Here we are again. Despite President Donald Trump practically flashing a glaring neon sign warning that a shutdown would backfire on them, Democrats plunged headfirst into the trap and triggered the shutdown anyway. Brilliant move, right?
So, how’s the messaging holding up? To put it gently—it’s a disaster. Even their usual media allies can’t spin this fiasco into anything other than political self-sabotage.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) attempted to control the narrative with a “Stop the Republican Shutdown” livestream overnight. The issue? Almost no one tuned in. It might go down as one of the least-viewed political broadcasts in recent history—a fitting symbol for Democrats’ struggling messaging on the shutdown.
In a country of 320 million, drawing an audience that wouldn’t even fill a high school gymnasium is, to say the least, far from impressive. But honestly, it’s not shocking.
That’s because Democrats simply don’t have a strong argument. There’s no credible case that Republicans are responsible for this shutdown. The House already passed a clean continuing resolution—no cuts, no strings attached—and it was Democrats in the Senate who blocked it. Two Democrats even broke ranks to side with Republicans. Had Democrats not filibustered, the government would still be open today.
It doesn’t get any clearer than that. The chain of accountability is unmistakable, and Americans aren’t buying the Democrats’ spin. The reason Jeffries’ livestream attracted fewer viewers than a neighborhood barbecue is straightforward: people aren’t interested in watching Democrats contort themselves trying to blame Republicans.
From the beginning, it was clear: if a shutdown occurred, President Trump would take the opportunity to go after the oversized federal bureaucracy. Now that it’s happening, hundreds of thousands of government workers—mostly Democrats—face job losses with little protection. And the impact on average Americans? Almost nothing, aside from some closed bathrooms and unpaid interns. That leaves Republicans with no motivation to back down.
The real fallout is political, and it’s landing squarely on Democrats. They’re losing control of the narrative so badly that even The New York Times is calling them out. When the nation’s paper of record can’t deflect the blame, you know how one-sided this battle has become.
Maybe Democrats believe there’s a grand plan behind this, but from where I’m sitting, it looks like a huge self-inflicted setback. In the end, they won’t secure their favored goals—like NPR bailouts or healthcare for undocumented immigrants—but they might sacrifice a significant portion of their bureaucratic influence.
And all for what? So Hakeem Jeffries and his team can rant to a YouTube livestream with an audience smaller than a church bingo night.
