Catie Edmondson [11/15/25] 

Read the article here.

Senator Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona, stood before his constituents crammed into a senior center in Tucson and addressed the elephant in the room.

The event he had organized here, in a swing district represented by a Republican in this swing state, was to discuss the Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.

But just days earlier, eight of his Democratic colleagues had backed down from their party’s demand that Republicans extend those credits in exchange for funding the government, voting with the G.O.P. to end the longest shutdown in American history and unleashing a wave of recriminations from all corners of the party.

“We saw the shutdown,” Mr. Gallego said in his opening remarks, acknowledging the pain it had created for federal workers and food aid recipients. “It was harsh. It was horrible.”

“The last thing that we need to be seeing,” he continued, “is people playing the poor against the less-poor, only for the rich to win at the end. Because that is exactly what happened. So we’re going to continue to make sure that we fight to make sure that people have access to affordable health care.”

Mr. Gallego was test driving what Democratic lawmakers, aides and strategists say will be the party’s core message for the 2026 midterm elections, centered around placing the blame for massive increases in health care premiums and looming cuts to Medicaid squarely at Republicans’ feet.

One year from now, the hopeful thinking goes, voters will not focus on the Democrats’ surrender in the shutdown fight, but instead on their anger at Republicans for refusing to extend the health care subsidies.

There were few signs during the hourlong gathering of an outpouring of anger at Democrats in Washington. No one rose to ask Mr. Gallego, who had voted against the spending deal, why Democrats weren’t fighting harder. Nor did they demand responses about the pain the shutdown had caused. What most of them wanted to know was what could be done to fix the nation’s health care system.

Eve Shapiro, a doctor who attended the town hall, said in an interview that the shutdown was “a fight worth having,” because it made more Americans aware of the issue of the expiring subsidies and how millions of people would be affected if they were not extended.

“I was a little disappointed that it got settled in the way it did, without any resolution, because even though there’s going to be discussion, we know the Republicans aren’t going to support it,” Ms. Shapiro said. “But that’ll be good for the Democrats, because it’ll show, ‘Oh, they promised to talk about it, but then there is no talk.’ So ultimately, I think it brings our issues to the fore.”

That was the bet Mr. Gallego appeared to be making on Friday night, on the heels of a legislative capitulation that left many in his party feeling bruised. Democratic lawmakers have fanned out across the country carrying the same message, toiling to move past the demoralizing episode and toward a health care debate they believe will carry their party to big midterm election wins next year.

At about the same time in New Hampshire, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, one of the Democratic defectors who voted with Republicans to end the shutdown, received cheers from attendees at the state Democratic Party’s annual dinner in Nashua when she shouted back at a congressional candidate who heckled her about siding with the G.O.P.

“You look at our record, and you tell me what you’ve done to protect the health care of Americans — and it’s not even close to what we’ve done,” Ms. Shaheen replied, to a burst of applause.

In Tucson, Rod Norrish, a retired epidemiologist, stood and bemoaned Washington’s penchant for moving “from crisis to crisis,” especially, he said, on health care.

“We know that the Republican Party has had a plan in place for years, and they’re implementing it,” Mr. Norrish said, referencing the Project 2025 blueprint that conservatives had devised before President Trump took office. “What do the Democrats have in terms of a long-term plan?”

Mr. Gallego, who has been mentioned as a potential presidential prospect in 2028, responded that he agreed that Democrats should have “a Plan 2029 that focuses on making sure that Americans have a chance in this country,” including ensuring access to affordable housing. Then he quickly pivoted to criticizing the district’s sitting Republican congressman, Representative Juan Ciscomani, for voting to approve his party’s marquee tax bill that included cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the food aid program.

That resonated with many in the audience, including Michele Watson, a retired bookkeeper who said, “I just wish the Republicans wouldn’t take away health care.”

But she was not completely ready to move past her own party’s defeat in the shutdown denouement.

“I don’t think that the Democrats who voted for the bill made a very good deal,” Ms. Watson said. “They didn’t make, basically, any kind of deal. I’m very concerned about people losing their health care.

“A lot of Democrats are fighting,” she added later, “but there are some that aren’t trying very hard. I’ve heard people say some of them need to be primaried.”

Florence Johnson, a retired former employee at the state’s school of social work here, declared herself “extremely disappointed in the people who decided to vote with the Republicans ending the shutdown, because they got nothing for all the pain that everybody went through.”

That’s a sentiment Mr. Gallego has been hearing a lot lately. Most of the calls his office has received have been from people who thought “that we should have held out more to get that leverage,” he said in a brief interview after the town hall.

“But at the same time, they understand that we’re in the fight, and this is what we care about,” he said. “So they’re asking us to make sure we keep going as long as we can to get the tax credits extended.”

Mr. Gallego began his public remarks by recalling witnessing Republicans’ failed effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act in 2017.

“They were just trying to save money, not necessarily save lives,” Mr. Gallego said. “This all sounds very familiar, right?”

Left unsaid was that the following year, his party’s relentless focus on that failed G.O.P. health care repeal propelled Democrats to sweeping midterm election victories, allowing them to take back the House. Many are hoping for a similar outcome next year.

There were some signs during Mr. Gallego’s gathering that even voters who are not die-hard Democratic supporters could be swayed by his message. Daryl Cole, a retired former city transportation official who said he was unhappy with both political parties and rarely attended such events, said he had showed up because he felt he had to do something given that Mr. Trump and Republicans appeared to be concerned only with helping the wealthy.

He called the shutdown “necessary, ” because Democrats “were trying to prove a point: The Republicans, at this point, weren’t going to give in at any cost.”

Mr. Cole said the Democratic Party had gone “too far to the left” and tried to become “everything for everybody,” but he also said that he was bothered by Mr. Trump’s efforts to cancel funding for projects across the country that Congress had already approved.

“There’s got to be some set of laws that we follow,” Mr. Cole said.

Mr. Gallego sounded eager to appeal to people like Mr. Cole as he argued that all voters should agree that the Republican agenda was not working for them.

“They want to divide the poor versus not-so-poor, in order for them to be able to get these tax cuts,” Mr. Gallego said. “They want to kick people off Medicaid. It is a very easy thing for a lot of us to be divided right now. The most important thing we can do is to be united.”