From the Editors: What was the point of all this?

After more than a month of stubbornness and invective in Washington, some sanity reigns — for now. Senate Democrats finally ended their filibuster and allowed the government to reopen as soon as the House concurs in their changes to the bill.

So what was it all for? What did Democrats get out of the longest federal shutdown in American history? On paper, it looks like not a whole lot. A few tweaks to the funding, and a promise of another vote later. For this, federal workers went without pay for more than 42 days — even those required to still show up for work — and benefits and other federal spending was frozen as appropriated funds ran dry. 

That the Democrats would gain next to nothing for their shutdown was obvious from the beginning, and it’s the reason Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer chose not to pursue this line of action back in March, the last time the appropriations threatened to run out. 

“There is no off-ramp” for a government shutdown, Schumer told New York Times reporter Annie Karni in an interview after the continuing resolution passed in March. “The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months.” 

He was right, and it doesn’t take an expert to know why: he didn’t have the votes and he didn’t have the leverage. Democrats have 45 members in the Senate plus two independents who usually vote with them. They can’t pass anything without a few Republicans signing on to it. The same situation prevails in the House. All they could have done then was filibuster the bills and hope that Trump and Republicans could stand the pain of a shutdown longer than they and their constituents could.

Democrats call this “hostage-taking” when it’s the Republicans doing it, but like so many things in our politics, the politicos value interests over ideals.

So what changed since March? Absolutely nothing.

The difference now, though, is that Democratic partisans gave Schumer and others no end of grief over their decision then. They demanded action! “Do something,” they insisted. “Resist!”

Well, this was something. But the messaging was as convoluted as the reasoning. Some initially went Full Resistance like Connecticut’s Senator Chris Murphy, who said “we have no moral obligation to pay the bills for democracy’s destruction,” a stance that suggests he would keep the shutdown going until 2029, at least. Eventually they settled on demanding the extension of a Covid-era relief programdue to expire, which provided even more money for Obamacare subsidies to people — a program Republicans had never agreed to and which Democrats at the time had said was only temporary.

What was the endgame here? How did the people urging on the shutdown see this playing out? Did they think the Senate Republicans would cave in and vastly expand Obamacare spending? And then what? The Republican-controlled House would also agree to making a pandemic emergency program permanent? And the President would agree to sign the bill?

None of this was ever going to happen. This was underpants gnome logic from the start. It accomplished no legislative end, only fulfilled the left-wing’s atavistic goal of fighting back. Then as soon as the elections were over, even that rationale withered and the eight most reasonable Democrats in the Senate (including Pennsylvania’s own John Fetterman) put an end to the temper tantrum. 

We deserve a better opposition party.

We can put aside the absurdity of the Democrats wanting to abolish the filibuster last year and then filibustering their hearts out this year — hypocrisy on this question is the coin of the realm in Washington. But dragging the whole government into fiscal quicksand to satisfy their radical supporters’ basest political urges? That’s inexcusable.