As Shutdown Ends, Will Democrats’ Civil War Begin?

 For the first time in decades, the Democrats have lost their bid to engineer a federal government shutdown, blame the Republicans for it, and win political concessions for doing so. Now that they’ve lost, they’re blaming moderates in their own party for the miscalculation. Let the blaming begin.

As is often the case, CNN’s unflappable, lonely conservative, Scott Jennings, predicted the outcome of the shutdown last week after Democrats posted big wins in blue states in the off-year elections. “I’m sure the Democrats will be happy to open the government now, the election is over,” he said, even as the Dems insisted that they wouldn’t.

But mere days after Jennings’ words, Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Tim Kaine, Maggie Kassan, Jacky Rosen, and Jeanne Shaheen, who had all voted 15 times against ending the shutdown, suddenly relented and crossed the aisle to vote to end the closure, joining original Democrat rebel Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, John Fetterman, and Angus King.

And even the Dems’ media supporters admit the shutdown was entirely a Democrat political ploy, having little to do with sympathy for Obamacare recipients: “Democrats said the shutdown was about the subsidies, but for most of them, it wasn’t,” wrote Ezra Klein in The New York Times. “It was about Trump’s authoritarianism. It was about showing their base — and themselves — that they could fight back. It was about treating an abnormal political moment abnormally.”

He’s right, in a sense. It was cynical manipulation of the public for political gain — a perfect description of today’s far-left Democratic Party, in which moderation, common sense, and decency are treated not as virtues but as political treason. This is now the party of self-avowed socialist and Islamist Zohan Mamdani, new mayor of New York City. It is also the party of soon-to-be retired former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose main legacy, as one recent headline put it, “is the socialist takeover of her party.”

The loss isn’t sitting well with the Dems’ extreme-left wing, which did its level best to blame others in the party for what conservatives quickly dubbed “Schumer’s shutdown.”

“Pathetic. This isn’t a deal. It’s a surrender. Don’t bend the knee!” whined California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a press release.

“Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution. And to my mind, this was a very, very bad vote,” added “independent” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Dozens of other progressive Dems added their vitriol, throwing a collective fit on BlueSky.

The rage was palpable. Why? One big reason was that President Donald Trump promised to do what the Democrats had threatened to do in years past to end a shutdown: Kill the filibuster. (Not all Republicans agree with Trump, by the way.)

Democrats in recent decades have won shutdown fights by using their friends in the mainstream media to portray Republicans as evil, stingy villains who care not a whit about working people. They did it this time, too.

And this time it’s clear: Democrats were 100% at fault for this shutdown, and all its inconveniences. 

Moderate Democrats such as the eight who broke ranks to end the shutdown and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer will now find themselves pretty lonely amid the 37 other Democrats in the Senate. Some might be challenged from the left in their next primary. And all will also certainly find themselves short of friends and, in some cases, political funds. As a headline on Raw Story put it, “Angry Democrats brew ‘furious civil war’ after ‘lousy’ shutdown deal.”

As a party, the Democrats are in no mood to compromise or tolerate those who will. They believe once Trump is gone, they’ll again win elections that count, and GOP squishes in Congress will do their bidding.

In the meantime, their rage will turn on the small remnants of moderation and reason within their own party, leaving a giant hole for the socialists, antisemites, and wannabe revolutionaries who now run the Democrats to fill. Politics abhor a vacuum. The Democratic Party’s civil war will likely be the final triumph of its now-dominant socialist wing.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/11/11/as-shutdown-ends-will-democrats-civil-war-begin/