The conventional wisdom is always right until it’s not.
In Washington, the conventional wisdom on government shutdowns was that they backfire on the party that’s out of power. Heading into the current shutdown, Capitol Hill insiders and other so-called experts warned Democrats that they would be fools to pick a budget fight now.
As the shutdown enters its second week, it’s clear that the pundits got this one wrong.
Democrats are winning the shutdown fight in the court of public opinion because they aren’t holding out for some abstract principle or unreasonable demand. Instead, they are fighting to keep millions of people from seeing their health insurance premiums skyrocket as Affordable Care Act subsidies expire.
Republicans could have avoided this fight if they had extended the subsidies earlier this year. The longer the shutdown drags on, the more foolish they look for opposing something so popular and necessary.
Republicans know that, which is why they have tried to muddy the waters with falsehoods, pushing the false claim that Democrats want health care for undocumented immigrants. That kind of sleazy sloganeering might work in a legislative fight that Americans aren’t watching closely, but it wilts under the bright lights of a shutdown. Republicans are left looking unserious.
Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., hardly a moderate voice in her party, is now signaling openness to a deal to preserve those ACA subsidies, while independent Sen. Angus King of Maine has indicated he may not keep voting with Republicans on a bill to reopen the government if they don’t get serious about health care costs.
Normally at this point in a shutdown, the defections would be toward reopening the government. The fact that they are happening on the other side shows how effective the pressure of a disciplined Democratic strategy has been.
This is exactly the point I argued in a previous column: Fighting is the only way to win. Progress is never handed over; it is wrestled into being. From the Civil Rights Movement to the labor movement, history tells us that those who wait patiently for justice are the ones left behind. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Democrats are demanding something concrete: health care security for the people they represent.
Republicans, by contrast, are exposing their own desperation. A spokesperson for the leadership even floated the idea of not swearing in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona until after the shutdown ends, a maneuver so petty and anti-democratic it reveals just how little confidence GOP leadership has in its own position. This is not governing. It is hostage-taking. And it shows how far the Republican Party has strayed from being a serious governing party. There is historical precedent here, too. Shutdown brinkmanship has been tried before, most famously in the mid-1990s when Newt Gingrich thought he could outlast President Bill Clinton. Gingrich lost that standoff badly because the American people understood who was really holding the government hostage. That history is repeating itself, but this time it is Democrats who came prepared with a clear, compelling reason to hold the line. Moments like this are clarifying for voters. Even amid the general chaos of the second Trump administration, the shutdown gives every American a clear choice between the two parties. One wants to help families get health care; the other wants to play games. Voters can see the difference. For more thought-provoking insights from Michael Steele, Alicia Menendez and Symone Sanders-Townsend, watch “The Weeknight” every Monday-Friday at 7 p.m. ET on MSNBC.
Symone D. Sanders Townsend is an author and a co-host of "The Weeknight." 
