Democratic Party leaders capitulate on gov’t shutdown

The Democratic Party, as represented by its top national leaders, went out of its way in mid-November to demonstrate its inability to defend working-class interests. To end the 44-day-long government shutdown, the party conceded the Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to the MAGA Republicans.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties back imperialist military aggression and both support capitalism 100%. 

Trump’s MAGA Republicans directly represent the superrich. They also have carried out the most openly reactionary racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, anti-disability rights and anti-LGBTQIA2S+ policies of any administration since at least 1933. 

Regarding domestic policy, the Democrats usually avoid frontal attacks on U.S. workers. The MAGA Republicans have assaulted all of the government programs that provide social benefits to the working class and especially to any sectors of society that suffer discrimination and poverty.

Thus it was no surprise that the Republicans, who have a majority in both houses of  Congress, passed Trump’s anti-poor “Big Beautiful Bill” earlier this year. The bill cuts health care subsidies in the ACA (also known as Obamacare). That will result in adding an average of $1016 annually in 2026 in health-care premiums for 22 million people. (KFF.org, Sept. 25) 

In protest, the Democrats voted no on the appropriations bill on Oct. 1. This shut down most government services (outside of the state apparatus, which consists of the military, border police, FBI, federal prisons, etc.).

Trump used the shutdown as a pretext to fire workers, to furlough workers without pay, to force thousands more to work but without pay, to disrupt air traffic and to cut food benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP) for 42 million people, blaming it all on the Democrats. Democratic leaders repeatedly asserted they would fight to the finish to save the ACA subsidies, but did little to fight Trump’s cuts. Polls found that more people blamed Trump for the shutdown than blamed the Democrats. 

Along with the military occupation of cities, inflation partly due to increased tariffs, the identification of Trump with Israeli war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump’s unbelievable war provocations in the Caribbean Sea, Trump’s role in the shutdown cost him support. His approval rating dropped below 40%. (Economist, Nov. 17) He also faced losing part of his base from the exposures of his relationship with pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

In the few places where local and statewide off-year elections reflected national issues, the Republicans lost gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia by more than 10%, an important referendum in California by 2-to-1. A declared socialist Muslim candidate, Zohran Mamdani, won New York City’s mayoral race, where Trump attacked him. Another progressive – Katie Wilson, who identifies as a socialist – was elected mayor of Seattle.

Democrats afraid to win

For the Democratic Party, confronted with this obvious backlash to MAGA rule and boost for the center-left, an ordinary battle strategy would be to accelerate an anti-Trump offensive. Instead, the leadership capitulated. 

The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer from New York, allowed seven Democratic senators to vote yes (and one “Independent” did), which ended the shutdown. Since none of the seven face an election in 2026, this was an obvious maneuver to capitulate with minimal electoral cost. The Republicans made a meaningless promise to discuss the ACA question in a few months.

The Democratic Party’s concession was seen broadly as a gift to Trump. The late-night comic host of The Daily Show − Jon Stewart − said of it a half-dozen times in his monologue, “I can’t f–king believe it!” His studio audience agreed, yelling and moaning.

The events proved once again the bankruptcy of the Democratic Party. It wouldn’t even carry out a battle against Trump that the Democrats seemed favored to win. Did they fear winning this battle more than they feared conceding the shutdown’s goals? 

To win would require mobilizing their base, which means running on the kinds of issues that mobilized 100,000 volunteers in the New York City mayoral election. It means taking to the streets against the migrant roundups, as people in Chicago and Los Angeles have done. It means protesting the obviously criminal attacks in the Caribbean. It means stopping support for the genocide in Palestine.

That means it’s something the Democratic Party leaders will reject. They would rather lose to Trump. The multinational working class in the United States must avoid losing with them. 

The workers, the people, must take the Democratic Party’s capitulation as another reason to break with the Republican and the Democratic leaders, to create new independent organizations that can struggle and win.