We are now one week away from a government shutdown. At this point, the safe bet would be that one is going to happen. And as always in such situations, the blame game has already begun in earnest. While the center ring of the circus that passes for politics these days was today undoubtedly Donald Trump making a complete fool of himself on the world stage during his address to the United Nations' General Assembly, the shutdown sideshow seems to deserve more attention than parsing Trump's idiocy (which, if I had gone that route, would have prominently featured the phrase "tilting at windmills," just for the record).

There was a White House meeting scheduled today between Trump and the Democratic leaders in Congress (House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer). So far in all of the run-up to where we find ourselves now, the Republicans have been refusing to even talk to the Democratic leadership. This includes Trump as well as the GOP congressional leadership. So today's meeting would have been a rather monumental occasion.

But Trump chickened out. He did so (naturally) in a social media post where he insulted the Democrats, called them names, and tried to bully them into just rolling over and supporting his position. Which is all pretty much par for the course, for Trump.

It's impossible to tell why Trump chickened out, but a big part of it was probably the fear that the Democrats would wind up scoring big points off of him while he looked out-of-touch and weak. This happened repeatedly during his first term, in meetings with Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats. So it's likely that Trump didn't want to give Democrats the chance to score major political points either in the negotiations (especially if they had been conducted with cameras in the room) or afterwards, when Democrats spoke to reporters on the White House lawn. But whatever the real reason actually was, Trump punted. Which increases the likelihood of a shutdown, although at this point it already seemed like it was pretty inevitable.

For those that haven't been keeping score, here's a quick rundown of where we find ourselves. If a budget bill isn't passed by October first, the government will shut down. The Republican House has passed a short-term continuing resolution (C.R.) that will keep the government open until just before Thanksgiving. They then went on vacation, since that is what they do best. This was a fairly "clean" C.R., as it did not include poison-pill GOP agenda items in it but instead will just keep government spending mostly on autopilot for seven weeks.

In the Senate, Democrats introduced their own C.R. that addresses some of their priorities. There are several included, but the main ones -- the ones likely to become "red lines" for Democrats in the negotiations (if any ever happen) -- deal with healthcare. Democrats are demanding a continuation of Obamacare subsidies which are scheduled to expire at the end of this calendar year (which will send out-of-pocket costs through the roof for millions) as well as a rollback of the worst of the Medicaid cuts that Republicans passed in their big, ugly budget bill earlier this year. Those are the big agenda items for Democrats, and they're pretty good ones to focus on, since Democrats have always enjoyed an advantage in public opinion over healthcare in general and because the insurance cost hikes are so immediate (indeed, letters from insurers are already going out to people telling them how enormous the spike in their costs is going to be if Congress does nothing).

Schumer has already successfully pressured Senate Majority Leader John Thune into holding floor votes on both bills -- the Republican one the House passed and the Democratic counterproposal. Both failed. Neither got anywhere near the 60 votes that will be necessary to pass a C.R.

Democrats are dug in, at this point. Schumer massively disappointed the Democratic base earlier in the year, by allowing a C.R. to be approved right after Trump took office. This wasn't so much over any specific policy item as just Democratic voters being disgusted that Democrats didn't seem to have any fight left in them at all. So for Democrats, this is already completely performative. Their real goals in the shutdown fight are: to be seen fighting and fighting hard by their own voters, and to get their faces on television news programs and appear politically relevant (instead of being largely ignored while the rest of the Trumpian circus rages on).

As I have written previously, the Democratic base will at first be delighted that Democrats are indeed at least attempting to fight back against Trump in some way, but when the endgame to the shutdown comes, they will likely also be disappointed at the outcome (since shutdowns almost never actually accomplish policy goals).

The Republican base will likely be enraged that Democrats are trying to blame them for a shutdown, and they will be supportive of anything Trump does in the meantime (a shutdown actually would give Trump a fairly free hand to slash funding for things he doesn't like, which is one big reason Schumer didn't let one happen back when Elon Musk was waving his chainsaw around). But then Republican voters will be triumphant when the shutdown ends, since they'll chalk it up as a victory for Trump almost no matter what happens.

There is also a faction of Republicans in Congress who absolutely detest continuing resolutions, on the basic principle that Congress should pass its budgets on time with multiple specific bills rather than cram everything into some sort of giant omnibus bill that is shoved through at the last possible instant. But while they may still badmouth the process, as we've already repeatedly seen (when voting actually takes place), they will not stand on this principle (as some of them have done in the past) but rather they will cave and vote for whatever Trump tells them to in the end.

The next week is going to be full of posturing and maybe even some actual negotiations. But those negotiations will likely go nowhere. The House, as mentioned, is scheduled to be on vacation until after the shutdown deadline passes. The Senate will have one week to either pass the House's C.R. (which would avoid a shutdown), pass the Democratic C.R. (which is highly unlikely), pass some sort of compromise worked out between Schumer and Thune (also pretty unlikely at this point), or just completely punt and do absolutely nothing (which seems like the safe bet, right now).

So the battle has begun over who will be to blame for the shutdown. Democrats are trying to get out in front of this, which is good to see. Jeffries posted on social media:

Trump Always Chickens Out.

Donald Trump just cancelled a high stakes meeting in the Oval Office with myself and Leader Schumer.

The extremists want to shut down the government because they are unwilling to address the Republican healthcare crisis that is devastating America.

Good framing all around, and Jeffries keeps the focus on the "Republican healthcare crisis." Chuck Schumer chimed in with a statement of his own:

Trump is running away from the negotiating table before he even gets there. While Americans face rising costs and a Republican healthcare crisis, Trump would rather throw a tantrum than do his job. Democrats are ready to work to avoid a shutdown -- Trump and Republicans are holding America hostage. Donald Trump will own the shutdown.

Democrats are even already putting some money into the effort. A Democratic group is putting up $3 million to run ads in 10 battleground House districts slamming Republicans on both the shutdown and inflation. Here is the transcript of one of the ads they have deployed, against an Arizona Republican in the House who won in a district that "Donald Trump also narrowly won last year."

They promised to lower prices, but you’re not imagining it -- Republican tariffs are making everything more expensive: detergent, toilet paper, clothes, beef. Juan Ciscomani voted to let Trump make tariffs even worse and voted to make healthcare more expensive. And now, Republicans in Congress are threatening to shut down the government, causing economic chaos. Call Juan Ciscomani. Tell him: "No tariffs. No shutdown. Keep his promises. Lower costs --now."

Republicans haven't fully responded yet, but it's not too hard to figure out what their political argument is going to be. They're going to point to the fact that their C.R. is a clean bill, which is usually the neutral fallback position in these situations. When Democrats hit them hard on the fact that millions will have to pay a lot more for their healthcare come January, they'll swear up and down that they fully intend to fix the problem and that there's plenty of time left to do so -- in a separate bill. They will likely reject the Democratic demand to change their big, ugly budget bill that cuts a trillion dollars from Medicaid, though (it just seems like this would be a bridge too far for them).

So how will all this play out among the wide swath of the American public who aren't part of the fervid base of either Republicans or Democrats (which I would define as: "People who are aware a shutdown is approaching," for the most part)? How will the large portion of the public who just doesn't pay that much attention to politics react next week when the crisis becomes unavoidable in the mainstream media? Will they buy the Democratic argument that it is Trump and the Republicans' fault that the government is shutting down? Or will they buy the GOP argument that this crisis is entirely one of the Democrats' making? And how will they feel about a shutdown if it goes on longer than a few days? Will their feelings shift when the inevitable stories about government workers losing their paychecks and national parks being shuttered all appear?

Those are the stakes, really. Democrats are pre-emptively making their case in a much stronger way than they usually do -- at least for someone who pays attention to such things. For all the rest, who will win the government shutdown blame game? That's the nature of the fight, for now at least.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant