Democrats can’t seem to get out of their own way regarding their effort to try to somehow blame the current three-week government shutdown on Republicans. Their latest effort is a great big fail, and worse, they did it to themselves.
Democrats are taking it on the chin over the Schumer Shutdown — and it shows in the generic-ballot polls. The numbers are sliding, and they know it. Still, they keep parroting the line that Americans somehow blame Donald Trump and the GOP for refusing to pass a “clean” continuing resolution. It’s pure spin, and everyone outside the MSNBC bubble knows it.
Anyone with even a passing grasp of how Congress works understands that Democrats are the ones blocking funding, hiding behind filibusters, and then crying foul when Republicans call them out. But because the truth doesn’t serve their narrative, they’re doing what they do best — cooking up “data” to make it look like the public’s on their side.
Today, Democrats tried to save face by leaking the results of their own internal polling to Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman — and let’s just say it didn’t exactly bolster their narrative:
Yikes.
Even a Democrat-friendly pollster couldn’t twist the numbers enough to make this look good. Their own internal data shows voters blaming Republicans barely more than Democrats — 45% to 42% — which is well within the margin of error. In other words, it’s a tie. And that’s with a handpicked sample designed to make Democrats look better than they actually are.
Worse for them, the trend line is moving in the wrong direction. The share of voters blaming Republicans hasn’t budged, but the number blaming Democrats has inched upward over the past three weeks. That’s a flashing red warning sign, leading some respondents to wonder why the D’s would share that data in the first place:
So how reliable are these polls, and what do they actually tell us? Not much — and that’s the point. Polling on government shutdowns has always been political theater masquerading as data. The truth is, most Americans don’t care. After three decades of these Beltway temper tantrums, voters have figured it out: shutdowns are just noise.
Sure, a few hyper-partisans on both sides will assign blame — Republicans, Democrats, whatever — but for the vast majority of the country, it’s background static. People know the government will reopen, the lights will stay on, and their daily lives won’t change one bit. These polls don’t measure real public sentiment; they measure how invested political junkies and media insiders are in their own narratives.
And there’s this: Even CNN’s data guru, Harry Enten, is baffled by the fact that President Trump’s personal approval rating since the now weeks-long shutdown began is up by a point.
Granted, the numbers are close — well within the margin of error. But that’s exactly the problem for Democrats. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries gambled big with this shutdown stunt, hoping to boost their image heading into the midterms by dusting off the same tired playbook: blame Donald Trump. It’s their favorite boogeyman, even though that strategy has flopped repeatedly over the past two years.
The plan backfired. Instead of padding their modest generic-ballot lead of roughly 3.6 points over the summer, Democrats have watched it collapse — now sitting under two points. That’s political freefall. And here’s the kicker: they need around a D+5 margin just to have a shot at keeping the House. In other words, they’re not just stalling — they’re sinking.
The Schumer Shutdown wasn’t a show of strength; it was a desperation move that blew up in their faces. And the longer it goes, the worse it’ll be for Democrats.