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Can anyone explain the government shutdown to me? I haven't followed the story at all. If you consider yourself to be aligned with the Democrats, I'd especially like to hear your perspective.
After not following the news at all since the beginning, I casually overheard on Fox News that "the Democrats are keeping the government shut down over Obamacare". I assumed that that couldn't be right. Surely the whole thing couldn't be happening because of any one policy issue; there had to be more to the Democrats' side of the story. But then I started reading reddit comments and the consensus from leftists seemed to be that, yes, we really are keeping the government shut down over Obamacare, and this is Good and Righteous.
My initial reaction is that this seems rather petulant and childish on the part of the Democrats, because I think the minority generally should be expected to make concessions to the majority, but that's where my factual knowledge essentially ends so I'll let other people argue the case.
So I'm not on the left, but as far as I can tell it's not really about any specific policy.
The Dem base thinks that Congress isn't doing enough to fight Trump. Schumer supported a continuing resolution back in March to avoid a shutdown and was heavily criticized for it.
There's been talk about having AOC challenge him in the 2028 New York Senate primary. She's leading in some polls.
Mamdani's victory can be taken as a sign that there's a strong dissatisfaction with the Dem old guard in New York in particular.
So with funding set to expire back on September 30th the Dems came out with demands for 1.5 trillion in new spending.
Trump isn't inclined to back down because he's been forced to keep a lot of things in the executive branch due to them being mandated by congressional funding, and now they are technically not funded so he should be free to wind many of them down.
The Obamacare argument is that covid era additional subsidies were set to expire and the Dems want those extended.
Thune is probably quietly pushing for a compromise package where both parties get a bunch of new spending. But I don't think he can sell that to the Rep base without Trump. It's hard for him to go back to voters and tell them that after the 2024 victory he didn't have enough power to keep funding at current levels.
So I think the Dems have the weaker hand, but Schumer probably sees getting a win as existential.
I'm not sure how it's going to play out. It'll be interesting if it's still going on Black Friday.
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