Democrats Have Every Reason to Dig in Their Heels 

For once, the opposition party has the upper hand in a shutdown showdown. The new statement from the American Federation of Government Employees doesn’t change that.

by Bill Scher 

On Monday, the American Federation of Government Employees union’s national president called for Congress to “reopen the government immediately under a clean continuing resolution that allows continued debate on larger issues.” As noted in mainstream media coverage, the statement was a shift away from the Democratic position linking reopening with renewal of expiring health insurance subsidies, and an effective embrace of the Republican position. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin told Politico the statement “has a lot of impact. They’ve been our friends.” 

But that is not reason enough for Democrats to surrender. They stand on firmer political ground than President Donald Trump and the Republicans. Climbing down with nothing to show for it would shatter the Democratic base far more than this one statement.  

How do we know Democrats have the upper hand? As I wrote earlier this month, the poll metric to track is the congressional generic ballot test. And the Democratic edge has held through October. Two outlets, Morning Consult and The Economist/YouGov, sample the question weekly, including this week. Democrats have held a consistent 3-point lead in Morning Consult and have toggled between 3 and 5 points in The Economist. Plus, Quinnipiac University chimed in last week with a whopping 9-point Democratic margin. Even if you deem that an outlier, we have no evidence of Democratic erosion, which we saw with Republican instigators during the 2013 shutdown before they threw in the towel. 

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Should we assume Democrats can sustain their position? Yes, because their main argument—expiring Affordable Care Act [ACA] health insurance subsidies are too urgent to separate from reopening the government—is being validated daily. Open enrollment at Healthcare.gov starts on Saturday. And The Washington Post reported last week that “premiums for the most popular types of plans sold on the federal health insurance marketplace Healthcare.gov will spike on average by 30 percent next year,” and those spikes are “mirroring the rising cost of private-employer-sponsored plans.”  

ABC News reports that “more than 24 million people were enrolled in the [ACA] marketplace plans in 2025” and “the political pressure” to address the sharply higher costs “has been evident in Republican town halls.”  

In theory, Republicans could address the twin problems of reopening the government and tackling health care costs without Democratic help. But that would require a Republican health care plan and mustering the GOP votes to suspend the filibuster. 

The Wall Street Journal checked in with Senate Republicans about their appetite for junking the filibuster and found it was limited. Senators Tommy Tuberville and Josh Hawley were open to it. But the Senate Majority Leader John Thune said it was a “bad idea,” and retiring Senator Thom Tillis declared, “The filibuster is not going away this Congress,” even if Trump demanded it. 

But if Republicans suspended the filibuster, they are not positioned to tackle health insurance policy. It’s been eight years since Trump tried and failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a comprehensive replacement. There still is no Republican plan, and there likely never will be. The Trump-era GOP is deeply conflicted between the party’s legacy of small government and its newfound embrace of government largesse as spoils for favored constituencies. Bridging that divide while crafting policies to regulate a complex industry is politically and substantively impossible. 

That leaves Republicans two choices: own a massive spike in health care costs heading into the 2026 midterms or cut a bipartisan deal.  

At the onset of open enrollment, Democrats have every reason to press their advantage. They can even sell it as a favor to Republicans: We know your most at-risk members don’t want to face voters suffering massive increases in health insurance premiums, and we recognize you can’t achieve partisan consensus on health care. We Democrats are your only hope.  

Should Democrats worry about being blamed for the elongated shutdown? Not if they remind everyone that Republicans, who have no nostalgia for norms, can reopen the government by suspending the filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer may be extremely reluctant to say that. After all, the filibuster gives minority leaders a lot of power. But Schumer was willing to suspend it when he was majority leader, so we know he’s not all that attached to it. In fact, that gives him more credibility to argue that Republicans have the power to open the government, and if they can’t cobble the votes among themselves to do it, then they have no choice but to do it in a bipartisan way. This requires a bipartisan solution to spiking health insurance premiums and guaranteeing that any agreement isn’t subject to partisan clawbacks like the last deal.  

Democrats have something the opposition party in a shutdown showdown has never had: the upper hand. Why give it up now?  

—Bill Scher, Politics Editor