Part of the reason I knew that the shutdown was almost certainly going to end the way it did was because of the nature of American political parties. Even though the two major parties are deeply ingrained in our national fabric, truly national brands that drive electoral outcomes all the way down to local elections, they are also nonhierarchical in nature.
In short, for all the talk of leadership and collective language of “The Democrats” and “The Republicans,” the reality is that individual politicians have substantial latitude to act outside the confines of the collective.
We may talk like these are collective units that have a shared message and are led by shared goals, but this is not as much the case as we like to think. It is certainly less the case than the daily discourse suggests.
To wit, in James Joyner’s post this morning, I was struck by the following about Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA). The story is from Politico, and the emphasis is mine.
Tim Kaine privately laid out weeks ago what he needed in return for his vote to end the government shutdown: a “moratorium on mischief.”
That’s what the Virginia Democrat told Senate Majority Leader John Thune that any deal had to include — undoing the firings President Donald Trump and budget director Russ Vought had carried out since the start of the shutdown, as well as protections against future firings of federal workers, who make up a significant portion of Kaine’s constituency.
[…]
With only eight members of the Democratic caucus voting to advance the bill — the bare minimum for it to move forward — satisfying Kaine was critical to ending the conflict largely on the GOP’s terms while also giving Democrats, who have long worried about Trump taking a sledgehammer to the federal government, something to hold up as a consolation prize.
Kaine was, by his own admission, a latecomer to the bipartisan talks, only joining late last week. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Angus King (I-Maine) began talking with Republicans the first night of the shutdown, by Shaheen’s account. The core group of negotiators included Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Katie Britt (R-Ala.), among others.
I was already going to write a post along these lines, but the Kaine bit really makes the point. Who knew that Kaine had made this demand? Not me, and I have been paying pretty close attention. Like James, I would have preferred Kaine’s goal of a “moratorium on mischief” to have been the Democrats’ message (as I noted here), but not only was that not the message that was put forth, but Kaine kept his personal message to himself while privately sharing it with Thune. And for the record, even with my preferred message, I still think the outcome would have been the same.
That behavior by Kaine exemplifies the nonhierarchical nature of our parties. Kaine was not negotiating internally with Schumer and his Democratic colleagues (or, even if he was, he ultimately was going outside the collective). He was acting as a free agent and going straight to Thune. In simple terms, Kaine was not bound to do what the leadership of his caucus wanted. He was not bound by what appears to most observers to be a hierarchy.
As I have repeatedly noted, mostly in comments, I am more than ready for Schumer to be replaced as Democratic Leader. But I also know that even if they can reanimate LBJ, the next Leader is also going to be weak, because the position is inherently weak and there are no levers of authority of any consequence that exist to make members of the caucus behave.
At the end of the day, it was never going to require The Democrats to fold to end the shutdown; it was going to take only seven individual Democrats.
It eventually needed those seven Dems and one independent (because Republican Rand Paul voted no).
And here’s the list.
- Cortez Masto (D-NV)
- Durbin (D-IL)
- Fetterman (D-PA)
- Hassan (D-NH)
- Kaine (D-VA)
- King (I-ME)
- Rosen (D-NV)
- Shaheen (D-NH)
The ability of any Democratic Leader to keep all of the caucus from not being willing to cave is a Herculean ask (if not Sisyphean), especially since leadership has very little in the way of carrots or sticks to use to induce compliance.
This is also why a unified message is hard to generate, and why the focus was narrowly on ACA subsidies. And I firmly believe that they knew from Day One that the best they could hope for on that count was to raise awareness in the hopes that it would provide political momentum for 2026, in the hope that those subsidies could be restored by a Democratic Congress. Whether that happens or not is its own question.
No one is going to get kicked out of the party for bucking leadership (as happens in some other party systems). No one is going to lose committee assignments. The only possible consequences might come from a primary challenge (something not controlled by the party, let alone by Schumer) or loss of donations (again, not something the party controls).
All of this is a key aspect of American politics.
And I know that the counter is going to be that the Republicans appear to be in lockstep. But this is because the individual members of the GOP are in basic agreement about the shape of government spending. They all voted for the BBB and rejected ACA subsidies being extended. And, as I continually note, there is more cohesion in the party that controls the White House, and substantially less in the power out of power.
A simple way of putting a lot of this: the issue was always “How long can seven members of the caucus hold out?” and was never, “How long can The Democrats hold out?”
In a hierarchical party, there would have been internal votes within the Democrats (or just doing what the leader said to do) before a floor vote. In a nonhierarchical party, it was always going to be the case that individual members would, at some point, go their own way.
So, sure, I am all for a better leader and spokesperson than Chuck Schumer, but no one should kid themselves that there is anyone who could force the caucus to stay in line. The mechanisms to do so don’t exist, and willpower and backbone do not go as far as the pundit class likes to think.
