As a Democrat and lifelong political junkie, and for the last six years as a journalist, I’ve seen my party stumble before. I’ve watched us weather humiliating losses, recover, and reinvent ourselves. But rarely have I felt as demoralized as I do now.
These past eight months under Trump’s second (failed) attempt to be president, with his reckless presidency, a far-right and compliant Congress, and a rubber-stamping Supreme Court all against us, have been among the darkest periods in modern Democratic history.
If there’s one lesson that I’ve witnessed from decades of political gut punches, it’s that survival depends on unity and message discipline. Right now, through this government shutdown, that means Democrats must stay strong, stay together, and stay on message.
This is perhaps one of the most consequential come-to-Jesus moments for the party. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and in more ways than one.
In a few instances, we’ve been here before, kind of, because nothing is like the Trump curse. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was swept into office, Republicans took the Senate for the first time in decades. Reagan and a Republican Senate passed all of his tax cuts for the rich (sound familiar?) in order to implement his failed “trickle-down” economic policies that gutted the middle class and the poor.
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The party rebounded, kind of, under George H.W. Bush, when the Democrats controlled the House and the Senate again. I always point to the fact that my boss when I worked on Capitol Hill during this period introduced and passed a raise in the minimum wage.
I was lucky enough to accompany him to the White House to watch President Bush sign it into law. It truly was a time when Democrats and Republicans worked together. In the Oval Office that day were all the Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress.
And then Bill Clinton got elected after 12 years of Republican presidential power, and it looked like the party was roaring back. But not so fast.
By 1994, Newt Gingrich’s imploding “Contract With America” gave Republicans both chambers of Congress for the first time in 40 years. That was explosive and incredibly demoralizing. At the time, it didn’t seem there could be a bigger gut punch than watching the mouthy Gingrich lead an increasingly virulent Republican Party with an aura of inevitability.
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But the Gingrich gut punch turned out to be more like a soft pat on the behind after getting the wind knocked out of us by the swat of George W. Bush’s 2000 victory (well, sorry, but I will always say that Al Gore won), which was handed to him by the Supreme Court. In all honesty, it felt like the end of democracy as we knew it.
When Bush wrongly invaded Iraq, it really did feel like the United States was no longer an arbiter of peace and decency, particularly when some Democrats voted to support the war.
One of those Democrats was then New York junior Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose shocking Electoral College loss in the 2016 presidential election ushered in Donald Trump’s first term. Her loss gave way to what was then the most destructive administration in living memory.
Since that wasn’t so long ago, I’m sure many of us can recall the horror and shock of Trump being elected.
It wasn’t a gut punch or wind knocked out of you moment; instead it was a punishing body blow. We can all agree that Trump’s first victory seemed like the apocalypse. Little did we know.
Joe Biden’s win in 2020 offered a reprieve, but the hope was short-lived. Trump’s 2024 comeback, coupled with his loyalists in Congress, has Democrats feeling battered, leaderless, feckless, and stupefied.
It got me thinking. After Gingrich, some of us said it would never get any worse. We said the same thing after George W. Bush won and when Trump won the first time. But after Trump’s second win, I do think it could get worse, and that’s if Trump or anyone else never runs for president again.
We’re already talking about dictatorship in month 9 with Trump, so who’s to say we’re not heading toward an actual dictatorship at this rate?
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Which brings us to the latest government shutdown this week and the Democrats' standoff with Trump and the congressional GOP. While things feel daunting, this could be unlike other battles where we’ve been outmaneuvered or silenced.
Democrats actually hold a critical lever of power here. Government funding requires bipartisan support. Republicans can’t ram through their budget without us. That gives our party leverage and the chance to show voters that we still know how to fight. And not just fight but stay in it for all 15 rounds and then some.
Unfortunately, the Democrats' track record this year doesn’t inspire much confidence. When Democrats folded in March to avoid a shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer caught all kinds of hell for giving in, and rightly so.
The capitulation was emblematic of a party that looked too timid, too willing to roll over while Trump trampled norms, decency, and the rule of law. Again and again, during the last several months, Democrats have appeared passive, reacting weakly to Trump’s chaos while his allies have supplicated themselves to his narrative.
Arguably, it has been one of the worst and most unpopular periods for the Democratic Party in history.
Could this time be different? Democrats are framing the fight around health care, and that is exactly where the battle belongs. Trump’s “big beautiful” budget slashes Medicaid and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year.
Those credits are lifelines for millions of Americans who want to affordably hold onto their health care. If Republicans want to keep the government open, they must agree to preserve them. That is the line in the sand.
When I spoke with Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi earlier this year, she was clear-eyed about the path forward, that health care must be the issue Democrats unify around if we want to win back the House in 2026.
It looks like she was right. Health care has always been our strongest ground. It is tangible, personal, and moral. It is also the issue that consistently exposes Republican cruelty, and that led to resounding Democratic victories in the 2018 midterm election.
But sticking to their guns on health care won’t be easy for Democrats. Trump will play dirty. He always does. He has already threatened mass firings of government employees, announced a freeze on major New York City projects and anti-terrorism funds to punish Schumer and Jeffries, and even ordered federal workers to blame Democrats in their out-of-office email replies.
These are intimidation tactics, and they will only grow more vicious the longer the shutdown drags on. God knows what the vindictive and demonic Trump is capable of.
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But that is precisely why Democrats cannot bend. If they cave now, the consequences will be catastrophic. It will not just mean losing on health care, but it will mean losing credibility, respect, and the faith of our base.
Democratic voters are already frustrated by what they perceive as weakness from the party in the face of Trump’s ongoing onslaught on democracy. If they see their leaders buckle again, many Democrats may decide the party no longer deserves their energy or their vote.
Government shutdowns are ugly, inconvenient, and to some, cancel that, to many, utterly ridiculous. They're akin to petulant children who can’t get along on the playground.
Nobody wins in a shutdown. Federal workers suffer, families face uncertainty, and faith in the federal government erodes. But this shutdown, painful as it may be, has become a test of backbone. It’s no longer just about passing a budget. It’s about proving that Democrats still know how to stand and fight.
That’s why this shutdown isn’t just about funding the government, It’s also about showing the American people that Democrats can lead, even from the minority. It’s about demonstrating that we still have fight left in us, that we still stand for health care, fairness, and the basic dignity of middle-class and working people.
It’s about reminding voters why they should have faith in the Democratic Party again and that we are up for the fight against Trump.
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