Ultimately the argument was that if the shutdown happened Trump would mass fire federal workers, regardless of ultimate legality. Which is already somewhat happening anyway. Besides Vought is ticking off the boxes at OPM which will allow entirely legal RIFs in a few months of hundreds of thousands of government workers.
So from my perspective it boils down to the bad thing happening later with congressional approval or happening sooner without it. It is a difficult choice but saying you will not fund this lawlessness is the only real lever that congress has. The lever which a handful of Senate Democrats have decided to saw off.
Right, neither position is clearly a winning position.
You can argue that not funding Trump and making Republicans either come back with a better offer or nuke the filibuster is "more" opposition than passing a CR. That's pretty clear. Yet, if firing as many government employees as possible is your goal, getting more powers to do just that while also turning off the courts that haven't been rolling over so far may or may not be the best play.
You can also argue that funding the government proves that Democrats are clueless and feckless or whatever. That's pretty clear. Yet, if trying to keep the government from being totally gutted instead of just decimated is your goal, preventing Musk from having more power to just lay off the entire federal workforce may or may not be the best play.
This whole thread is a symptom of the fact that the Democratic Party is a "Systems" party that isn't the inherently correct organization that can fight against a non-governmental organization like Project2025 that has assumed control of the government. And it never has been. You defeat a faux populist movement with an actual populist movement. Sanders and Warren were the clear options in 2016. AOC and...Sanders are still the clear options now. Right now, it seems pretty clear that Sanders is the leader of the opposition in the Senate and AOC is the leader of the opposition in the House. There are a sprinkling of Democratic governors who are leaders of the opposition in their own states, too. That's a start.
US Citizens will need to fight against fascism as individuals and as groups. The best you could expect from Democratic politicians who only know the system, is for them to teach non-system non-fascists how to work the system once the system is back in place. Schumer can only balance pros and cons and believe that using the system is ultimately a pro. That's what he's doing. Allowing the US to go into a shutdown now would be foisting upon individual US citizens the power of stopping fascism, and I don't think the average US citizen is there yet. People are still calling their elected representatives expecting some sort of opposition when Democrats have close to zero actual power at this point. How many of the people on these here forums still haven't exercised their second amendment RIGHT for whatever reason, and yet are expecting some House Member with zero power to be able to save them?
It's a tough call and I don't think either position the Democrats have boxed themselves into has a clearly "correct" side. Which side is worse? Only time will tell.
What has become clear is that the average voter choosing to remain harmless if ignored isn't making the situation any better. See my signature that I've been rocking for the past 4.5 years. Fascists don't care about your memes and your stickers and your jokes. They do care about your fucking fist knocking out their teeth.
You can be peaceful without being harmless. Exercise your rights. If you're just a harmless voter stuck leaving a message with your Rep's intern, don't expect that we're just going to walk out of this unscathed.