The 43-day government shutdown has exposed the intensifying battle between progressives and centrists over the direction of the Democratic Party in 2026 and beyond, an ideological struggle that could determine whether Congress can avoid another lapse in federal funding in February.
The intraparty struggle is taking place on Capitol Hill as well as in key states around the country, such as Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa and Texas, where progressive Senate candidates are vying against more mainstream Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
The contest between progressives, who are pushing bolder policy reforms and want to confront President Trump more aggressively, and establishment-type candidates, who want to focus on affordability and de-emphasize conflict with Trump, will influence their party’s tactics in the months ahead.
“The 2026 congressional and senatorial primary battles are just opening skirmishes in this,” said Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a more centrist Democratic think tank and policy group.
“There’s a lesson we need to relearn over and over again, which is we only win nationally and red and purple places when we are seen as less extreme than Republicans,” he said, voicing the view of mainstream Democrats who want to keep the party from shifting too far to the left as progressives such as New York City’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani gain new prominence.
On the other side of the battle is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), an outspoken progressive who caucuses with Democrats, and Mamdani, who are calling on Democrats to embrace a bolder economic agenda that puts Medicare for all and higher taxes on the rich prominently at the top of the agenda.
Sanders led the opposition in the Senate Democratic caucus to the bipartisan deal to reopen the government, and many Senate Democratic candidates around the country joined him in denouncing the deal — either because they aligned politically with him or they were fearful of giving their progressive challengers ammo to use on the campaign trail next year.
Sanders argues that “parts of the Democratic establishment” are “way, way out of touch with where the American people are or where we have got to go.”
“Our job is to build a political movement,’ he told YouTube host Brian Tyler Cohen. “We’re going to build that movement, grassroots movement, to do what Mamdani did in New York City all over this country.”
Sanders could be influential again in pushing Democratic leaders to use the next federal funding deadline of Jan. 30 as a bargaining chip to get Republicans to agree to extend enhanced health insurance premium subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year.
Funding for broad swaths of the federal government, including the Departments of War, Health and Human Services, Education, Transportation and Commerce, is due to expire at the end of January.
Whether Democrats attempt to use the next funding deadline as another leverage point to pressure Republicans to agree to extend expensive health care subsidies may depend on how much influence progressives are able to wield in the months ahead.
Sanders, who has a large populist following across the country, has sought to wield his influence in Senate Democratic primaries by endorsing oyster farmer Graham Platner in Maine, progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and progressive Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is running to succeed retiring Sen. Tina Smith (D) in Minnesota.
Platner said Senate Democrats “caved” in the shutdown deal and that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) “failed in his job” and should step down as leader. El-Sayed called it a “s— ‘deal.’” And Flanagan said “we deserve so much more than this bull—-.”
Their fierce opposition put pressure on their opponents to also criticize the agreement.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills, who is neck-and-neck with Platner in Senate primary polls, criticized it as a “lousy deal” but didn’t go as far in her rhetoric.
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who is running against El-Sayed to replace retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), voted against the funding bill, explaining in a statement that she though it “offers up lip service instead of actually lowering costs for our families.
And Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), a centrist who is running against Flanagan in Minnesota, also voted against the deal but like Stevens issued a more measured statement. She said “it’s past time for us to lower costs for working folks in this country, and this bill doesn’t do that.”
The government funding fight in Washington became a litmus test on the campaign trail and even more mainstream or centrists Democratic candidates embraced the party’s shutdown posture in Washington — something that would have been viewed as an extreme position in years past – to stay in step with the party’s progressive base.
Kyle Kondik said the Senate Democratic primaries have become emblematic of the power struggle in the broader Democratic Party.
“The Maine Senate primary really stands out as offering this choice — the sitting governor is about as establishment a candidate as you can get. Mills is basically a mainstream Democrat whereas Platner is super left, endorsed by Bernie Sanders and his candidacy is so reminiscent to me of what we saw on the Republican side after Obama,” he said.
But he pointed out that centrist Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s (D-Va.) victory in Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial election shows that moderate Democrats can do very well in swing states.
Democratic strategists say that the backlash against the deal reflects the power of online Democratic donors, who are more significantly more liberal than Democratic voters as a whole.
A poll of Democratic primary voters by Third Way and Global Strategy Group found that 21 percent of primary voters post online daily and those voters who engage frequently with politics through the internet are younger and more liberal than the average Democratic voter.
“We did a poll in August of 1,400 Democratic primary voters, 20 percent of those voters are online every day and they’re about 15 points to the left of the 80 percent that are not,” Kessler said. “That online community is a good two paces to the left of the rest of the rest of the Democratic likely primary electorate.”
A Democratic senator who requested anonymity to comment on the political dynamics driving the shutdown fight said many colleagues felt tremendous pressure to vote against a House-passed government funding bill because of fear that their online fundraising would dry up if they broke ranks.
“Social media is corrosive,” the lawmaker lamented.
Online Democratic donors and activists were especially eager to continue the government funding fight against President Trump and his allies in Congress, and they angrily criticized Schumer when he failed to keep his caucus unified after the shutdown dragged onto its sixth week.
Adam Green, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, in a message to donors criticized Schumer for “caving,” even though the Democratic leader led the Democratic messaging battle throughout the shutdown demanding a solution to rising health care costs and voted against the funding deal.
“The legacy of Chuck Schumer is caving, not winning,” Green said.
Anger among progressives and online donors and activists over the deal puts pressure on Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to use the Jan. 30 funding cliff as another opportunity to confront Trump.
Some Democrats thought the eight Senate Democrats who voted to reopen government without Republicans promising to extend the expiring health care subsidies gave up too soon.
“There is a difference of opinion, broadly inside the Democratic Party, as to how exceptional this moment is and whether you can manage the growing totalitarian state in a way that preserves our democracy or whether you have to draw lines in the sand, moral lines in the sand,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Friday at the Texas Tribune festival.
Murphy joined with Sanders in urging Senate Democratic colleagues this week not to agree to a funding deal without a bigger concession on extending health insurance premiums.
“Part of my worry … is that if we don’t show in the Democratic caucus a willingness to engage in risk-tolerant behavior, how do we ask a university or a law firm to do the same thing,” Murphy said, arguing that Democrats in Congress need to set a stronger example of resisting Trump.
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