As the government shutdown enters its second week, Democrats appear to have the upper hand. It's not an overwhelming advantage, but it does seem like the Republicans are losing the battle for public opinion. This strengthens the Democrats' position -- for the time being. Public opinion is a fickle thing and could easily shift as the impacts of the shutdown become more widely felt, but for now Democrats seem to be the ones winning the battle for hearts and minds.

The best evidence of this is how Republicans are now shifting their tone. They based their initial argument on a flat-out lie -- that Democrats were fighting for "illegal aliens to get free healthcare," to the tune of a trillion dollars no less -- but Republicans now seem to be bowing to the reality that people absolutely do not want the Republican agenda on healthcare.

Here is a quote from a press conference Speaker of the House Mike Johnson just gave (you can be excused for mistaking this as an attempt at comedy -- I certainly laughed out loud when I read it):

Let me look right into the camera and tell you clearly: Republicans are the ones concerned about health care. Republicans are the party working around the clock to fix health care.

It's tough to see anyone taking that seriously, since Republicans have actively been trying to destroy healthcare in this country since at least Barack Obama's time. Johnson, later on, said Republicans have already worked to "fix" healthcare by slashing $1 trillion from Medicaid (which is why the whole stance of Republicans somehow being the saviors of healthcare is so downright laughable). But what's notable is that Johnson is making the attempt to paint the GOP as champions of healthcare.

Here is why he is attempting to do so, from the article that quote comes from:

The emphatic statement about Republicans working to fix health care is something of a rhetorical shift from [House Speaker Mike] Johnson, who has for the past two weeks mostly bashed Democrats for arbitrarily demanding health policy concessions on a "clean" government funding bill and dubiously accused them of supporting free health care for unauthorized immigrants.

The shift comes after Senate Democrats held their ground in a third vote on reopening the government on Friday -- and after a weekend of polling showing voters mostly blame President Donald Trump and the GOP for a shutdown, and are overwhelmingly supportive of the health care subsidies Democrats are asking for, with 78% of the public, including 57% of self-identified "MAGA Republicans," believing they should be extended, according to a poll from KFF.

But the most worrying poll result for Republicans may come from a CBS News/YouGov survey which found a 36% plurality believe the shutdown is primarily about health care, compared to a mere 5% who said it was about immigration, reflecting far more voters are buying the Democrats' basic frame of the shutdown than the GOP's. (Republicans on Monday pointed to a poll last month in which 65% of voters said Democrats should not shut the government if their demands aren't met; the poll also showed more voters would blame Republicans for a shutdown.)

This is why Democrats chose this issue as the one to fight for in the shutdown. A whopping 78 percent of the public supports what Democrats are fighting for. Even 57 percent of MAGA Republicans favor it. And other polling has shown that (so far) the public blames Republicans a lot more than Democrats for the shutdown happening. That all leaves a very tough hand for Republicans to play.

At this point, the Democrats now own the issue. But it didn't have to be this way. Before the shutdown happened, a faction of the GOP was urging their leadership to fix the problem of the expiring subsidies. These were vulnerable Republicans (for the most part) who hail from swing districts, who know their chances of being re-elected would go way down if the subsidies end as scheduled at the start of next year. There are other Republicans who strongly insist that the subsidies should go away, and some pragmatic Republicans who cautiously suggest that perhaps the subsidies should be extended just for one year (which would conveniently mean that they would then end right after the midterm elections).

If this were a normal Congress in normal times, the GOP faction who wanted to extend the subsidies would sit down with Democrats and hammer out some compromise that they both could vote for. Efforts to do so have actually taken place, behind the scenes and out of the media spotlight. But now that the issue has been forced by the shutdown, many Republicans are worried that if they do come up with some compromise it'll look like the Democrats "won" the shutdown. And in the age of Trump, the perception of winning and losing has become overly important to Republicans.

Democrats need to maintain their initiative and momentum, and the best way to do that right now would be to write their stance out in legislative language. Come up with a bill that has everything they are asking for in it. File the bill and start demanding Republicans allow it to pass before the government can open again.

This likely won't work, but it would provide a rallying point for Democrats in the meantime, and it would present to the public exactly what the fight is all about (rather than just competing spin from both sides).

I say it won't work, but I am speaking in the short term. This could actually work to solve the problem, eventually. What will happen is the Republicans will (of course) balk at voting on any bill now, since their main demand is: "We can talk about all this later, but we're not even going to discuss it while the government is shut down. Open the government back up, and then we'll hold negotiations." And no bill written solely by Democrats is going to survive intact no matter when such negotiations happen. Having said all of that, though, this could eventually lead to a bill that solves the problem well enough that Democrats can vote for it, even with some Republican changes and additions.

So far, Democrats have the upper hand. It's a rare issue these days that 78 percent of the public agrees upon. That 78 percent includes a whole bunch of Republicans, obviously. By putting the issue front and center, the Democrats will now make it a central issue to their midterm campaigns next year no matter how it all ends. If Republicans refuse to budge and the subsidies expire on schedule, then Democratic ads will be hammering Republicans for "doubling everyone's healthcare costs." If some agreement is reached, then the Democratic ads will highlight it as a purely Democratic victory which they had to drag Republicans kicking and screaming to support. Either way, it builds on one of the few remaining strengths Democrats have these days, since the public trusts them on healthcare issues a lot more than they trust Republicans.

Mike Johnson can claim that Republicans "are the ones concerned about healthcare," and that they are "working around the clock to fix healthcare," but he's going to have a very hard time convincing the public of that if the subsidies expire and Medicaid is allowed to be gutted.

The letters warning of massive premium hikes are already being sent out by insurance companies. If this shutdown didn't happen, the people receiving those letters might never have connected this shock to politics at all -- but now that the Democrats put the issue front-and-center, the Republicans can't avoid getting blamed for it.

As I said, things can change, and they can change quickly. Public opinion is fickle. Shutdowns grind everyone down the longer they go on. But for the time being, Democrats definitely seem to be the ones with the upper hand.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant