By Ending the Shutdown, Democrats Squandered a Moment of Moral Clarity

Democrats enjoyed some big special election wins last week as the U.S. government shutdown neared the 40-day mark. At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings had been sinking since October 18^th, when his agriculture secretary announced that funding for SNAP, the nation’s food assistance program that benefits 42 million people, would run out by the end of the month.

While 42 million people worried about what they and their families would eat come November, Trump threw a lavish Great Gatsby themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. He posted photos of his bright, new marbled White House bathroom. He tore down the East Wing of the White House to make way for a bigger, fancier ballroom.

When the courts ruled that he would have to continue to feed 42 million Americans, he fought to let them go hungry. The Supreme Court agreed to let him do so and he demanded that states “undo” any actions they had taken assist their hungry citizens—actually take away nutrition assistance that had been given to families—or face the consequences.

It’s shocking that anyone should go hungry in a country where the wealthy spend gobs of money on drugs to help them lose weight. But it’s absolutely sickening that a president of this country could be so cruel as to fight against helping families get the nourishment that they can’t otherwise afford. The same president who promised to bring down food prices on “day one” of his return to the White House.

Like every issue, Trump believes it is partisan, meaning, he thinks that more Democrats benefit from this program than Republicans. While there’s no current data to easily support or refute this, the New York Times crunched some numbers and found that “SNAP recipients made up an average of 10.9 percent of households in Republican-held [congressional] districts and 13.8 percent in Democratic-held districts.” So, there might be slightly more Democratic voters receiving food assistance, many MAGA voters and their families also depend on it.

It’s impossible to tell poorer MAGA voters that Trump doesn’t care about them—but this moment was beginning to show them his true colors.

64% of those polled by FMI-The Food Industry Association in May held favorable views of the hunger assistance program, a more recent poll by Data for Progress put this support at 78%. Nate Silver points out that this issue got more than just a media cycle’s worth of attention based on Google search data, which has grown steadily since the October 18^th announcement. And this coincides with a decline in Trump’s approval ratings.

Why would 7 Democrats and one independent Senator break with their Senate leader Chuck Schumer and vote to end the shutdown now while Trump’s cruelty is on such shocking display that it seems to be affecting his approval ratings? Why do so in exchange for so little?

The blame starts with Schumer’s own lack of strategic thinking.

At the heart of the strategy for the shutdown fight was to extend subsidies that help lower- and middle-income Americans buy health insurance beyond the December 31^st expiration date. Once these subsidies that come in the form of tax credits expire, health insurance will double for millions of Americans, and an estimated 4-5 million Americans won’t be able to continue to pay for coverage. Some people will die.

The problem is that Schumer jumped into this shutdown skirmish only asking for one more year of funding. This would shelter Trump and his party from the wrath of voters who would lose their health insurance or pay sky high premiums in next year’s midterm elections and then put these same voters at risk of losing their benefits again just after the election.

Certainly, this poses a deep moral dilemma to Democrats: do they fight for something that voters may not even give them credit for next year or let voters feel pain inflicted by Trump? And likely reap the electoral benefits from this pain?

Instead, this small group of Democrats caved in to Republicans in exchange for guaranteed jobs and backpay of furloughed federal workers and a promise to hold a vote on the healthcare tax credit in mid-December.

In doing so, the Democrats who voted to move towards ending the shutdown gave up all the leverage they had: Trump’s sinking approval ratings while his inhumanity was on conspicuous display as people were going hungry, looming chaos in the country’s airports just ahead of Thanksgiving and the fast-approaching end to reasonably priced health insurance for millions of Americans.

They deserve the wrath of Democratic activists and leaders and Schumer does too, for leading Senate Democrats into a fight without thinking it through. Schumer has earned the calls for his resignation.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see federal workers get some decent treatment after such a rough year. The end of the shutdown will also mean that food assistance should regain its funding and air traffic controllers should get paid and allow airports to get back to capacity. I say should because Trump would clearly like to go on de-funding these federal programs and cutting jobs.

This is the English version of my column, La Globalista, in El Español.