Schoen: Nobody won the shutdown, but GOP lost

With the longest government shutdown in U.S. history officially over, it increasingly appears that, while there were no clear winners, the big losers were President Trump and Republicans.

Indeed, despite the intra-party fighting among Democrats, Republicans failed to present any alternative to the ACA subsidies they wanted to expire, publicly opposed feeding needy Americans, and were content to let healthcare premiums skyrocket.

Even though Democrats are weakened by divisions between progressives and moderates, it is hard to see how Republicans’ actions before and during the 43-day shutdown do not work to Democrats’ advantage.

To be sure, polling data consistently reflected that Democrats were more aligned with voters’ sentiment and attitudes.

Tracking polls from Navigator Research, conducted from the shutdown’s beginning through just before it ended, showed that initially, nearly one-half (45%) of Americans blamed the GOP, versus 32% blaming Democrats.

That advantage never slipped below 10 points in any of the six polls Navigator Research conducted, eventually settling at 48% of voters holding Republicans responsible and roughly one-third (34%) blaming Democrats just days before the shutdown ended.

Similarly, nearly three-quarters (74%) of Americans supported an extension of the ACA tax credits, with 75% of that cohort — or 56% of Americans overall — saying they would blame Trump and Republicans if they are not extended, per KFF
polling
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Critically, this is not to say that Democrats can claim anything close to a clear “victory.”

In return for ending the shutdown, all Democrats secured was a promise to vote on extending the healthcare subsidies next month and the rehiring of furloughed federal workers.

The lack of any tangible win also worsened the ongoing ideological battle between progressives and moderates, which continues to be a drag on Democrats.

In the House of Representatives, Democrats including Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries publicly blasted the eight moderate Senate Democrats who broke with their party to reopen the government.

Likewise, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez blasted the whole Democratic Senate caucus, accusing them of selecting ineffective leadership, and fellow progressive Rep. Ro Khanna called for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to “resign.”

And yet, for all of the internal strife roiling the Democratic Party — not to mention Republicans’ success in ending the shutdown without any concrete agreements — President Trump and the GOP walk away the biggest losers.

By merely extending the deadline for a permanent answer to the subsidies questions, Republicans set themselves up for another fight — and potentially another shutdown — next year.

Moreover, as the government reopens, Trump and Republicans have few good options.

Their economic messaging is falling flat — the latest Morning Consult poll showed Trump’s approval on the economy to be 10 points underwater (42% to 52%) — and letting healthcare premiums skyrocket would further degrade Trump’s “affordability” message.

The optics around the just-ended shutdown also present their own challenges.

Throughout, Trump resisted efforts to fund SNAP benefits — even appealing to the Supreme Court to block lower court rulings ordering the benefits to be paid — making it appear that he was actively fighting efforts to assist hungry Americans.

Further, while it is legitimate to oppose continuing COVID-era subsidies, it is clear that Republicans were fighting for a wildly unpopular position, as the aforementioned KFF poll demonstrates.

Even conceding that Democrats perhaps should not have held the government hostage in order to achieve a win on healthcare subsidies, the GOP’s insensitivity toward making healthcare unaffordable for millions of Americans was hardly a winning message.

With that in mind, the question that remains is what, if any, electoral impact will the shutdown have on next year’s midterms?

To the extent that there are any lasting impacts, even if Democrats do not see a direct benefit, it is likely that GOP opposition to extending healthcare subsidies and responsibility for shutting off food assistance will exacerbate trends we saw in the recent off-year elections.

In New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, respectively, made affordability the center of their campaigns, and voters responded by electing them with extremely wide margins.

Furthermore, Democrats across the country were extremely successful in turning the off-year elections into referenda on Trump.

Harnessing anger toward the shutdown, state of the economy, and other policies, Democrats sidestepped their own lack of a message and used the reaction against Trump to their advantage.

Put another way, even if the shutdown does not endear voters to the Democratic Party — whose singular message remains “we are not Donald Trump” — it may well stoke anger toward Republicans.

Having been elected largely due to concerns over the cost of living under the Biden administration, Trump’s policies have either had no positive impact, or worse, actually increased costs due to tariffs.

According to both Politico and the Washington Post, White House insiders are now keenly aware that allowing the subsidies to expire without any replacement would be a severe risk ahead of midterms.

The problem facing the GOP is that it is running out of time to create or implement any beneficial policies before the Senate holds its promised vote next month.

Interestingly, we have been here before. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, he tried to repeal Obamacare without an alternative, and Democrats rode that anger to pick up 40 seats in the House.

Ultimately, whether 2026 is a repeat of the 2018 midterms remains to be seen, not least because of Democrats’ branding issues and historic unpopularity.

That being said, how Republicans navigated the shutdown figures to be a tailwind for Democrats, particularly if the GOP remains unable to provide any viable replacement to ending healthcare coverage for millions of Americans.

Douglas Schoen is a longtime Democratic political consultant.