On Friday the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, committed the grave sin of accepting reality, and his party is now furious.
Democrats were outmaneuvered by House Republicans on a measure to fund the government, and the only options for Democrats by late last week were to fold and vote for it or plunge into a government shutdown for which they were likely to pay a heavy political price.
Mr. Schumer understood this and spared the country and his party from the damage. It is dangerous territory for members of Congress to try to convince their base — or themselves — that they have more power than they do. At some point the bill comes due.
The truth is that this funding fight was over the moment House Speaker Mike Johnson was able to pass the G.O.P. bill without the help of the minority in the House. Still, some Democrats have deluded themselves into thinking the threat of shutdown provided some kind of leverage to rein in President Trump’s assault on the federal work force. Others believed that if they showed Mr. Trump the party was willing to fight, they would be in a stronger position next time. This is nonsense.
Shutdowns are not resolved through a negotiated peace or compromise. They almost always end when one side has taken a brutal political beating long enough that it finally throws in the towel. The party that forced the shutdown usually gets nothing but demoralization.
As a Republican, I find the fiery backlash against Mr. Schumer amusing. But it also offers startling echoes of the dysfunction that hampered years of G.O.P. control of Congress. If Democrats don’t get a better grip on what is achievable, they will fall victim to the same infighting that has plagued congressional Republicans for more than a decade.
In 2010, I was working for John Boehner, then the House minority leader, when the Tea Party movement rocked American politics. We rode its energy to a blockbuster midterm result, winning the House by flipping 63 seats. But once we were in charge, the demands to always be fighting harder made governing extraordinarily difficult.
Over the next eight years, most of which I spent serving in the speaker’s office, first for Mr. Boehner, then for Paul Ryan, we grappled with the limits of our power in a divided government. Too often, for the base and our members, the achievable was unacceptable and the acceptable was unachievable. Fighting became more important than winning.
As a result, I have sat through more than a couple of government shutdowns. Mr. Schumer is right that a shutdown was not a winning play for Democrats. It never is for the party that puts one into motion. In this case, it would have been an incredible political gift to Mr. Trump, who would love to change the subject from the market free fall and his sagging approval rating.
In 2013, Republican leaders reluctantly went along with a shutdown strategy cooked up by Senator Ted Cruz and House conservative rabble-rousers. The admittedly absurd aim was to force President Barack Obama to defund the health care law known as Obamacare.
We rationalized at the time that our members needed to touch the hot stove and would quickly realize shutdowns are a foolhardy tactic. It took 16 days before it got too hot for them. And we were right back at it in 2018 with the longest shutdown in history, over funding for Mr. Trump’s border wall. Both times, Republicans folded with little to show for the effort. In 2013 we won a fig leaf provision tightening eligibility verification in Obamacare. The Trump-era shutdown ended with no additional funding for the border wall.
While a shutdown was avoided this time, many Democrats are engaging in similarly absurd thinking. It is important to appreciate that the bill that Democrats have melted down over is not any kind of conservative coup. It is a stopgap measure to largely keep in place the same spending levels set under President Joe Biden. Democrats just appear to want what they don’t have, and that is any legislative option to stop Mr. Trump. Unfortunately for them, choosing which bills get a vote and which ones the president signs are not privileges afforded to the minority.
Democrats have long mocked Republicans for being prisoner to their base, perhaps thinking their own party too sophisticated or pragmatic to meet the same fate. We have shown, though, that what starts as spoiling for a fight can end in a party taken over by demagogues unmoored from principle.
That’s why it would be wise for Democratic leaders to stamp out this notion that simply fighting harder changes political math in Congress.
Yet as senators were weighing whether to support the funding bill or dive into a shutdown, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi released an astonishing statement that four times called it a “false choice.”
Telling your base that there is some divine third way to defeat the other party is not only wrong but also shortsighted and a recipe for being eaten alive by it.
Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, hopes to become speaker someday. Given a chance to defend Mr. Schumer, a fellow New Yorker, Mr. Jeffries declined, leaving the Senate leader twisting in the wind. Mr. Jeffries may think stoking voter anger is the path to a Democratic majority — and it may be — but if he does ever take the gavel, he may come to regret it.
Republican leaders were not entirely victims of an overzealous base. Promises, like repealing Obamacare, were made, and voters expected us to deliver, even if the votes simply weren’t there. There is a lesson to be had if Democratic leaders are willing to accept it: Entertain political fantasy at your own risk.
Brendan Buck, a communications strategist, was a counselor to Paul Ryan and a press secretary for John Boehner when they were speakers of the House.
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