The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion In shutdown showdown, Democrats should blink

January 19, 2018 at 3:00 p.m. EST
The Lincoln Memorial during the 2013 government shutdown. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

The limited data set on who gets the blame for government shutdowns should give Democrats pause when considering their strategy as the deadline ticks down. They believe they are on solid moral and political ground in demanding protection for the “dreamers” as the price for supporting the budget deal. But the examples from 1995 and 2013 are instructive.

In 1995, President Bill Clinton was under extreme pressure to capitulate to House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s (R-Ga.) demands for budget cuts. The Clinton administration would, over time, succeed in refining these proposals as a gutting of the social safety net, but at the time, Democrats were still shellshocked by losing both houses of Congress in the 1994 Republican landslide and had little faith they could win any major fight. In the two shutdowns in 1995, Republicans argued that the Democrats were willing to close the government to protect profligate spending. In 2013, tea party Republicans believed they, too, had a strong hand when they argued that President Barack Obama was willing to put Obamacare ahead of operating the government. Both Clinton, with strong support from Vice President Al Gore, and Obama eventually held firm, and the government closed.

Polls taken after the shutdowns in 1995 and 2013 showed that the presidents won these political battles. ABC News found that in 1995, by a 2-to-1 margin, the country blamed congressional Republicans more than Clinton. And a Fox News poll in 2013 found that 42 percent of Americans blamed Republicans for the shutdown, while 24 percent blamed Obama. And, I would argue, support for deficit reduction and the repeal of Obamacare, the two issues that so animated Republicans in these fights, both lost a little momentum after the shutdown defeats. Could the same happen to Democrats on the issue of the dreamers?

The odds are in the president’s favor in these fights because the voice of the Congress is diffuse and discordant, but the voice of the executive is focused and harmonious. The problem for Congress is structural. There are 535 of members of the two chambers, compared with only one president. While congressional Republicans and Democrats point the blame at each other and compete on tweets and stakeouts for narrative control, the president has the clearest and loudest megaphone. He has the strongest power to define the fight.

While Trump has generally shown limited capacity for message consistency, on occasion he has been ruthlessly disciplined. (The tax bill comes to mind.) Last night, Trump was already saying that whether the government stays open is entirely up to Democrats; if it closes, he can hit that message day after day. Meanwhile, Democrats can talk about any number of things: Republican disarray, the need to protect dreamers, the impermanence of the fix. But Trump will have only one message, and Democrats should consider that it may be a winning one.