When Both Parties Turn Against Themselves — 11/17/25

One of the best things about a two-party system is that it requires compromise between its factions in order to move forward in any meaningful and impactful way. The worst thing is that such a need for compromise leads to almost constant infighting among those factions. Any party that includes both Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is frequently going to be at war with itself, as is any party that has room for both Donald Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
 
For most of modern history, those internal battles have taken place largely along traditional left-right policy divides, pitting centrists in both parties against their more ideologically extreme members. But both Democrats and Republicans are currently experiencing much deeper divisions in which the familiar disagreements between liberals and/or conservatives against moderates are replaced by even angrier arguments between both parties’ populist insurgents and their longtime establishment leaders. While there is often overlap between the left/right tensions and the insider/outsider combat, that is not always the case. 
 
The recent fight among Democrats over whether/how to settle the longest government shutdown in American history reflected familiar conflicts between the party’s progressive base and its center-left members. But it also highlighted a deeper philosophical breach between traditional Democratic leaders who have historically shaped party policy and frustrated renegades who seek a more fundamental upheaval that prioritizes confrontation over compromise.
 
Schumer himself has been caught in the middle of this brewing fratricide. The New York Democrat came under heavy fire last spring for agreeing to a budget deal that avoided a government shutdown at that time. So it should have been of little surprise that Schumer adopted a more confrontational approach last month, outlining a series of budgetary and legislative demands from Republicans that led to the forty-plus-day closure of the federal government, the longest in American history.

No political party that has ever held out against a budget agreement to achieve policy goals has ever succeeded. As the real-world inconvenience and suffering spread, the holdouts eventually put up their votes amid promises to fight another day. That’s exactly what happened last week, when eight Democratic senators finally decided that there was nothing more to be gained while flights were cancelled, food stamps were withheld, and other disruptions spread. So they cast their votes to reopen the government—and were immediately assaulted by their fellow party members.

The eight Democrats who voted to end the shutdown represent competitive states and are both centrists and establishmentarians. Fierce criticism arrived not just from Democratic progressives but from moderates as well. Schumer, even after voting against reopening the government, has received the greatest amount of blame. The anti-Schumer argument is part generational and part attitudinal. But at the core is the suggestion that he should have fought harder and better, the way that younger and angrier outsiders might have done.

There’s no evidence that a more aggressive approach would have pressured Republicans to give in. But a growing number of Democrats have called for Schumer’s ouster as Senate leader, and there are now questions about whether he will even seek re-election to his seat in 2028. Ironically, a career-long proud progressive may end up being the most significant casualty of the party’s unhappiness with itself.

Republicans have faced many of their own ideological divides in the past: the Goldwater-Rockefeller and Ford-Reagan fights largely shaped the GOP’s agenda for decades until Donald Trump’s hostile takeover. With a few vocal holdouts, the party has stayed largely unified since Trump’s ascension. But that might be changing as well, as cracks have begun to emerge in what has always been a rock-solid MAGA base of support.

The most notable brewing rebellion against Trump has been over the release of federal files relating to the Jeffrey Epstein controversy. Despite the White House’s strenuous efforts, a handful of House Republicans have provided the votes to require the Justice Department to make public the remaining evidence of Epstein’s illicit and criminal behavior. As a likely vote looms this week, it appears that many other additional GOP members will flout the president by supporting the files’ release too.

This willingness to push back against Trump is exceptional, but no longer unique. There are also brewing signs of discord from conservatives unhappy with the president’s actions on trade, immigration and international military engagement. The president himself is clearly unsettled by the pushback, but it comes with the realization that even the most anti-establishment president in American history is now seen as a political insider by many in his own ranks.