Public Opinion Key to Ending Shutdown: Bernstein

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00:00We're in day six of the shutdown. We're on week two officially. Given that you do have this

00:05experience under your belt, what's your best guess as to what those conversations behind

00:10those closed doors might sound like at this point? Well, there's a lot of, first of all,

00:15thank you for having me on and raising this important topic. And I thought the previous

00:19conversation was very helpful as well. There are two main conversations that you'd expect

00:26behind closed doors right now, or at least two. One is assessing who's winning. Public opinion

00:33is a huge factor in determining how long this goes on and when it ends. Right now, the polling shows

00:41that Democrats are doing better than Republicans in this regard, both because people are somewhat

00:48moved by the Democrats' message regarding health coverage. It's also the case that 70% of people

00:56who are on the Affordable Care Act exchanges live in red states. So it's not quite the clean,

01:01red, blue break that Republicans would like. And then there's a discussion of just pure functionality.

01:08Are we getting what we need? How damaging is it that the data reports aren't coming out?

01:13Who's an exempt person? What's going on with things that are huge for consumers, air traffic control,

01:20the TSA workers? Remember, they're now working without pay. And that has been a real source of

01:26pressure in prior shutdowns. So there's some of the things going on, I would imagine, behind closed

01:31doors. Well, that's what I'm curious about, where the rubber meets the road when it comes to actually

01:35determining public opinion. As you say, that's really going to determine who blinks first when it

01:41comes to this standoff. So, I mean, maybe missing the jobs report, we care about that. But when it

01:46comes to the American public, what are some of the things that we need to keep an eye on as these days

01:52and potentially weeks progress? Well, it's a great point. Folks coming to your microphones, including

01:58myself, will bemoan all day missing the jobs report. It's not something that regular people are

02:04really keyed into. I think it has a lot more to do with the things that affect people's everyday

02:11lives. OK, so travel is huge. And I've seen shutdowns end the afternoon of the morning that

02:19the air traffic controller said, that's it. We're just not going to keep coming to work without pay.

02:24Now, that can take four weeks. It can take five weeks. But that is what happened in one of the more

02:30recent shutdowns. Same with, of course, TSA workers. People are very sensitive to those kinds

02:37of lines. Then you have services that people want to access, whether it's getting your passport in a

02:44timely way, whether it's calling the Social Security Administration, which is very clear, of course,

02:49Social Security checks go out and they'll continue to go out. The workers that send those out are

02:53so-called exempt or essential workers or exempt from the furloughs. But if you try to call somebody and

02:59get them on the phone, it's hard anyway. It's particularly hard now. So I think it's those

03:04kinds of, you might think of them as almost harassment just in getting through your daily

03:08lives factors that can lead to a level of frustration that eventually forces Congress to

03:14move. I am curious, Jared, just about the politicking around this, particularly on the

03:19Democrats' side. I know that they have made this an issue about the Affordable Care Act and

03:23reinstating the provisions that they think should have never been stripped out to begin with out

03:29of those previous bills. But I'm also curious as to whether there is something underneath the

03:34surface here that goes a little bit deeper about trying to curb the power of the presidency,

03:40of Trump specifically.

03:42Oh, that's unquestionable. And I don't even know if it's that far under the surface. I mean,

03:47you've heard Democrats explicitly argue that one of the motivations for the shutdown is that they

03:54can't even trust Republicans if there's a handshake, if there's agreement, because of all these

04:00rescissions and impoundments. The idea would be that you'd legislate a budget deal, but then the

04:05other side will refuse to spend the allocated funds. I think one way in which Democrats are operating

04:11is that this may not prove to be the ultimately successful legislative strategy. They may not end up

04:19getting exactly what they want. That's typically the case in shutdowns. But it's also a very important

04:25messaging strategy for them. They have the microphone. They have a little bit of leverage

04:29here because of the filibuster. And they're going to let people know the ways in which, A, they're being

04:35left out of politics, B, the ways in which Republicans are hurting them right where it hurts, in their

04:40affordability pockets, in their wallets and pocketbooks. And C, just very, very focused on

04:48the health care dimension of all that.

04:51Does that, do you think that that's going to resonate, though, with the American people? I mean,

04:55we've seen the spin by the Republicans and they've been relentless and more importantly, united in that

05:01messaging so far. And I am curious as to how rank and file voters actually view what's going on in

05:06Washington. Well, that's why we now have pollsters who are literally taking daily polls of this stuff.

05:11So that question is very much a temperature question. You have to take the temperature every

05:16day, see where the public is. Thus far, I've actually been surprised about how disciplined

05:21the Democrats are. They're not exactly known for being a disciplined group these days, but they've

05:26been staying very much on message. And I've seen numbers north of 70 percent in terms of people who

05:33are moved by the Democratic message that Republicans are hurting them when it comes to health care

05:39affordability. This certainly came up during the Budget Debate Act. But the fact that 77 percent

05:47of folks on the ACA exchanges are in red states, that hasn't been lost on folks in the debate.

05:53And the fact that Republicans, of course, control all three branches of government for, if you want to

05:58include the conservatives on the Supreme Court. And so thus far, Democrats have been prevailing. I have a

06:04sense that that's pretty elastic. It could change perhaps quickly. But that is that that is the

06:10temperature taking exercise these days.

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