Who exactly is advising the Democrats these days? I’m genuinely curious, because their latest “takeaway” from week one of the Schumer Shutdown is downright laughable. These geniuses actually think they won the first round of the messaging war.
Earth to Democrats: refusing to cave for a week doesn’t make you winners — it just makes you delusional. Everyone knows you’ll fold soon enough, probably right after the so-called “No Kings” rally in D.C. on October 18.
And let’s be honest, there’s nothing more politically toxic than trying to justify spending $1.5 trillion on health care for illegal immigrants. Yet here they are, patting themselves on the back for “winning” the narrative. The whole thing would be funny if it weren’t such a perfect snapshot of how out of touch these people really are, via Puck News:
Last Wednesday, in the hours after the government officially went into shutdown mode, researchers at Resonate, a firm that monitors online discourse for Democrats, began to notice something unusual: For once, the left was actually winning a message battle online.
Posts about the shutdown—outraged reactions, explainer videos from creators and Democratic politicians, attacks on Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress—were noticeably overperforming on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
Mainstream news accounts as well as left-leaning ones like MeidasTouch, Courier Newsroom, and NowThis Impact were seeing nearly twice as much engagement on the major platforms as they normally do. Clicks, views, and shares were spiking for liberal creators like Aaron Parnas, Harry Sisson, and Dean Withers.
… The Trump administration’s sombrero-themed meme attacks on Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Jeffries, claiming that Democrats wanted to give free healthcare to illegal immigrants, didn’t seem to hit the mark. Resonate found that right-leaning pages in their tracking mentioned sombreros 126 times last Wednesday—but those posts underperformed their average engagement levels by 40 percent.
“The healthcare for illegals argument, what we call ‘sombrero posting,’ did not really seem to be getting them anywhere,” said Eric Coffin-Gould, the vice president of analytics at Resonate. “Anything that goes up on Donald Trump’s accounts is always going to perform well, but outside of that, they seemed to actually be underperforming.”
On the other hand, left-leaning shutdown posts that included references to healthcare—specifically, the Democratic argument that Republicans were preparing to ax health insurance subsidies for millions of Americans—were performing four times as well as content that didn’t mention the issue.
The D.N.C., which went megaviral on TikTok and X with a cutesy/weird shutdown explainer clip starring kittens, jumped 24 spots on Resonate’s ranking of social media accounts compared to the previous week. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also collected millions of views with a widely shared walk-and-talk video explaining the Obamacare subsidy cliff.
So let’s get this straight — the president’s social media team has no real reach, yet somehow we’re supposed to believe Democrats “won” the messaging war? Please. When you hold the bully pulpit, you already have the upper hand. Full stop.
Democrats shut down the government over funding NPR and handing out health care to illegal immigrants. They’re the ones who tanked progress on extending expiring health care subsidies — something everyone saw coming. Meanwhile, Republicans offered a clean, reasonable solution: a seven-week continuing resolution to finish all 12 appropriations bills, at Biden-era spending levels, which Democrats themselves once supported.
It comes in mens and womens and lets your friends know you're happy to express your views and don't care what anyone thinks! Cheers!
So hold the line, GOP. Don’t cave to the noise. Because let’s be real — Democrats, whose approval ratings are in freefall and who can’t point to a single popular issue, didn’t “win” anything. The idea that they somehow came out ahead is pure fantasy — and hilarious, if it weren’t so pathetic.
