“Put on your big boy pants”: Democrats rediscover a will to fight with government shutdown battle

Early last week, Democrats seemed to be hitting new lows in the post-election slump. Progressives were especially demoralized by the failure to elect Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.,  as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. Democratic representatives instead gave the spot to a 74-year-old with esophageal cancer, Rep. Gerry Connelly, D-Va. It suggested Democrats weren’t going to put up much resistance to the incoming president, Donald Trump. “Who’s going to stand up to Trump if his actual opponents have embraced ‘strategic silence’ regarding all of his spiraling abuses?” lamented progressive pundit Brian Beutler in a newsletter headlined, “Democratic Capitulation Is Contagious.” Everyone smart agreed that it was wise not to replicate the hair-on-fire-all-the-time tactics of The Resistance© for round number two of President Trump, but laying down and taking it also seemed like a poor idea. 

Then Trump let billionaire Elon Musk bully him into shutting down a continued resolution to fund the government — a bill Trump obviously thought would be to his benefit — and all of a sudden, the fight came roaring back into Democrats.  Musk basically wrote his own spending bill, with Trump meekly signing on. The two foolishly believed that Democrats would cave by voting for the new bill that eliminated funding to research childhood cancer and a provision to crack down on “junk fees,” such as those that often double the face value of a concert ticket. Instead, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., saw a perfect opportunity to kick off Republican in-fighting, expose Trump’s weaknesses as a leader, and educate the nation on how Republicans are in the thrall of maniacal billionaires. Democrats refused to vote for the Musk bill, and taunted Republicans for being too disordered to pass it, even with their House majority. 

“Put on your big boy pants! Pass your own bill,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., declared from the floor as the Musk bill went down in flames Thursday night. “We’re only here because you guys can’t agree amongst yourselves.”

Friday night, hours before the government shutdown took effect, Democrats handed Musk —sorry, Trump — the first major loss of his presidency, a presidency which technically doesn’t start for another month. The funding bill passed, with all the major provisions Musk tried to strip out returned. The fight left the Republican coalition divided and weakened. It also revealed that an aging, tired Trump is currently controlled by his biggest donor. 

The media myth that Trump has a strong, unified coalition has solidified in the past six weeks, driven by the continued shock caused by his presidential victory in November. For those paying close attention, however, it’s clear that the GOP is being held together with safety pins. MAGA was never coherent ideologically but held together by Trump’s cult of personality. Now these days, as Heather “Digby” Parton wrote Friday, “Trump is just an old guy playing golf and holding court at his gaudy beach club in Palm Beach every night.” He was always a bad leader, but he’s increasingly old and addled, making keeping his party in line even harder. Musk is taking advantage of Trump’s weakness by trying to make himself a shadow president, but he is an even worse manager of the party, both because he’s not actually their leader and he’s a less charming version of Trump. 

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Musk and Trump are lamely trying to blame the chaos on Democrats. This effort is doomed precisely because the two narcissists have dominated the news cycle so thoroughly that it’s likely many Americans are unaware Joe Biden is still technically president. Plus, government shutdown antics are coded as “Republican” in the imagination of both voters and the media, to the point where even the tremendously powerful right-wing propaganda machine can’t confuse people on this issue. 

Democrats are taking full advantage, and using this to drive home a simple but important message: Trump and Republicans are puppets of predatory billionaires. The “President Musk” jokes flew fast and furious, helping reinforce the point that Trump is in this to enrich himself and his friends, at the expense of the poor souls who believed his lies that he wanted to do something about inflation. 

But what is perhaps even more important is how Democrats are using this situation to weaken Trump before he even steps into office. Jeffries has long understood the critical weakness of authoritarians: they claim to bring order, but in fact, they are chaotic. The rigidity, lack of empathy and aggression of authoritarians means they have a “my way or the highway” approach to all conflict. That can look “strong” to low-information voters when marketed as a campaign, which is how Trump won. But it means their coalitions tend to succumb to infighting quickly, as they’re built mainly of people who think listening and compromise are weak, girly behaviors. 

Jeffries learned this lesson well during the leadership fights that erupted after Republicans won a House majority in 2022. Instead of doing the smart thing and unifying behind Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as Speaker, MAGA Republicans decided to take an entirely incoherent stand against him. The debacle was humiliating, especially after multiple candidates for the role flamed out after McCarthy’s pointless defenestration. Despite pleading from the centrist punditry for Democrats to save Republicans from themselves, Jeffries kept his caucus strong in their unwillingness to vote for any Republicans as Speaker.

The strategy worked. Eventually, exhausted Republicans elected now-Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a man who had no experience and had never even faced a serious challenger in running for office. The GOP caucus was weakened and its members continue to be suspicious of each other. They have been moribund in passing legislation and even their attempts to gin up fake controversies with committee power went nowhere. Now it looks like Johnson may face a McCarthy-like ouster, though it’s even harder to imagine who could possibly step up to fill the thankless role of leading an ungovernable caucus of far-right loudmouths, all of whom think they’re right about everything and will brook no argument, much less entertain compromise. 

On paper, Trump is going into office with a strong hand of controlling both houses of Congress. In theory, this should smooth the way to passing all sorts of legislation and enacting the lengthy and terrible Project 2025 agenda. In practice, organizing Republicans is like trying to get 15 wasted frat boys to take comprehensive notes on a lecture on Kantian philosophy. And that was before Trump just let Musk sow even more disorder for seemingly no other reason than Musk is bored and has a wine-glass-fragile ego. Demobilizing your opponents before they even take power is quite the move.

Senate Democrats are already feeling emboldened enough to start making real moves, such as pressuring Republicans into actually reading an FBI background check into Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary. In fact, Trump’s entire clown car of nominees offers many opportunities to stoke division among Republicans, by forcing them to argue over topics like “do vaccines work?” or “should it be okay if people keep worrying the head of intelligence is a Russian asset?” All it takes is a little discipline and a little spine, and Democrats can get Republicans to hate each other so much that getting work done feels impossible for the would-be fascist leaders.