Once Again, Senate Democrats Show They Don’t Get Who They Represent

Second, literally every poll I saw showed majorities blaming Trump and the Republicans, not the Democrats. That’s pretty amazing considering that by any objective reckoning, it was the Democrats who, in fact, did shut the government down. In addition to that, we have another set of polls, on Trump’s approval rating, where he is also tanking. A stadium full of football fans booed him at Sunday’s Washington Commanders game. As the pain grew, heading into the holidays—people going hungry, travel nightmares, all the rest—wouldn’t that public perception only metastasize? Why not let Trump drop to 35 percent approval, maybe 33? He wouldn’t care personally—by now, he just blindly asserts that his approvals are higher than they’ve ever been anyway. But he’d have dozens of Republicans coming to him predicting total disaster in the midterms, and he just might, under those circumstances, cut some kind of deal. He’s done it before.

Third, if you’re going to do something like this, you need to lay some groundwork so that people are emotionally prepared for it. It might have been different to do this just two weeks from now—on the eve of Thanksgiving, say. I think very few progressives would want the Democrats to keep the government shut down forever: Everyone who believes in the good work the federal government does wants it to function and do those things. So I think most progressives would have come around to that view. But this was sort of out of the blue. People weren’t ready for it emotionally.

Missing those three realities, not smelling them in the air, is bad leadership. Chuck Schumer voted “no” himself on the resolution, but there’s no one who thinks he didn’t give the eight his permission to go cast “yes” votes. Schumer has shown many times over the years: What he’s good at is guiding legislation through, as he did with those big bills while Joe Biden was president. For that kind of leadership, he has a knack. For running the opposition, though, he doesn’t have the right kind of insurgent instincts. And he really does come from another era. He came of political age during the Reagan years. Sometimes, a team just needs a new coach.