A Democratic pollster notes that it might be time to let Americans experience some tough love during the shutdown.
Speaking to MSNBC on Friday, Cornell Belcher noted that in shutdown after shutdown, Democrats fight to help bring back policies that Americans overwhelmingly support. He said that some on the left are saying it's time to stop.
The debate in Congress over the shutdown centers on Democrats' refusal to help Republicans raise the debt ceiling without the concession that Republicans restore the funding they cut for healthcare. Subsidies for the Affordable Care Act are slated to double next year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation research team report last month.
"There are plenty of folks on the left who say, you know what, if Republicans have done this and they control all branches of the government, we should allow the American people to feel the pain of what government, of what Republican policies are," said Belcher.
While he didn't clarify if he was one of those on the left, he explained, "I mean, you can't keep — if you want to touch the stove at some point, you gotta let them touch the stove. And this is a terrible thing to have to say, because millions of people will be hurt by it. But what's the other option, right? They have to see the consequences of what Republican policies will do to them and their families. And Democrats keep bailing them out."
Both Belcher and The Atlantic's staff writer David Graham said that some in the news world assume that voters will remember or care about the shutdown when voting in the 2026 election. Instead, they're underrating the "real world implications," said Graham.
"And what I mean is, when people get to the polls, they're not going to be remembering the details of the shutdown," said Graham. "But if this hurts the economy, that is going to affect them, it's going to affect the way they're thinking about things. I think that's a danger for Trump, who seems to be relishing this at the moment. But he's going to have to answer for the economy. And Republicans in Congress are the ones who will, you know, sink or swim on that in the midterms."
