Progressive grassroots organizations say they’ve learned a lesson from congressional Democrats’ last government shutdown fight: to trust no one.
These groups want Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to commit to firmer redlines this time around, mounting a pressure campaign to ensure that September plays out differently than March did.
“March for us was hair-on-fire frustrating,” Andrew O’Neill, director of advocacy at Indivisible, told NOTUS. “We were told for weeks, ‘Yeah, yeah, we’ve got a plan. We’re going to fight.’ And we said, ‘OK, great. We really want to see it, like, what’s the plan?’”
“Turns out there wasn’t really a plan,” he said.
The stakes of this spending fight are only growing, putting a magnifying glass on party leaders, Democratic activists, strategists and pollsters say. But the party’s perspective on how to navigate spending fights is shifting too, they say.
On Tuesday, Schumer warned his party that Republicans are leading the country “towards a shutdown” with the White House’s latest attempt at a pocket rescission.
“Senate Republicans can’t pretend they’re helpless against Donald Trump. They’re the majority in this chamber. The majority could very easily undo what he does. They have the power to rein in his worst impulses,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
Indivisible blasted out an online toolkit to members in August urging them to call Democrats weeks before their return to Washington and tell them to demand a rollback of health care cuts in Trump’s budget law, and prepare to hold out all the way to a shutdown if they don’t get it.
The group of progressive strategists and pollsters behind Navigator Research has been distributing numbers that bolster the idea that a dug-in fight over spending is less risky than avoiding a fight.
Navigator Research was designed to guide Democratic messaging, and is funded and advised by powerful mainstream Democratic-aligned groups, like the Global Strategy Group, which includes Gov. JB Pritzker, Sen. Jacky Rosen and many others on its client roster. Data from August shared with NOTUS found that 48% of Americans would blame Trump and the GOP for a shutdown while only 28% would blame the Democrats.
Some Democratic strategists are also sounding less cautious when talking about the possibility of a shutdown.
Back in March, the political narrative was still about the previous election. Democrats were nervous about Republicans’ talking points, calling them out of touch on everything from immigration to the economy. And uncertainty around what Elon Musk could do under a government shutdown complicated Democrats’ feelings about letting funding lapse.
“They were sort of proceeding with legislating business as usual,” O’Neill said of Democratic senators in the spring.
In private conversations in late August, several strategists said that fear no longer has the same resonance with Democratic electeds as it did then. Now, Democrats are intent to show they are fighters, latching on to the president’s declining poll numbers to fight a midterm about 2024 buyer’s remorse.
Of course, Navigator’s polling came before the possibility of a shutdown dominated the news cycle. Still, Democratic strategists think their party has a stronger message now than it did in March.
Since March, congressional Republicans have delivered on President Donald Trump’s big legislative demands and codified some of DOGE’s cuts. They also never made good on the deal Schumer struck to restore the District of Columbia’s budget.
“Republicans have spent the last 6 months on defense over health care costs. Now they’re demanding a budget that takes away tax credits for health insurance, or else they won’t fund the government,” strategist Jesse Ferguson said.
Even centrist Democrats are seeing the winds shift in the direction of a shutdown.
Jim Kessler, who runs policy at Third Way, told NOTUS he thinks the chance of a shutdown is “high.” And while he is not as seethingly angry at Senate Democrats as Indivisible is, his perspective on what could merit a shutdown isn’t all that different.
“If there is indeed a shutdown, Democrats must make it over something that voters care deeply about, not the activists,” he said. “That’s health care and the Obamacare subsidies that Republicans are set to extinguish, kicking people off the rolls and jacking up their premiums.”
“Democrats can’t repeat the mistakes they made last time, which began with a belief that House Republicans would need help to get it through the lower chamber. It seems everyone was caught flat-footed when they found the votes,” Kessler said. “This time, Democrats must assume Mike Johnson will find the votes.”
It wasn’t that long ago when Schumer altered his book tour amid calls on him to resign over striking a deal with Republicans on spending. Poll numbers for the party tanked among the base and have remained bad. Rep. Nancy Pelosi directly called out her Senate colleagues for caving.
Still, Senate Democratic leadership is keeping its cards close to the chest. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto appeared to throw cold water on the suggestion that there’s intense pressure from the Democratic base to shut down the government.
“As I’m home and I’m talking about it, most Americans, they don’t understand, and rightfully so, procedure that happens in the Senate,” Cortez Masto told NOTUS days after completing a tour of rural Nevada in August. “They don’t understand what it means at the end of the day, but they do know that they want their elected leaders to work on solving problems, not creating them, and not making their lives any harder.”
Cortez Masto got into a public spat with Sen. Cory Booker on the Senate floor before leaving town in August, when the New Jersey Democrat accused her of being “complicit” with an authoritarian president for pushing forward a bipartisan bill.
“I think it gets lost by some of the press and folks,” she told NOTUS. “Remember: Who’s in control here? It’s not just Donald Trump. It’s the Republicans. And the question I have quite often is, are the Republicans in control? Where are they? Where are they? Why are they not fighting for Americans or their constituents?”
If Cortez Masto has a plan for the spending fight, though, she did not reveal it.
“We need to take back Congress, and we need to win. And the only way we can win these elections is to connect with our voters and talk to them, listen to them, understand what they care about, and show we’re fighting for those issues,” she said. “That’s what it comes down to. If we are doing a circular firing squad, we’re fighting amongst ourselves, and it does not help move this ball forward and help us win elections.”
Booker maintained his appetite for a “fight” in September.
“I can’t speak to other senators’ consideration, but I’m going to say it as loud as I can, as often as I can: This is a time to stand and fight,” he told NOTUS on Tuesday. “This is a time to draw a line.”
How negotiations played out in March, and what Republicans have done in subsequent months, is part of Democrats’ calculus, senators said.
“I’ve got to think now, in light of our experience with him, what a vote would mean one way or the other. It’s not an easy decision,” Sen. Dick Durbin said.
At Run for Something, the progressive grassroots candidate recruitment group, Democrats’ March vote to keep the government open resulted in the largest number of sign-ups by potential candidates eager to replace Democratic incumbents of the year, co-founder and president Amanda Litman told NOTUS.
“They were fucking pissed,” Litman said, succinctly summarizing that spring vibe. The group is building out infrastructure in case September brings another bump in recruitment. Another perceived cave and “the anti-incumbency wave in primaries is going to be a tsunami,” she said.
Callie Barr is running for the second time in Michigan’s 1st District — a long shot Democratic campaign in a red, rural district. Last time she was trounced, and oddsmakers are not betting on a different outcome in 2026.
But Barr said she’s seen something this campaign she didn’t see in the last one: Indivisible groups popping up in the rural counties she visits, often with unheard of turnout for events this far ahead of an election cycle. Attendees are looking for someone to channel their anger.
March was a moment that stoked that anger, she told NOTUS recently. “Oh, we should have shut down the government,” she said.