Right as Democrats swept Tuesday’s off-year elections, reclaiming a trifecta in Virginia and keeping New Jersey indigo blue, the party’s shutdown of the federal government set the record as the longest in the nation’s history. The overlap of the two events is no coincidence: nearly a quarter of Virginia’s electorate works for the federal government, two-thirds of whom voted for Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger. By the time the shutdown hit the 35-day mark on election night, some 2.5 million federal workers, a disproportionate share of whom live in Virginia, were going without their paychecks.
The nominal reason congressional Democrats have refused — 14 times in a row now — to authorize the Republican continuing resolution that would reopen the federal government at Biden-era spending levels is that they wish for Republicans to spend an extra $350 billion to extend Biden’s enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies permanently. The actual reason Democrats refused to reopen the government was to prove to its apoplectic voters it was #DoingSomething to stand up to President Donald Trump and thus win the off-year elections. Democrats have gotten what they wanted. Now is the time for them to take the win and reopen the government.
