The Left is losing its edge. And they keep stepping in it.
Because Democrats walked right into Trump’s trap and they are finally admitting it.
Progressives Hand Trump a Shutdown Victory
The Washington Post’s editorial board fretted on Wednesday that Democrats have blundered straight into a “trap” set by their own radical left flank, torpedoing a clean funding bill and handing President Donald Trump total control amid the brewing government shutdown.
In a stark warning to the floundering party, the board slammed the Congressional Progressive Caucus and its allies for strong-arming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., into ditching a solid bipartisan deal, leaving vulnerable Democrats exposed to Trump’s masterful negotiations.
The board rightly pointed out that while the far-left base craves the same ruthless brinkmanship that’s defined GOP hardliners, history shows “the Freedom Caucus’s tactics have failed to achieve Republicans’ goals every time” there’s been a shutdown—yet this time, it’s the left reaping the whirlwind of their own folly.
Dems’ ACA Demands Spark Needless Chaos
With a partial federal government shutdown hitting at midnight Wednesday, thanks to Democrats’ stubborn refusal to pass a straightforward continuing resolution, Republicans stand firm against the left’s overreach.
GOP leaders have rejected the Democrats’ non-negotiable push to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits beyond year’s end, exposing the progressive obsession with Obamacare subsidies at the expense of fiscal sanity.
The Post astutely noted that Democrats’ supposed leverage is a mirage: “Even if Republicans decide to eventually come to the table for a compromise on health care this time around, the details could splinter the left, especially if they include conservative priorities. (Any deal that Trump cuts with Democrats on ACA subsidies would prompt some rank-and-file Republicans to vote against the compromise),” the board argued.
And as the editorial underscored, “chances are slim that the two parties could come to terms that Democratic activists would view as a decisive victory,” though the party’s rabid base demands they “fight anyway, even if it means holding the government hostage.”
Lessons from GOP’s Smart Restraint Pay Off
The Post’s analysis shines a light on how Democrats are repeating the Freedom Caucus’s past errors—but with far worse consequences for their side, as Trump’s team seizes the reins.
“In doing so, progressives embraced the same disastrous mentality that led the House Freedom Caucus to believe it could come out ahead in previous government funding standoffs: They wrongly assumed their political leverage would withstand the ensuing fallout,” the board wrote.
Drawing on GOP triumphs, it recalled the 2019 35-day shutdown that didn’t bend Democrats on border wall funding—and the 2013 battle where Republicans’ stand against Obamacare ultimately bolstered conservative principles without caving.
“There is no reason to think this shutdown will end any differently for its left-wing counterpart. The most likely outcome is that Democrats will come to regret having just walked into a trap,” the board wrote.
“Left-wing Democrats, like the Freedom Caucus before them, enter this shutdown in a position of weakness. President Donald Trump and his budget director, Russell Vought, now have extraordinary authority to choose which agencies to close, what spending to prioritize and even which government workers to lay off,” the board stated.
