Joel Berman’s feelings about the end of the government shutdown depend on which hat he’s wearing.
As a Democrat, the retired Concord physician thought the shutdown shone a light on what he sees as a need to extend Obama-era health insurance tax credits that many of his former patients rely on.
As co-chair of the New Hampshire Alliance of Braver Angels, the local chapter of a national organization seeking to promote bipartisanship and cool the political temperature, he felt more torn.
After some thought, he said he supports the deal struck by New Hampshire’s U.S. senators to end the shutdown, even without a guarantee on healthcare subsidies.
For Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, as well as Berman, the impacts of the shutdown — the suspense of food assistance, grounded flights and unpaid federal workers — had inflicted too much pain.
“In the end, I support what they did,” Berman said. “I support any kind of bipartisanship and really applaud people who can reach across the aisle and work with the other side, even if that means creating such opprobrium from their own party members.”
Most Democrats disapprove of the deal, and many in New Hampshire have pelted Shaheen in particular with criticism for her key role in striking that deal — from nationally known politicians like New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, who spoke to party activists in Manchester last week, to congressional hopefuls in the Granite State.
Among their ranks is Shaheen’s own daughter, Stefany Shaheen, who is running for Congress. To the candidate in New Hampshire’s First Congressional District, any deal that didn’t extend subsidies from the Affordable Care Act wasn’t worth it.
“We need to both end this shutdown and extend the ACA tax credits,” Stefany Shaheen said in a statement. “Otherwise, no deal.”
Sen. Shaheen spent days defending her decision and said she’s still working to pass the tax credits next month. She’s spent years championing the policy.
“I understand the frustration some of my colleagues and supporters feel. I feel it too,” she wrote in an op ed published earlier this week. “None of this is easy. Negotiation never is, especially when you’re the party out of power. But leadership means staying at the table and making tough decisions even when you can’t get everything you want.”
Shaheen said no one in Washington understands the importance of extending the tax credits as she does.
“While Republicans unambiguously refused to link ACA tax credits with the shutdown debate over weeks and weeks of talks, they now have said that they are willing to come to the table—and they’ve given us a guaranteed vote on a bill of our choosing by the date of our choice,” Shaheen said in a statement to the Monitor. “Democrats must spend the next month keeping their feet to the fire—and now we’re able to do so in a way that doesn’t cause harm to the most vulnerable Americans.”
Berman, for one, was most disappointed in the “abysmal failure” of a government that operates under a system where one party holds another party hostage in a shutdown fight that negatively impacts people’s lives.
“It’s just a terrible indictment of the state to which our federal government has descended to have to do that,” Berman said. “I don’t take any pride that Democrats were the ones who instigated it this time, and I don’t take any comfort in the fact that, well, last time it was the Republicans who did it.”
While 52% of Granite Staters approved of the deal struck by Shaheen and Hassan to end the shutdown, 68% Democrats opposed it, according to an analysis conducted by the UNH Survey Center.
“The more activist part, wing of the party, which I think represents most of where the vote is within the Democratic caucus right now, were opposed to making this deal,” said Andrew Smith, director of the survey center.
Shaheen and Hassan didn’t stand much to lose politically by crossing the aisle. Shaheen is retiring at the end of her term, and Hassan isn’t up for reelection until 2028. Smith said voters are likely to move on by then.
Still, the break in the Democratic Party is unusual — at least for New Hampshire.
For a former governor who charted the course for Democrats to win in New Hampshire as moderate problem-solvers, Saint Anselm College politics professor Christopher Galdieri said he wasn’t surprised that Shaheen chose the route of a bipartisan deal that reopened the government.
“Part of the way you survive here is by not being a national Democrat, by setting yourself off a bit from the national party,” he said.
Voters’ response, however, felt different. It surprised Galdieri that New Hampshire would voice the same frustrations that Democrats are showing across the country. He believes Granite Staters are more moderate.
“It’s always been sort of, ‘Oh, things are different here.’ You have to be different to win as a Democrat, because it’s such a different state, right? We don’t have a big city; we don’t have a lot of voters of color,” Galdieri said. “It seems like the Democrats here are angry in a way that Democrats across the country are angry over the end of the shutdown.”
It’s possible, Galdieri said, that the reaction to the shutdown deal signals a departure from the norm Shaheen helped create.
“I think it could be the sort of thing that we look back on and say, this was a disjuncture between the Jeanne Shaheen style of governing and something that comes next,” Galdieri said. “But I don’t know what that something that comes next necessarily is.”
The next generation of activists and volunteers, he said, may not be looking for compromise anymore. They may be done with that approach to politics.
Smith and Galdieri both said the shutdown deal is unlikely to tarnish Shaheen’s long legacy of public service. Smith anticipates one, or potentially multiple, government shutdowns in the next year and believes this one will fade.
In Galdieri’s view, the shutdown and the deal are already beginning to fade.
“I think there’s always a tendency to think that whatever is happening right now is just incredibly important and the thing people are going to remember,” he said, “and I just, I don’t know that this is going to be that.”
He added, “The shutdown, sort of, is feeling like a distant memory.”