Margot Sanger-Katz

So as you may remember, the real crux of the fight over the shutdown was whether or not Congress was going to extend these subsidies that help people buy insurance in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

This was the thing that Democrats decided to make the centerpiece of their fight.

And they chose to fight over these subsidies specifically because I think they felt like this was a really strong issue for them.

Voters trust them more on health care.

It's like one of the Democrats strongest issues.

But it has not been the biggest issue that was in the forefront of people's mind.

It was a little bit of a gamble.

You know, were they going to be able to get people to pay attention to this?

But they did.

And it.

didn't work from the perspective of getting legislation passed.

They shut down the government for a record period of time.

Ultimately, they decided to reopen the government without legislation to extend these subsidies.

Right.

Democrats basically lost that fight.

The one deal they got is that they were going to get to put up a vote on the Senate floor.

They did that.

Republicans didn't vote for it.

It didn't go anywhere.

So that was all they got was a kind of failed vote on this issue.