As of 12:01 am ET, the US federal government has been shut down. Workers deemed “nonessential” are staying at home, meaning that many government functions (like national parks) will be closed because of a lack of staff. “Essential” workers, ranging from soldiers to air traffic controllers, will be working even after money for their paychecks runs out.

This is happening, in large part, because the Democratic Party wants a fight. The shutdown could have been avoided if Democrats had agreed to allow a vote on a “continuing resolution” to fund the government, as they did in March. But this time around, Senate Democrats decided to filibuster the CR and indefinitely block government funding that Republicans have the votes to approve.

The plan is to make this fight about health care. Obamacare subsidies for millions of Americans are set to expire at the end of the year, and Republicans have no interest in reauthorizing them. In an early morning statement, the party’s congressional leadership — Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries — confirmed that they are refusing to pass the budget unless some deal can be struck over the subsidies.

You can see the logic: Democrats poll well ahead of Republicans on health care; if they can refocus attention on the issue, they can drive President Donald Trump’s already-dismal numbers down further and maybe even extract concessions on health policy.

Except this logic is missing an absolutely critical, utterly obvious piece of context: that the Trump administration is in the midst of an authoritarian bid to destroy the constitutional order. This most fundamental fact about our political moment changes everything about the basic logic of political conflict. In shutting down the government over health care, the Democratic leadership reveals that they’ve failed to truly internalize this fact’s significance.

Now, they’re caught in a trap of their own making — one they can only escape by fundamentally changing the way they talk about the shutdown.

The worst of both worlds

Last month, I argued that there were basically two strategic perspectives on how Democrats should fight Trump’s authoritarianism:

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