How are Democrats faring in the longest US Government shutdown?

5 November 2025

On Tuesday night in the United States, the current government shutdown officially became the longest, surpassing the previous record of 35 days during the first Trump administration. It has been a test of both Democrats and Republicans. So far Democrats appear to be winning the messaging war. An Ipsos poll for ABC and the Washington Post found a significant difference between shutdown blame for Republicans and Democrats, with 45% of respondents blaming Republicans and 33% blaming Democrats, although House Republicans shared a memo showing the GOP had a slight edge in the polls. The optics of President Trump’s lavish Halloween party at the same time that food stamp funding ran out did not help Republicans with their perception problem.

Conventional wisdom is that the party holding up the vote, in this case Democrats, usually gets blamed and then caves on their demands, but, so far, this has not happened. One reason Democrats may have wagered on this stronger stance (rather than avoiding a shutdown like they did in March of this year) is the number of significant city and state elections happening today. Virginia and New Jersey both voted on new governors and self-described Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani made history in New York.

By leveraging their platform of pushing for the extension of healthcare subsidies, while standing up to Trump and the Republican Party, Democrats were able to campaign harder in the home stretch.

Ultimately, their gamble with the shutdown does not appear to have hurt them at the ballot box. While New Jersey was expected to vote for a Democratic governor, Virginia was more uncertain, but they too voted for the Democratic candidate, Abigail Spanberger. In fact, Democrats received strong support in a wide range of races across the country, including ballot measures in Maine and Colorado and the special election in Texas. Even the embattled Democratic Attorney General candidate in Virginia, Jay Jones, was successful.

And one of the most watched ballot measures – approval to change the constitution of California to allow the government to redraw their congressional districts – passed. This was an uphill battle for Democrats and simultaneously bolsters their numbers going into next year’s midterms, but also escalates the redistricting game taking place across a range of US states as Democrats appear to be the strongest they have been since losing the White House a year ago.

One year out from the midterms, these elections are the biggest indicator of the trajectory for Republicans and Democrats 10 months into the Trump presidency. Now that the Democrats have risen to the occasion, the next test will be whether they can build momentum and establish a winning strategy to set them up for 2026 and 2028.

Lead photo by Chip Somodevilla and Taurat Hossain/Anadolu for Getty Images.

“New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change."

Zohran Mamdani in his election victory speech | 4 November 2025

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Remembering Dick Cheney

Thanks to Hollywood and his own gruff demeanour, former Vice President Dick Cheney is being remembered this week as the most powerful and controversial American Vice President in modern history. Both statements are accurate but working in close proximity to the Vice President for almost five years, I saw other dimensions of the man that also merit attention. The main thing I think the movies and reporting get wrong is that Cheney was not obsessed with power for power’s sake.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the broad assumption was that the United States and our democratic allies would be coming under relentless terrorist attacks in malls, churches, and public spaces. More terrifying was the spectre of terrorist organisations obtaining nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons to use in those attacks. Cheney’s hyperfocus on that threat may have led to policy and strategy mistakes, but it was motivated by a patriotic sense of mission and not some plan to take over the American Government.

Behind the scenes Cheney was extremely pragmatic. He supported diplomacy with North Korea and China because he believed the major challenge of the day was preventing catastrophic attacks on the homeland, we had to manage other problems facing the country with a balanced approach. I was involved in those talks with both Pyongyang and Beijing and the Vice President pushed for a hardline, but not an impossible one.

Cheney was also an “allies first” leader in the White House. His chief of staff and national security advisor, Scooter Libby, had lived in Japan, appreciated regional expertise, and made certain I was sitting next to the Vice President for most of his key meetings with visitors from Japan, South Korea, or Australia. My sense was that the Vice President was well-liked by John Howard and others in the Australian Government.

The image of him manipulating and undercutting President George W Bush is central to the Hollywood myths, but I never really saw it. He would cut into the Oval Office to make his case directly to the President on issues that frustrated Secretary of State Colin Powell and others in the cabinet, but I never saw the Vice President disobey or undermine the President once he had made a decision.

The last time I saw Cheney was at a dinner for former Prime Minister John Howard in Washington. The VP looked frail and had a musette bag over his shoulder with an external pacemaker. He struggled with heart disease throughout most of his career and it is noteworthy that he stayed in government, where many would have wisely taken less stressful positions in think tanks or academia.

The Darth Vader image stuck because Cheney cultivated it himself. He tried to create an aura of shadow power for his staff, insisting that they see the calendars for the NSC or other staff but not reciprocating. Some of his staff acted on that aura — most frustratingly for Australia in the case of Al Qaeda fighter David Hicks, whom the rest of the US Government was prepared to return to the Australian Government for custody until the entire process was slowed down by the VP’s lawyer. Eventually the veterans at the NSC learned how to work around the troublemakers on the VP’s staff and to work with those who did not believe their own mythology and wanted to get things done with allies. That was almost always the case with Cheney himself. New York Times reporter Peter Baker’s book on Cheney, Days of Fire, captures that dynamic much more accurately than Hollywood did in the feature film about the VP.

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