'Picking the wrong fight': Nate Silver urges Democrats to make a different shutdown demand

A government shutdown looks increasingly likely, as Republicans don't have the votes to pass their continuing resolution and Democrats have seized the moment to demand the GOP extend Affordable Care Act subsidies, preventing people from losing access to health care.

But they are "picking the wrong fight," argued longtime pollster and statistician Nate Silver, who stated in a New York Times column that there's a better issue Democrats should be using as their shutdown ultimatum.

"This time, Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, seems open to their encouragement and said recently that Democrats had settled on restoring health care funding from the big Republican domestic bill as their line in the sand," wrote Silver. "I’m less sure about the wisdom of a shutdown this time.

"But since it seems like a real possibility, I believe that Mr. Schumer is picking the wrong fight, or at least the wrong issue to hinge his fight on," he continued. "Instead of health care, I’d focus on the one issue that has had the most impact in denting Mr. Trump’s approval rating: tariffs."

A few weeks ago, Silver noted, he would have urged Democrats to do things differently: stake the shutdown fight over Trump's authoritarian policies and refuse to lend their votes to a regime that is not a "normal" state of affairs.

"But two things gave me pause," he argued. "One is that the message — actually, we’re not negotiating, we’re refusing to negotiate; you have your majorities and all of this is your problem — would require a lot of discipline in practice, and Democrats aren’t very good at that. The other reason is that the crisis atmosphere that Democrats are treating as a desirable feature of the shutdown might be exactly what Mr. Trump wants, particularly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk."

So with that in mind, Silver said, Democrats should focus on tariffs, because they are having the greatest immediate negative impact on everyone's lives and wallets, and because they are almost certainly illegal under the Constitutional separation of power. Additionally, he argued, "tariffs are one of the few things that have actually moved Mr. Trump’s numbers. In April, after his 'Liberation Day' tariff announcement, his net approval rating plunged in the Silver Bulletin approval tracker to –9.7, from –3," a greater drop than any other issue, even the Epstein files.

Ultimately, Silver concluded, Schumer's shutdown threat "might be better than nothing, but it still indicates that the Democrats are hobbled by caution — tariffs would be the bolder play."