By Eric Bradner, Sarah Ferris, Annie Grayer, CNN
(CNN) — In March, six days after Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and nine of his colleagues voted with Republicans to keep the government open, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vented their frustrations in Las Vegas before thousands of people.
“This isn’t just about Republicans. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us too,” Ocasio-Cortez said then. “But what that means is that we as a community must choose and vote for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class.”
Seven months later, their position has become the party’s consensus.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps the two most high-profile voices in the progressive movement, have mobilized their supporters to keep up the pressure on Democratic leaders. It was, in part, because of that highly visible groundswell from the left that led Schumer to change course this September and jump with both feet into the current shutdown fight.
In one private strategy session in September on the shutdown, one Democratic member, Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, specifically cited his party’s animated left wing as a reason to hold the line on health care even if it meant a shutdown.
“Something is shifting beneath our feet,” Moskowitz told his fellow Democrats at the time, according to a person involved in the session. He warned that their party was “going to get a tea party” of its own if Democrats didn’t recognize the left’s power, alluding to the 2010 wave of hardline conservatives that primaried establishment Republicans.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez will make their case for Democrats’ shutdown strategy Wednesday night in a CNN town hall. It is set to air at 9 p.m. ET and will be moderated by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins from Washington, DC.
No end in sight
The federal government has been shut down since funding lapsed on October 1, after just three in the Senate Democratic caucus supported a short-term funding extension, leaving Republicans short of the 60 votes necessary to pass the measure. Democrats are demanding that the GOP agree to extend billions of dollars in subsidies for insurance plans sold on Obamacare’s marketplace, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez will appear on CNN as the government shutdown drags on with no end in sight, leaving roughly 1.4 million federal employees furloughed or working without pay. The funding lapse has already affected travel, and its impact could soon be seen on food assistance programs and the economy overall.
So far, the public has blamed Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown. A CBS News/YouGov poll found 39% of Americans blame Trump and the Republicans in Congress most for the government shutdown, with 30% saying they blame the Democrats in Congress and 31% both sides equally.
Publicly, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have insisted they won’t negotiate with Democrats over health insurance funding until the government is reopened. Johnson said Tuesday that Schumer is pushing “partisan political” demands in the shutdown standoff because he doesn’t want a “Marxist candidate” – an apparent reference to Ocasio-Cortez – to challenge him in a primary.
Democrats are similarly dug in. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday that top Democrats won’t change their position in the standoff over the enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
“There has to be a willingness among Republicans to actually have a conversation,” the New York Democrat said.
Progressives and Democratic leaders have faced some pushback within the party’s moderate ranks – largely from Maine Rep. Jared Golden, who wrote last week in his Substack newsletter that the shutdown is “driven by demands, from some in the Democrats’ base and far-left groups, for the party to visibly ‘fight’ Donald Trump.”
“I don’t believe it’s right to shut down the government — to threaten or cancel the troops’ pay, food assistance for moms and kids, customer service at Social Security, and so much more — over a normal policy debate like health care tax credits,” Golden, who holds one of the party’s most competitive swing seats, wrote.
Still, in a sign of broader Democratic desires to take Trump on, Golden quickly drew a primary challenge from Maine state auditor Matthew Dunlap, who lambasted his vote for the continuing resolution to fund the government and is supporting Democrats’ efforts to extract concessions on health spending.
An extraordinary level of influence
Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders have an extraordinary level of influence within the Democratic Party.
In the early weeks of Trump’s second term, the mood among congressional Democrats was dire. Many felt that the party had effectively gone dark: Democrats were locked out of power in Washington and had no cohesive voice, or a national leader, to plot their next steps as Republicans muscled through their massive policy bill.
Then came some “signs of life” from Democrats in the spring, as one senior aide put it. Sanders and his team — along with Ocasio-Cortez and a handful of other progressives — organized massive rallies across the country.
“We are not powerless in this moment,” Ocasio-Cortez declared from the stage in Greeley, Colorado, one of 11 different events she attended alongside her longtime mentor.
Since the shutdown began, Sanders has used his own influence in the Senate to remind his more squeamish Democratic colleagues that the public stands behind them in the fight. The Vermont senator, an independent who does not regularly attend Democratic caucus meetings, has shown up to more recent face-to-face interactions with colleagues, often armed with copies of recent polls showing that voters blame Republicans for the shutdown.
“I think they understand that the American people want to make sure that our health care system does not collapse, that we don’t have 15 million people losing their health insurance and seeing a doubling of premiums for over 20 million people,” Sanders told CNN Tuesday of why Schumer and other senators are digging in now. “I think they understand that. I think they’re right, and it’s the right strategy.”
Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, has repeatedly refused to rule out a primary challenge to Schumer — a move that could give her more leverage. (People close to her believe she truly has not decided what to do in 2028 – whether to challenge Schumer or to run for president.)
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta, Kaanita Iyer, Alison Main, Manu Raju and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.
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