Ezra Klein Warns Democrats Not to Fold: ‘They’re Winning This Shutdown’

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein sharply criticized Senate Democrats on Monday for considering a deal to reopen the federal government, arguing the party is squandering rare leverage at the precise moment it holds the upper hand.

Klein writes that Democrats began the shutdown with an unusually strong case — and a rare moral frame. The stated purpose was to resist President Donald Trump’s authoritarian behavior, not simply to secure a year-long extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits. But as the standoff dragged on and internal pressure mounted, the party narrowed its goals to a technocratic concession that Klein says fails to match the stakes.

Klein’s column carries particular weight because he arguably helped spark the standoff in the first place.

In early October, he urged Democrats to treat the moment as a necessary and even unavoidable confrontation, warning that “we are in a government shutdown” in all but name and arguing the party had no choice but to make ACA tax credits — and, by extension, the broader fight over Trump’s authoritarian impulses — the line in the sand.

He emphasized that the expiring subsidies would trigger a “huge premium shock” and cost millions their coverage, framing shutdown politics as a moral stand rather than a tactical gamble. That stance, more than any other prominent voice on the left, encouraged Democrats to take — and hold — the position that ultimately forced the shutdown.

“Democrats said the shutdown was about the subsidies, but for most of them, it wasn’t,” Klein wrote in his Monday column titled “What Were Democrats Thinking?”

“It was about Trump’s authoritarianism. It was about showing their base — and themselves — that they could fight back.” Reducing the shutdown to health-insurance mechanics, Klein argues, created a mismatch between moral ambition and bargaining position.

That strategic confusion comes despite signs Democrats were “winning this one.” Klein points to polling showing voters blamed Republicans for the shutdown, Trump’s approval rating had dipped into the 30s “for the first time since he took office again,” and Democrats dominated elections last week — results Trump himself partly attributed to the shutdown. Those dynamics, he writes, offered Democrats an unusual advantage: an opposition party gaining ground during a standoff it initiated.

Over the weekend, however, eight Senate Democrats began indicating support for a compromise. The outline would restore government operations, increase funding for SNAP and WIC, rehire federal workers with back pay, and promise a future vote on extending ACA tax credits — a vote Klein says Democrats privately expect to fail.

For him, that deal exposes the deeper inversion: extending the tax credits may be good policy, but also a strategic gift to Republicans. Without action, premiums for about 20 million Americans will surge, disproportionately in red states. “Why were Democrats fighting so hard to neutralize their best issue in 2026?” Klein asks, citing polling from Trump adviser Tony Fabrizio showing that allowing the subsidies to expire could devastate Republican chances in competitive House races.

Klein warns that Democrats risk teaching Trump that the party will fold under pressure — especially as the administration escalates pain by withholding food assistance and tolerating increasing airport disruption. “Shutdowns are an opportunity to make an argument,” Klein writes, adding that Democrats were only beginning to “make their priorities exquisitely clear.”

The columnist argues he would oppose the compromise were he in the Senate, writing that Democrats should not rescue Trump from consequences of his own choices. The fight, he emphasizes, was never primarily about subsidies — but about whether Democrats could muster a response appropriate to an abnormal political moment.