What Were Democrats Thinking?
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What is the New York Times Games promotion featured at the start of the episode?
Hi, I'm Juliette from New York Times Games and I'm here talking to fans about our games. You play New York Times Games. Yes, every day. There's this little tab down here called friends. So you can add your friend. That feels new to me. It is. It's nice to have the social aspect. Oh my god, and you have OLED Times. That's crazy. Right? You can look at spelling B, Wordle, Connections. Oh my god, amazing. Love that. I'd have to get the app. New York Times games subscribers get full access to all our games and features. Subscribe now at nytimes.com/slash games for a special offer.
Why did Democrats consider a government shutdown in September and how did the political context shape it?
Back in September, when I was reporting out my piece on whether Democrats should shut down the government, on why they should shut down the government. I kept hearing the same warning from veterans of past shutdown fights. The president controls the bully pulpit. He controls to some degree at least which parts of the government stay open and which parts close down. It is very, very, very hard for the opposition party to win a shutdown. Which makes it somewhat remarkable that Democrats Democrats were winning this one. Polls showed most voters blamed Republicans, not Democrats, for the shutdown. Maybe because instead of negotiating with the Democrats like other presidents would have, President Trump was bulldozing the east wing of the White House to build a ballroom, and throwing great Gatsby parties at Mar-a-Lago while he canceled food assistance for hungry families.
Trump's approval rating has been falling, is polling going down. In CNN's tracking poll, he dipped into the thirties for the first time since he took office again in this term. And last week, Democrats absolutely wrecked Republicans in the elections. And you could really argue whether or not the shutdown was part of that, but you know who thought it was part of it? Donald J. Trump And so Democrats, as of a few days ago, were riding higher than they have been in months. They were winning.
What were the key components of the shutdown deal negotiated by Senate Democrats?
And then over the weekend, a group of Senate Democrats broke ranks and negotiated a deal to end the shutdown in return for, if we're being honest, very, very little. The guts of the shutdown deal are this. Food assistants, both SNAP and WIC, the Women, Infants and Children program. They get a bit more funding. Then, if you look at other parts of the appropriations process, there are some other modest concessions on spending levels elsewhere in the government. You have a deal for laid-off federal workers to be rehired, for furloughed federal workers to be given back pay. But the deal does nothing at all, nothing, to extend the expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits over which Democrats ostensibly shut the government down in the first place.
All it offers is a promise from Senate Republicans to hold a vote on the tax credits in the future. And most of the government here is funded only until the end of January. So get ready, we could be doing this again in a few months. I think to understand what happened here, you need to understand the strange role the Affordable Care Act subsidies always played in the shutdown. Democrats said the shutdown was about the subsidies, but for most of them it really wasn't. It was about Trump's authoritarianism. It was about showing their base, showing themselves. that they could fight back. It was about treating an abnormal political moment abnormally.
How would a hypothetical Nikki Haley presidency affect the decision to shut down the government?
Imagine an alternative world where we have President Nikki Haley and she does none of the authoritarianism, none of the corruption, but has the same healthcare policy as Donald Trump. Are Democrats shutting the government down in that world? I don't think they are. But in this world, there were a number of Senate Democrats, even with everything Donald Trump has done, who didn't want a shutdown. Whatever they thought of Trump, they didn't think a shutdown was going to stop him. Instead, it was gonna hurt people they cared about. It was going to degrade services they fought to protect or even to create. And then there was another group of Senate Democrats who doubted that their voters cared that much about masked ICE agents and Trump's corruption.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the New York Times Games promotion featured at the start of the episode?
0:00–1:03
2
Why did Democrats consider a government shutdown in September and how did the political context shape it?
1:03–2:24
3
What were the key components of the shutdown deal negotiated by Senate Democrats?
2:24–3:48
4
How would a hypothetical Nikki Haley presidency affect the decision to shut down the government?
3:48–5:16
5
Was focusing on healthcare premium subsidies the right strategy for Democrats during the shutdown?
5:16–6:55
6
Why did Democrats accept a one‑year ACA tax‑credit extension despite its limited policy impact?
6:55–7:57
7
What pressures did Senate Democrats face that made reaching a shutdown deal especially difficult?
7:57–8:53
8
How does the author evaluate the overall political and moral outcomes of the shutdown?
8:53–10:24