After Government Shutdown Surrender, It’s Clearer Than Ever Democrats Must Overhaul Their Strategy

Interview with Norman Solomon, co-founder of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, conducted by Scott Harris

November 12, 2025

Just days after Democratic candidates celebrated coast-to-coast election victories, including in governors races in Virginia and New Jersey, eight U.S. senators caucused with the Democrats broke ranks and voted with Republicans to reopen the government after a record 40-day federal shutdown. The legislation they voted for authorizes government funding through the end of January next year, reverses Trump’s post-shutdown firing of thousands of federal workers, guarantees retroactive pay for furloughed government workers, and prevents further layoffs through January. But most importantly, the compromise bill did not resolve the demand to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that triggered the shutdown, which if not addressed will more than double monthly health insurance premiums for some 22 million Americans starting in January 2026.

A year after the Democratic party’s loss to Donald Trump and Republicans in the 2024 election, many Americans have little confidence in the Democratic party leadership’s ability to mount effective opposition to an authoritarian, corrupt and erratic president. This, despite the fact that Trump has hit his lowest approval rating since the week after he incited the Jan. 6,2021 Capitol Hill insurrection to overturn his 2020 election loss.

Many Democrats condemned the eight senators who bolted the party to vote with Republicans, with several senators calling for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to be removed from his leadership position. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Norman Solomon, co-founder of Roots Action.org and author, who after the Senate government shutdown surrender, insists it’s clearer now more than ever that Democrats must fundamentally overhaul their strategy and tactics.

NORMAN SOLOMON: There’s going to be enormous suffering and a lot of deaths that could have been avoided, a lot of illnesses that could have been prevented if there had been a willingness of Democrats to really hold the line to show not just with rhetoric, but with behavior in Congress, that healthcare is crucial, that they’re willing to fight for healthcare as some kind of human right.

So the consequences for human beings will be enormous and the consequences politically, I think we have not begun to see the ripple effects. There’s so much justified outrage towards those six Democratic senators or those who caucus with the Democrats in the U.S. Senate and also Chuck Schumer, the minority leader who with a wink and a nod, has really facilitated this cave in to the accommodation toward the MAGA forces, toward really, Donald Trump. So we don’t know how this will play out. But ironically, it could strengthen the momentum of progressive forces. This atrocious event, the cave in of these Democratic—or Democratic-caucusing senators—this will have enormous effects, I think, to energize people around the country to realize that we can’t just go along to get along with Democrats just because they have a “D” after their name and they’re not as terrible as Republicans. And I think in short, there’ll be a lot of primarying—primary as a verb—of incumbent Democrats who should be challenged from the left.

SCOTT HARRIS: Thanks, Norman. In your commentary and again, I’ll read the title of it, “A Year After Trump Won, Why Won’t Democrats Change Their Playbook?” you point out that year after year, the Democrats fail to address the nation’s growing inequality by delivering substantive policies to improve working Americans’ lives, where the Democrats embrace Wall Street and middle of the road incremental policy changes. Trump comes along in 2016 and again in ’24, and promises to disrupt and blow up the entire system, while of course not delivering any policies that help working American families, but instead, he guts social safety net programs for workers to give his millionaire and billionaire buddies the largest tax break in U.S. history.

We have two major parties that aren’t really addressing the core issues for the majority of American people and working families. The system is failing. Now, you talk optimistically about new leadership for the Democratic party that can maybe stop this kind of yo-yo or ping pong politics where voters are forced to dump one party, go to the other party. They fail them, they go back to the other. It’s almost comical to see it if it wasn’t so tragic.

NORMAN SOLOMON: Well, it is very tragic and this has been a pattern that’s spiraling downward. Unfortunately, we have the worst administration in any of our lifetimes in control of the executive branch, in control of the legislative branch and largely as well, the judicial branch. And I think we can trace a lot of it to a point that Sen. Bernie Sanders made to a reporter back in 2017. Bernie Sanders said, and I’m quoting here, “Certainly there are some people in the Democratic party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first class seats. And the state rooms that people like Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader of the House, or Chuck Schumer, the minority leader of the Senate—they’re comfortable, they have power. They’re running the show for Democrats on Capitol Hill, but we’re suffering.”

And they have an accommodationist attitude that is corrosive because it keeps moving the frame of reference, the Overton Window rightward instead of taking a stand and insisting that healthcare is a human right, education is a human right, so is environmental protection and not living in a poisoned environment. We really have a dug in, so-called leadership of the Democratic party.

My belief at Roots Action, we have this belief in terms of our organizing rootsaction.org, that we have to put up a fight that Yes, we need to critique the Democratic party. Yes, we need to be very clear about what’s wrong with the so-called leadership. But we need to challenge them concretely, not only with articles and books and broadcasts and so forth, as important as that is. But also primary challenges—really go up against the so-called leadership that is being provided, that is really accommodating to the MAGA forces.

For more information, visit the Roots Action at rootsaction.org.

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