The rage from the center-left at Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats for “caving” to end the shutdown is understandable. It’s also misguided.
From the beginning, this shutdown was never about health care. It was about who could raise the most money, generate the loudest moral outrage, and walk away looking like they “fought” heading into the midterms. Even Ezra Klein said the quiet part out loud earlier today: “Democrats said the shutdown was about the subsidies, but for most of them, it wasn’t. It was about Trump’s authoritarianism. It was about showing their base — and themselves — that they could fight back.”
Since Democrats have shown no appetite to meaningfully challenge Trump on economic policy, they’re forced into the realm of political theater — where they perform for the cameras across national news and social media. Their strategy is driven mainly by polls that measure which side is to blame.
All of this relies on the assumption that the American public will view politics as spectacle and cheer for the right side. The problem is this is a game the elites play among themselves, much to the detriment of ordinary people.
The shutdown was, in truth, a proxy war. Like all proxy wars, those calling the shots didn’t pay the price. The public did, through missed paychecks, mounting bills, hunger, and the kind of instability that hits hardest the people who had no role in manufacturing the crisis. The two sides weren’t fighting over the stated issue of health care at all, but over control of the broader narrative: who could dominate public discourse, who could claim the moral high ground, who could galvanize their base and donors by projecting “strength.” The shutdown became a symbolic battlefield onto which Democrats and Republicans projected their messaging wars, leaving ordinary Americans to absorb all the collateral damage. This ought to be the source of your outrage.
The New York Times reported weeks before the shutdown that there was bipartisan appetite to extend the ACA subsidies. Yet, as Klein acknowledges, “if Democrats secured that extension — if they actually ‘won’ — they would be rescuing Republicans from a massive electoral liability.” In other words, both parties recognized that the clash over subsidies threatened their brand. And when politics becomes a battle of brands rather than a contest over material outcomes, the former must appear as the latter in order to maintain the illusion the system still holds.
This is why it’s so outrageous that nearly every major liberal and left group is directing their furor toward the eight Senators who voted to reopen the government. It reinforces the idea that this was ever meant to “work.” These groups are punishing deviation from the performance, not any policy goals, which ultimately legitimizes the entire spectacle.
We deserve leaders who don’t have to resort to the appearance of fighting in order to win back power. And the entire apparatus — from the media to politicians to groups like 50501 and Indivisible — deserves scrutiny for trying to con the American people into believing this was ever about their health care. They all benefit from the spectacle, which drives outrage, clicks, and donations in their direction. After all, Democrats, like Republicans, have done very little to provide health care that isn’t a kickback to the corporate state.
We are all prisoners of this theater unless we choose not to be. Even more damningly, we are human beings who ought to see each other’s suffering not reduced to bargaining chips through polling, but through the real world of people’s lives — health care bills, rent, lost paychecks, fear, economic precarity — as the meaning of politics itself.
This was an interesting and different take on the shutdown and I have to say I agree with it. If this was indeed performance, the performance is getting panned by the critics as well as the audience. The audience is throwing trash on the stage and demanding a refund. If nothing else, more people are now aware of the party leadership's total bankruptcy. Anger has shifted away from the traiterous eight and is now directed at the party, itself.
This is so clear and righteous I welled up.
Congress is in a play and the President and his admin are in a movie.
We are the extras and stunt performers. We are paid little and ignored. No credits roll for us. Ever.