Democrats hurt themselves by not having a better plan leading into the recent government shutdown, Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, said Thursday.
Ryan appeared on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and played Monday morning quarterback regarding the recent three-day closure of the government.
"I think it definitely hurt us, there's no question about it. We went in as a party without a real plan, without a real strategy on how we were gonna get out or what the end game was," Ryan said.
"So we lost before it even started, in the sense that we weren't prepared, in my estimation, to figure out what exactly it is we wanted, what did our senators who are on the front lines who had to run for re-election, what were they looking for, what could they handle? So at the end of the day, I think it did damage our ability to try to get it done and I don't think we built a big enough coalition."
Ryan then looked back at the two government shutdowns under former President Bill Clinton in 1995 and 1995-1996. The party, Ryan said, was more unified then with its message.
"I thought back a lot to when the government shut down under Bill Clinton and he had two or three things he was saying: 'They're gonna cut medicare, they're gonna cut medicaid, and they're gonna gut the environment.' That was a consistent message that played across the country," Ryan said.
The recent shutdown began at midnight last Saturday and ended late Monday when President Donald Trump signed a short-term spending bill that passed in both houses of Congress.
Ryan said Democrats should have been focused not just on Dreamers, the people who have benefited from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, but also on truck drivers and coal miners who are seeing their pensions cut, along with people dealing with opioid addiction.
"We should have been standing on a stage with the Dreamers, with the teamsters, with the coal miners, and with people who need addiction treatment and recovery," Ryan said.
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