The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history is over. But with little to show for it, the mostly Democratic politicians who ended the standoff now face intense backlash.
It’s one of the clearest examples yet that the party is experiencing a moment like the GOP’s tea party uprising of the early 2010s, an upheaval that fundamentally altered Republican politics.
This time the anger was targeted at senators, including several from New England, who are typically praised for their pragmatism. Within hours of the announced deal, protests ensued outside their constituent offices and phone lines were swamped. A new social media rage cycle kicked into overdrive as users blasted the collective age — about 70 — of the eight Democratically aligned dealmakers and called for their retirement.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, was among the targets of the fury. He helped break the funding stalemate by voting with Republicans to end the shutdown. King then attempted to explain why he thought the shutdown failed to achieve Democrats’ intended objectives: standing up to President Donald Trump and extending subsidies for Americans buying health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
“The problem was the shutdown wasn’t accomplishing either goal and there was ... zero likelihood that it was going to,” King said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
He then added, “So, standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work. It actually gave him more power.”
To some, King’s assessment may have rang true. The Trump administration used the shutdown to try to fire thousands of federal workers. Food assistance for low-income Americans and their children came to a halt. Restrictions on air travel before the Thanksgiving holiday loomed.
During a moment when Democratic politicians are under fire for their anemic resistance to Trump, the deal to reopen the government was viewed as surrender. While the handshake agreement with Republicans was supposed to assure that the Senate would vote on a bill extending the health care subsidies, there was no guarantee that Republican Speaker Mike Johnson would allow such a vote in the House.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, said voting for a funding bill without those subsidies “is not a compromise. It is capitulation.”
Pingree’s statement was the prevailing sentiment among Democratic senators and representatives, as well as the candidates hoping to join them next year.
Before launching her bid for the U.S. Senate, Gov. Janet Mills had expressed skepticism to Maine Public about using the ACA subsidies as a bargaining chip. She criticized the deal for not including the subsidies shortly before the decisive Senate vote on Sunday.
“Tens of thousands of Maine people are facing skyrocketing health care costs because of Donald Trump and Susan Collins,” her campaign account posted on social media. “Maine people deserve affordable health care — not just the promise of a vote that won’t go anywhere. Fight back.”
Graham Platner, Mills’ leading Democratic rival, had called on Democrats to take a hard line from the beginning of the shutdown stalemate. In his view, the deal to reopen the government dovetailed with one of his central arguments for the party’s nomination: the collective fecklessness of the Democratic establishment.
“We get nothing. No healthcare. No subsidies,” he posted. “This is not a ‘deal.’ It's a surrender.”
Platner is arguably an embodiment of the angst coursing through the Democratic electorate. It helps explain the unexpected rise of his upstart campaign.
Now anti-establishment views are becoming more mainstream. He was among several Democrats who called for the removal of Sen. Chuck Schumer as Senate minority leader and among the majority of Democrats who trashed the deal to reopen the government.
The move to ride the current of rebellion running through the Democratic electorate even divided at least one political family.
Stefany Shaheen, a N.H. Democrat running for Congress, repeatedly criticized the agreement. It was partially brokered by her mother, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.
“We both need to end the shutdown and extend the ACA subsidies,” she said. “Otherwise, no deal.”
There was no such split between Sen. King and his son Angus King III, one of several Democratic candidates running for governor. The younger King declined to criticize the deal, but his rivals did.
“Congress needs to extend the health care tax credits now. Anything short of that is turning their backs on the thousands of Mainers who are about to see their premiums skyrocket,” Hannah Pingree, Rep. Pingree’s daughter, said in a statement.
Fellow Democrat Nirav Shah described the deal as a “political cop out.” Troy Jackson, another gubernatorial candidate, had a similar message.
“They're making a huge gamble on health care. But it's not their care they are gambling with, it's yours,” he said.
Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, another Democrat running for governor, said the Senate vote “revealed the true divide in our party today.”
“It’s between Democrats who fight and Democrats who cave,” she said in an email to supporters.
If what’s currently happening in Democratic Party politics is analogous to the GOP’s tea party rebellion it’s ironic that Affordable Care Act subsidies are playing a part in facilitating its rise. The ACA, once pejoratively referred to as Obamacare by Republicans, was an animating force in the tea party movement. In 2013, Republican hardliners shut down the federal government for two weeks in an attempt to defund the nascent law.
Sen. King was a freshman at the time. He won the seat in 2012 after Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, suddenly dropped her reelection bid amid threats of a primary challenge by tea party-inspired candidates.
The 2013 shutdown didn’t achieve Republicans’ intended purpose. Shutdowns rarely, if ever, do.
That’s how King viewed the one that just ended. He told Maine Public that he understands the desire to fight Trump and the Republican majority.
He said he’s “with them,” but saw empowering Trump while millions of Americans suffered through the closure of the federal government as a losing move.
“People want someplace to stand up and it felt like this was it,” he said. “But it’s backfiring in the sense of hurting a lot of people without getting what we want.”
At the moment, that’s the minority view among Democratic activists, who have directed their anger at King and the other senators who broke ranks. They planned to let King hear about it during a speaking event Thursday at Colby College. The event was postponed without explanation.
When asked to describe the backlash against him, King said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
This edition of Maine's Political Pulse was written by State House bureau chief Steve Mistler and produced by news editor Andrew Catalina. Read past editions or listen to the Political Pulse podcast at mainepublic.org/pulse.
