Without a budget agreement in Congress by Sept. 30 to fund the federal government, there will be a shutdown.
Many writers and thinkers on the left are arguing that Democrats should embrace a shutdown. It would be a strategic move, the thinking goes, in response to what they see as abuses in the ways that President Trump and his Republican allies have governed.
Matthew Glassman, a political scientist at Georgetown, wrote in his Substack newsletter, Five Points, that this approach is all wrong. He explained further in an interview with a Times Opinion editor, John Guida.
John Guida: You write that a strategic shutdown would be a “terrible idea.” In general, why are shutdowns bad politics?
Matthew Glassman: They don’t work. There have been a handful of shutdowns longer than a day in the modern era. In none of them did the party trying to leverage the shutdown win the concessions they were seeking and, in each case, they also lost the public opinion battle.
Their opponents simply demanded a reopening of the government while pointing out all the ways the shutdown was hurting federal workers and American citizens. Eventually, the shutdown coalition cracked, the government reopened, they didn’t win their policy major objectives, and they were worse off politically going forward.
You write that this specific strategic shutdown would be particularly damaging for Democrats. Why?
First, as mentioned, it won’t work. There’s no way Trump is going to sign a bill tying his hands on spending authority or cleaning up the perceived lawlessness of his administration in response to a forced shutdown.
Second, the Democrats are in the worst possible structural situation to try to win over public opinion in a shutdown: They don’t control any branch of government. If you have control of Congress — or even just one chamber of Congress — there’s at least a hook of democratic legitimacy in negotiations that leads to a stalemate and a shutdown.
But currently, the only way for the Democrats to force a shutdown is to filibuster in the Senate, and public opinion is likely to turn against that almost immediately.
One argument for a strategic shutdown is that Democrats can use it to draw Americans’ attention to what they see as the abuses of power of the Trump administration and shift public opinion in their direction.
You seem skeptical of this. For this to succeed, you write that it would require “magic explainer sauce” as a key ingredient.
I just don’t buy that attention is the issue here. At this point, people know all about Trump and mostly don’t like him. It’s very easy in politics to convince yourself that the main problem is your message, because it means you don’t have to think about adjusting your policies. But it’s a huge bank-shot argument to say: “We will win if the people just understood how bad Trump is, and we haven’t been able to reach them. But if we shut down the government, that will draw their attention, and they will listen to us.” That’s four or five separate claims that you have to be right about.
You also write that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party might be advocating a shutdown because it doesn’t really want to go the “other plausible route to electoral success.” What is the other plausible route?
Democratic strategy is largely caught between two competing ideas for how to win back power. One is that Trump is terrible and dangerous, and if properly messaged, that will be enough on its own for Democrats to reclaim power. The other idea is that the Democratic national brand is a bit too liberal, and the party needs to not just run moderate candidates in swing Senate states, but actually moderate somewhat as a national party in order to decisively win back power, particularly in the Senate.
There’s nothing inherently contradictory in these two ideas — you can moderate while still messaging how dangerous the Trump administration is. But a shutdown over the excess of the administration is squarely coming from the liberal-wing view of party strategy — in this case, focused on messaging.
There’s also a sense on the left that Democrats need to fight more. This aligns with the outlook of a lot of liberals that the Trump administration is not a normal conservative government, but a larger threat to basic liberal commitments, or even to democracy itself. That also suggests that crisis-type strategies like shutting down the government should be employed.
But the alternative theory is the more traditional one for out-parties: Modestly moderate your platform and brand by conceding ground on a couple issues, focus on capturing back potential swing voters, and let the thermostatic nature of the American electorate — in which voters tend to sour on the party in power, left or right — carry you to victory. In effect, treat Trump like a normal, unpopular president.
You acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons for Democratic rage, for example noting that the Trump administration has attacked congressional spending authority (via impoundment and other moves) and abused executive power. As you put it, under those conditions, “How can you have a bipartisan negotiation over spending if the executive has no intention of executing the deal in good faith?” So how can you?
It’s not easy, and I certainly put the blame squarely on Trump and his encroachments on the spending power for blowing up the logic of the traditional bipartisan appropriations process. Even things that are perfectly legal — like the fast-tracked rescission package Trump proposed and Congress approved on a 50-vote threshold — have undermined the ability to bargain in good faith in the Senate.
But that still leaves open the question of a strategic political response. A lot of times in politics we say “something beats nothing,” and that’s often true when you have a policy problem and are searching for a solution. As a guide to judiciously asserting power, however, it can be very dangerous.
There’s an important political fallacy at play here, that if something is available to do, you should necessarily do it. If doing nothing causes less harm, it’s the best option. Sometimes you have to choose the least-worst path.
It’s also important to note that congressional Republicans aren’t thrilled with Trump’s actions, either. The appropriations leaders — particularly Susan Collins, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee — clearly seem like they would prefer the normal negotiations. Many of the backbenchers are worried about specific programs their constituents like being left to the whims of the administration. And the Senate Republican moderates are wary of the whole enterprise. If the Democrats shut down the government, they would immediately unite all of those dissenting Republican factions, by changing the question from Trump’s excesses to the Democrats’ shutdown.
The arguments for a shutdown vary: to bring attention to the abuses of power of Trump; to wring policy concessions, particularly on health care; to demand an end to impoundment and rescission and other deal breaking; to push Trump back toward constitutional governance; to pick a fight because Democrats need a fight, and it would help party unity. Are they all wrongheaded?
Generally, they are all misguided, and none of them are likely to work. But I also think you can rank them. The worst idea is to shut down the government over general Trump abuses or lawlessness. That will probably never work at a policy level — how could it?— and would tend to unify the G.O.P. while Democrats bickered over the strategy and eventually split over whether to continue the shutdown. The public will likely be confused about what the Democrats are even demanding.
Shutting the government down over a specific list of actual policy demands makes somewhat more sense. The health care subsidies are popular, and are perhaps a reasonable thing to fight for. Definitely something to try to negotiate. But once you shut down the government, you aren’t going to win those concessions. So you are probably better off just operating normally, trying to get winnable Republicans on board with the extension, and keep the stakes low.
In the event of Democratic resistance to cutting a deal, you noted that Republicans might get rid of the filibuster. There are plenty of liberals who would not see that as a necessarily bad outcome. Has the filibuster outlived its usefulness?
I think so. For a long time, I was a mild defender of the filibuster. It had its problems, for sure, and it stalled a lot of legislation, but it really did create an environment in the Senate where true deliberation happened and we saw genuinely bipartisan outcomes.
But in the last 15 years, those benefits have shrunk a fair amount, and the normalization of the 60-vote Senate has all but wrecked the legislative process. The good news is that the current equilibrium isn’t stable. The filibuster will almost certainly be gone sooner rather than later. Whether that helps one party or another more isn’t clear, but it certainly would allow unified governments to enact their programs and spending priorities without minority input. Which many people see as a positive development. And a lot of liberals think ending the filibuster would be a net win for Democrats and liberal policy priorities.
Since a lot of people agree that the Democrats can’t win a shutdown at the policy level, they have shifted to a new argument: Shut the government down to force the Republicans to end the filibuster in order to reopen the government. They see this as a long-term win for liberals.
But the logic here is terrible. The G.O.P. isn’t going to end the filibuster because you shut the government down. They are just going to demand you agree to reopen the government and make you vote on it over and over again — you will be filibustering — until you cave. And, more important, if the Democrats want the filibuster gone and are willing to do it while the G.O.P. has unified government, they can get that whenever they want. They can just say: We aren’t going to filibuster appropriations bills anymore, starting now, and when we get control of the Senate we will formally end them. No shutdown needed.
If not a shutdown, what should Democrats do?
Well, they could have standard negotiations in good faith, and then continue to call out Trump’s impoundments or other spending moves. So long as the Senate Republicans are willing to do that as we stumble toward the eventual omnibus, it’s probably the least-worst option. I’m not going to pretend it would be great, because the cloud of administration impoundments and other games would be looming over it, but it would likely proceed more or less as normal.
It sounds like doing nothing, but right now, doing nothing is probably the best strategy. Trump is unpopular, the midterms are rarely kind to the incumbent president, and in all likelihood, the Democrats are going to control the House and pick up seats in the Senate. Save the big fights for 2027, when they are on much firmer electoral, political and institutional footing.
If that seems too weak or passive, they could withdraw from the appropriations process, not filibuster, and let the Republicans write the bills alone, reserving themselves the ability to strongly critique them. That might allow them to draw attention to the unusual nature of the current situation, and perhaps satisfy the wing of the party that is looking for a fight right now.
They could also do any of these things with a specific set of demands that they are seeking. Any of these choices would be politically better than causing a shutdown for vague reasons related to Trump’s power grabs.
Some Democrats argue that the party needs to see them fighting now, no matter the outcome, to be motivated for the midterms. Do you see any connection, or is the ultimate goal — win the midterms — best served by avoiding a shutdown altogether?
One response I have gotten from many liberals is that not fighting here and now is going to depress their faction or, even worse, cause a rupture in the Democratic Party. This is a concern I take seriously. Part of party politics is coalition maintenance, and the liberals already feel burned by the Democratic leadership for not fighting back in March during the last round of appropriations.
Among a certain faction of activist liberals, I have no doubt that following a similar course now could infuriate them and create internal party problems. If the Democratic leaders do shut down the government, my guess is that coalition maintenance will largely be their primary motivation.
That said, I doubt the failure to shut down the government during this appropriations season will have much effect on the midterm elections. Any animus toward Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries will likely be vastly outweighed by anger at Trump or the various administration policies that have little or nothing to do with current appropriations fights, such as immigration enforcement or Medicaid cuts.
So Democrats should stress being strategic?
Yes, and I want to emphasize the difference between opposition and strategy. I’m very much opposed to Trump’s executive encroachments on the spending power, and I firmly believe that pocket rescissions are illegal and impoundments unconstitutional. I would very much like to see the disputes over this settled in favor of the legislative branch and the spending power firmly entrenched as an Article I prerogative.
But how an opposition party goes about making that case is a question of strategy, and simply having a tool at your disposal does not mean you should always use it. Judicious uses of power require consideration of the likely costs and benefits, and my view continues to be that, yes, the administration is blowing up the appropriations process and illegally abusing spending authority, but a shutdown is simply a counterproductive response to Trump.
Matthew Glassman is the author of the Five Points newsletter. John Guida is an editor in Times Opinion.
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