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A Helpful Reminder- The Majority of the Public Correctly Assesses Blame for Shutdowns [1]

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Date: 2023-10-16  

There’s a lot of uncertainty in politics. The public can be fickle, and predicting how they’ll react is tough. The media tendency to blame both sides doesn’t help. And it’s true that a good deal of our fellow Americans are woefully undereducated. But all that being said, there’s at least one issue where you can predict the majority of the public’s reaction with 100% certainty — government shutdowns. If your party shuts down the government your party will be blamed.

Starting with the mid-1990s clashes between President Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich's Republican majority in Congress, there have been seven government shutdowns or close calls that were the subject of polling. While each situation was unique, Republicans have been blamed for most of them, although Democrats took the blame for the most recent, a short affair back in January, even though Republicans controlled the House, Senate and White House at the time. The President hasn't been blamed in any of the previous shutdowns.

my emphasis

So there’s really no reason to worry about Biden here- Republicans have control of the House, at least in the formal sense. Yes, I have seen polls suggesting that Democrats will get some of the blame- I will stake my reputation (such as it is) on the fact that the public isn’t paying attention yet and when they are they’ll follow the same historical pattern.



Does that mean this will be a big factor to in the next election? Maybe, maybe not. If Republicans shut down the government for six months and it wrecks the economy, will Biden get blamed for a bad economy? Maybe, no one knows because that hasn’t happened before. But if there’s a month long shutdown let’s not worry about the majority of the public blaming Democrats because they won’t.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/16/2199389/-A-Helpful-Reminder-The-Majority-of-the-Public-Correctly-Assesses-Blame-for-Shutdowns?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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