Under Pressure From the Left, Democrats Get Back in the Fight

The party, hobbled by internal divisions, hopes the government shutdown reignites voter enthusiasm.

Six months ago, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ignored a push by liberals to stand up to President Trump and shut down the government during a budget showdown.

Under Pressure From the Left, Democrats Get Back in the Fight

This time, Schumer and the Democratic Party went all in, siding under pressure with the party’s ascendant left flank. Leaders say they are determined to show voters a greater willingness to fight on their behalf, in a direct challenge to Trump and the Republicans in control of Congress.

Democrats understand their role in the federal government shutdown that began Wednesday might sour rather than rally voters. Party leaders believe it is worth the risk.

Last month, congressional Democrats rolled out a strategy of resistance that centered on making the case that expiring health-insurance subsidies, unless renewed, would set off a national crisis. If Republicans weren’t willing to negotiate on extending the subsidies, Democratic lawmakers would try to force the issue, taking their chances on a shutdown.

Schumer began calling prominent Democratic leaders, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton, as well as progressive groups, and labor-union leaders to ask them to amplify the party’s message, according to people familiar with the calls. Schumer also deputized others in his caucus to persuade influencers that now was time to mobilize liberal voters itching to take on the Republican Party, those people said.

Demonstrators in Washington supporting renewal of expiring healthcare subsidies.

For months, Democrats gave Schumer an earful. At town halls, voters begged their party representatives to do more. They complained that the New York Democrat had given up the party’s sole leverage in the GOP-controlled government by supplying the Democratic votes needed to keep the government open in March. Schumer faced pressures from the party’s progressive wing, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is considering a run against him in 2028, according to a person familiar with her thinking.

Acceding to demands for action by the party’s left-flank followed months of combative conversations, fundraising declines and momentum by progressives. The honeymoon is likely to be short-lived. Democratic leaders will eventually have to make a deal with Republicans, and any compromise is unlikely to satisfy progressives.

For now, Democrats are borrowing from Trump’s strategy of defiance. They have watched Republicans under Trump take political risks, breaking norms that have paid off among GOP supporters who see the president and the party fighting on their behalf.

In the final hours before the shutdown, Democrats held the line during an Oval Office meeting with Trump, who said they didn’t “bend even a little bit.”

“It’s one thing to say that we should solve the healthcare crisis for Americans,” Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday. “It’s another thing to say that we’re going to shut down the government unless we give the Democrats every single thing that they want.”

On Tuesday, most politically vulnerable Democrats backed the shutdown. Three in the Democratic Senate caucus broke with their party to vote for Republicans’ short-term funding bill to keep the government open, without negotiations to restore the healthcare subsidies. While House Republicans were able to pass the legislation without Democratic support, the Senate required 60 votes. Republicans hold 53 seats.

To amp up support, a coalition of Democratic groups are spending more than $1.2 million to push their message through ads in competitive congressional districts.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) speaking Wednesday at a news conference.

The shutdown is a sharp turnaround for Democrats who have lambasted Republicans as irresponsible for threatening shutdowns in the past. Yet they faced limited choices.

“There is just so much political downside to ‘caving’ at this point. I blame gerrymandering and the fact that there just aren’t as many members in the middle willing to come to the table,” said Kristen Hawn, a Democratic strategist who advises centrists. Even so, Hawn said, “there is concern about what exactly the endgame is.”

Maine Rep. Jared Golden, who represents a district Trump won, was one of a small group of Democrats in either chamber who supported the GOP funding bill. After the government shutdown, Golden blamed what he called far-left groups for demanding “Democratic Party leaders to put on a show of their opposition to President Trump.”

On the ropes

While Trump wrests control of the levers of government, many Democratic voters have turned against their party. A Wall Street Journal poll this summer found that Democrats had the lowest favorability rating in 35 years. A Pew Research Center survey released this week showed that for the first time in more than a decade of its research, more Democrats disapprove than approve of the job their party leaders are doing in Congress, by a margin of 59% to 40%.

The Democrats lack a clear leader, and the divisions between the progressive and centrist wings of the party have deepened.

At an exclusive retreat Friday in Aspen, Colo., dubbed “The Weekend,” Democratic speakers said they needed to rethink the party’s strategy after this spring’s government-spending standoff. The event—the latest gathering in a series to debate the future of the Democratic Party—featured a session with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, according to an agenda reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

They acknowledged that the shutdown carried political risks but told the group that the party frustrated voters who believed Schumer had caved to Republicans in the spring, attendees said.

The day after his appearance in Colorado, Emanuel was asked in Iowa how Democrats should handle the shutdown. “This is Trump’s shutdown. Just repeat it,” said Emanuel, who is contemplating a 2028 Democratic presidential bid.

Emanuel, who served as the White House chief of staff to President Obama, said in an interview that Democrats need to highlight contrasts with Republicans. “Now that we are having the fight, sharpen the message,” Emanuel said. He led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 when the party gained 30 seats and won the House majority.

Newsom, the California governor, found some recent success rallying the base with his direct challenges to the White House. On social media, he imitates Trump with combative, all-caps posts criticizing Republicans. Newsom is pushing an initiative for voters to change the state’s maps to eliminate five GOP-held congressional seats. The effort is a response to Trump persuading GOP-led states to redraw their districts to increase Republican power.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signing bills related to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on Aug. 21.

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Democratic socialist, won the New York City Democratic primary for mayor in June with a campaign focused on affordability. His surprising victory has divided the party. Yet even moderate Democratic leaders have praised his focus on the cost of living and creativity in reaching voters, despite a political agenda unlikely to appeal to most centrist voters.

Many Democratic leaders, including Schumer, haven’t endorsed Mamdani. Harris, the party’s presidential nominee in 2024, has. She recently told supporters in Philadelphia, “We’re rules followers, right? We believe that there should be a certain level of decorum. Look, right now, we need to fight fire with fire.”

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a longtime progressive leader and Mamdani supporter, watched gleefully on his iPad as election results came in showing Mamdani crushing former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June primary. The next morning, Sanders sent a memo to his fundraising list asking for help raising money for a new crop of liberal politicians. He said more than 7,000 people have committed to run for office after an email solicitation, and his campaign is routing them to progressive training organizations.

“All over this country people are saying you can take on the establishment,” Sanders said in an interview.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, far right, after a July 16 meeting in Washington.

Great divide

A fight to preserve health-insurance subsidies offered a rare chance for Democratic unity.

Republicans put up for a vote a seven-week stopgap bill to keep the government funded, saying it would buy lawmakers time to craft full-year spending bills. Democrats opposed the measure and instead called for attaching to the funding a restoration of Affordable Care Act subsidies, worth billions of dollars, which expire this year. Democrats view these subsidies as a potent political issue that transcends party divisions.

There has been little agreement among Democrats following steep losses in the 2024 election. The party’s elite, including the Senate and House minority leaders, donors and potential presidential candidates, gathered at a luxury resort in New York’s Hudson Valley in May to hear blunt assessments, according to people who were there, others who were briefed on the retreat and documents reviewed by the Journal.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin said voters in her battleground state of Michigan thought the party had become “weak and woke.” Rep. Sarah McBride, a transgender congresswoman from Delaware, told attendees the party made voters who were uncomfortable with transgender athletes competing against females feel unwelcome. The party needed to be more tolerant of those voters, McBride said. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona said Democrats had to be willing to take a tougher stance on immigration policies, including border security.

Some Democrats fear that the party’s renewed enthusiasm for a fight will mean fueling progressives who won’t appeal to voters in swing districts.

Third Way, a group trying to push Democrats closer to the center, hosted a “Comeback Retreat” in February at a resort in Northern Virginia for Democratic strategists, politicians and donors. A document encapsulating the event concluded the party has overemphasized identity politics, failed to focus on economic concerns of working-class voters, vilified wealth and communicated in a “vague, politically correct, or overly intellectual” fashion.

At a June gathering of centrists in Washington, Democratic writer Matthew Yglesias criticized party leaders for being too far left. During his presentation he said Democrats sometimes took positions they disagreed with because it was what they were told to do. Among Democratic officeholders, he said, “You never meet the person who is like ‘f—yeah, we banned plastic straws,’ and yet they sort of robotically do it.”

Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said he wanted the party to be more focused on economics and jobs. In his view, Democrats have tried to be everything to everyone. “If I got 100 Democrats in a room and asked them what we stood for, I’d literally get 150 different answers,” he said.

Though the party has largely held together on the shutdown, several centrist Democratic senators who had voted with Schumer to keep the government open in March waited to cast their votes Tuesday night, locked in intense discussions on the Senate floor.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) speaking to reporters Tuesday at the Capitol.

One of the last Democrats to cast a “no” vote on the Republican bill was Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a centrist Democrat from New Hampshire. Shaheen said she was trying to find a way out of the impasse that would both save the healthcare subsidies and keep the government open.

“The American people are counting on us to get this done,” Shaheen said.

Write to Eliza Collins at eliza.collins@wsj.com, John McCormick at mccormick.john@wsj.com, Tarini Parti at tarini.parti@wsj.com and Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com

Under Pressure From the Left, Democrats Get Back in the Fight

Under Pressure From the Left, Democrats Get Back in the Fight

Under Pressure From the Left, Democrats Get Back in the Fight

Under Pressure From the Left, Democrats Get Back in the Fight