President JD Vance said, “I think we’re headed to a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing.”
So the shutdown nears. The most useful way for Democrats to think about this fight is to ask what realistic outcome they would like to see when it ends, then work backward to arrive at a strategy likeliest to get them there. What’s the best outcome? As many policy concessions as they can get (which would most likely be limited) and a fight that convinces the public that Republicans are malevolent and reckless.
If Congress can’t pass a bill to extend funding by Wednesday, the federal government will close (in part, anyway). For it to reopen, both houses of Congress would have to pass a funding bill — which means seven Democrats in the Senate would have to join Republicans to reach the 60-vote threshold that overcomes a filibuster. At the moment, Republicans have offered nothing to win Democrats’ support. Rather than discuss where the parties might see eye to eye, Trump has been making bizarre accusations (Democrats want to “essentially create Transgender operations for everybody” to keep the government open, he said, puzzling even Republicans) that only reinforce how erratic he is.
That’s a key part of this equation that gives Democrats an advantage: Trump is extremely unpopular, and the public is disinclined to believe what he tells it. The spending fight comes at a moment when almost everything is working against the president. Pessimism about the economy is running high, and the public rejects Trump’s signature economic policy, his ever-changing tariffs. In fact, more Americans disapprove of his performance than approve on almost every issue. Most Americans oppose his use of the military to invade American cities, and a majority now say it would like to see Congress controlled by Democrats to provide a check on Trump. His naked authoritarianism is increasingly indefensible — even many conservatives are blanching at the strong-arming of ABC to silence Jimmy Kimmel and the petty and vindictive prosecution of James Comey.
Furthermore, while most Americans won’t follow this fight all that closely, they do have some baseline beliefs that put Democrats in an advantageous position. The first and most straightforward is that Republicans are in charge of the government, so Republicans are responsible when things go wrong. That helps explain why polls are showing that voters are (at this stage, anyway) likelier to put blame on Republicans for a potential shutdown.
The second factor is that the GOP is also the party that hates government and that has shut it down in the past. That means it doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.
While most Americans won’t follow this fight all that closely, they do have some baseline beliefs that put Democrats in an advantageous position. So what are Democrats demanding? Jeffries has a new mantra that he is repeating: “Cancel the cuts, lower the cost, save health care.” That requires some explanation (never a good sign for a slogan), but there are a few core pieces. The first and most important is that at the end of the year, expanded subsidies for those who buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act exchanges will expire; this will cause premiums to balloon for millions of people. Some Republicans want to extend the subsidies for only one year — i.e., past the 2026 midterms, so voters don’t feel the pain until after the election. Democrats want the subsidies made permanent. Democrats also say they want to reverse the brutal cuts to Medicaid that were in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” But they know congressional Republicans won’t ever agree to that, so it’s most likely a negotiating tactic, something they can put on the table and then give up, allowing Republicans to say they got a concession. They also want an assurance — written unambiguously into the legislation, since Trump can’t ever be trusted to keep his promises — that there would be no more illegal “impoundments,” in which the administration has simply refused to spend money Congress appropriated. In addition, they want the billions of dollars the government already illegally froze to be spent as the law requires. The good news is that Democratic leaders seem to have gotten the message their base has been sending: No more capitulation. You have to fight. They’ve been sounding increasingly pugnacious, and when the administration threatened to use a shutdown as an excuse for more mass layoffs of government workers, it only hardened Democrats’ resolve. The threat made something else clear: The administration isn’t looking to minimize the damage of a shutdown. It wants to maximize the damage. If Democrats can at least win a substantive concession or two — like the extension of ACA subsidies — and use the controversy to remind voters how much damage Trump and Republicans are doing to the country, it wouldn’t fundamentally change the course we’re on. But it would be better than nothing and better than the alternative. And that looks a lot like a win.
Paul Waldman is a journalist and author focused on politics and culture. 
