Keller: Who will voters hold responsible for the government shutdown?
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ-TV, CBS News or Paramount, a Skydance Corporation.
The current government shutdown is the 11th time the federal government has halted activities and services since 1980. And as the political climate in Washington has soured, the disputes that lead to shutdowns have become more commonplace.
But who stands to gain politically from this latest episode?
Most likely, nobody. Welcome to another edition of the D.C. blame game.
"Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House," said Congressman Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts). "So, if they can't keep government open, then they're going to get rightfully blamed for a shutdown."
"The Chuck Schumer, AOC wing of the Democratic Party shut down the government because they said to us 'we will open the government but only if you give billions of dollars of funding for healthcare for illegal aliens,'" says Vice President J.D. Vance, repeating a false claim about Democratic demands to reverse cuts in Medicaid and Obamacare. (Neither program covers undocumented immigrants.)
But Moulton's claim that Republicans will inherit the blame is yet to be proven.
Who do voters blame?
A new NPR/Marist poll shows 38% of respondents blame the GOP for the shutdown, 27% blame the Democrats, and for now, 31% blame both parties, suggesting the partisan onus could shift. And among those all-important swing-voting independents, a plurality blames both parties, with 36% pointing to the Republicans and 19% to the Democrats.
"The instigating party thinks 'I'm going to look good doing this, and I'm going to gain leverage,'" said political journalist and historian Bill Scher, who has studied the 45-year history of government shutdowns.
He sees a pattern: "The popularity of the issue you tried to bring into the picture becomes irrelevant, your polls go down, you clearly see you're losing leverage so what's the point of all this, and so you cave."
How long will the shutdown last?
That's what happened to President Donald Trump during the 35-day shutdown of 2018-19 over border wall funding. "This could easily go beyond that because who has the incentive to resolve it?" said Scher. "Nobody."
How all this affects the elections depends on how long it lasts and how much damage it causes. But most likely, this will be just a piece of the puzzle voters put together as they consider their choices in the midterms.
Scher said the polling number to watch is the generic ballot test that asks which party you'd support if the election were today. Democrats hold a very narrow lead in the latest polls.
If that number starts to move significantly, it could have a major impact on how long this standoff lasts.