Democrats Exploit Election, Shutdown Momentum to Shape 2026 Strategy

Democrats Exploit Election, Shutdown Momentum to Shape 2026 Strategy

A new study from the Media Research Center found — to no one’s surprise — that legacy media outlets have slanted their coverage of the government shutdown to favor Democrats.

The MRC analyzed “every evening newscast on ABC, CBS, and NBC” during October and determined the following:

Broadcast shutdown coverage heavily favored Democrats over Republicans (87% to 13%).

Only 12 reports (less than one fifth) even mentioned that Senate Democrats had refused to vote for a clean continuing resolution.

Not a single report mentioned that Democrats voted back in March to end the same Obamacare subsidies which they’re now demanding.

The coordinated gaslighting campaign from Democratic leaders — aided by a compliant media — did its job, as usual. Most Americans now blame Republicans for the shutdown, which has reached its 39th day and stands as the longest in U.S. history.

Although it’s impossible to quantify, by casting Republicans as the villains, Democrats fired up their base — fueling a wave of turnout on Election Day.

It was widely believed that once the election was over, Democrats would end the shutdown. Leaders would claim they fought the good fight — but that, faced with the prospect of Americans losing their SNAP benefits, threats to air traffic safety, and military families going without pay, they had no choice but to support the spending bill.

During an appearance on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures last weekend, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) predicted this outcome. And he wasn’t alone.

For a couple of days this week, it seemed possible that a breakthrough was within reach. Several Democratic senators from red or purple states were reportedly ready to bring the shutdown to an end but had been persuaded by party leaders to hold off until after the election. Only five additional Democratic votes are needed to pass the Republicans’ clean spending bill.

It was reported that shortly after voters went to the polls on Tuesday morning, a bipartisan group of senators met to negotiate an end to the shutdown. For a brief period, hopes for a quick resolution surged.

Those hopes were dashed, however, when Democratic leaders, emboldened by their sweeping Election Day success, reconsidered their game plan. Their strategy of pinning the shutdown on Republicans had paid dividends, and they saw little reason to waste the political momentum now in their grasp. The sense of being back in the driver’s seat was too intoxicating for them to capitulate. Instead, they saw an opportunity to exploit the standoff for further political gain. Whatever empathy they had once professed for federal workers quickly evaporated.

A Wednesday morning comment from Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) summed up those sentiments. He claimed that, after the previous night’s blowout wins for Democrats, Trump “certainly feels weaker.”

“This was a resounding defeat for Donald Trump,” he said. “He should have woke up this morning and just immediately said, ‘I — we need to negotiate. We need to find an end to this shutdown.’”

The Republicans’ offer to hold a vote on the expiring subsidies if Democrats would support the continuing resolution was not enough for some senators, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT,) who said:

If they [Democrats] cave now and go forward with a meaningless vote, I think it will be a horrible policy decision, and I think politically, to the Democrats. And you know, they’re going to come into the 2026 election. Some of you may have heard the expression, when we fight, we win. You ever hear that? Well, when you cave, you lose.

On Friday, Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) brazenly took to the Senate floor to lay out the Democrats’ new demand for ending the shutdown. He told colleagues his party would agree to reopen the government if Republicans would agree to a one-year extension of the COVID-era Affordable Care Act premium subsidies that are scheduled to expire on December 31. [This would cost the government $35 billion upfront.] And once the shutdown was over, the two parties would negotiate a long-term solution.

Schumer said:

We would like to offer a simple proposal that would reopen the government and extend the ACA premium tax credits simultaneously. … This is a reasonable offer that reopens the government, deals with health care affordability and begins a process of negotiating reforms to the ACA tax credits for the future. Now the ball is in the Republicans’ court. We need Republicans to just say, ‘Yes.’

Politico noted that Schumer “proposed a ‘clean’ one-year extension … meaning they would not include new restrictions on eligibility that many Republicans have sought.” Of course he did.

Schumer himself voted for a spending bill in March that would allow these subsidies, passed by Congress without a single Republican vote during the pandemic, to expire as scheduled. Now, he’s holding the government hostage to keep them in place.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) rightly rejected the shameless proposal, calling it a “nonstarter.”

Republican acceptance of such a one-sided offer would signal not only weakness but desperation. More importantly, if the Senate failed to reach a long-term solution, as is likely, the Democrats would seize on this issue ahead of the midterms, painting the Republicans as the bad guys just as they did during the 2025 elections.

If you’re beginning to suspect that Democrats are using the shutdown to lay the groundwork for their 2026 campaign strategy, you’re not mistaken. The stalemate isn’t just about budget priorities — it’s about politics. By keeping the government closed, Democrats are effectively freezing President Trump’s domestic agenda while running out the clock to the midterms. Every passing week allows them to shift the narrative, cast Republicans as inept, and rally their base around the idea of standing up to the Trump administration’s “lawlessness.”

Interestingly, despite the audacity — and outright absurdity — of Schumer’s latest demand, Politico revealed that around a dozen Democratic senators held a meeting just before he took the floor.

The group included senators who have been negotiating with Republicans about a path out of the shutdown, as well as other Democratic senators viewed as potential swing votes.

A person familiar with the conversation, granted anonymity to describe the private discussion, said that “tone and approach” of the senators in the meeting “doesn’t reflect what you see on the floor.”

This aligns with reports suggesting that not all Senate Democrats are on board with their leadership’s hardline approach. Some lawmakers are allegedly more eager than others to bring the nearly six-week standoff to a close sooner rather than later.

The question is how many senators share that view — and whether they’re willing to defy party leadership to end the impasse.

Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.

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