Eight days into the government shutdown, Senate Democratic communications directors received a private briefing and a memo from pollster Geoff Garin.
The crux of the message: Stay the course because Democrats are winning the battle of public opinion.
"Voters continue to blame Trump and Republicans more than Democrats for the shutdown," said the memo, which was obtained by NBC News and featured new polling data conducted by Hart Research, with findings that are backed by other public national surveys on the shutdown fight.
It added that voters are siding with Democrats' health care funding demands, that "Republicans are starting to feel the heat" on the issue and that the GOP's political pain will worsen "the longer and more aggressively" Democrats litigate it.
Republicans need five more Democratic votes to break a filibuster and pass their bill to reopen the government on a temporary basis and buy time for a larger spending deal. On Thursday, the Senate voted again — for the seventh time — on that plan and a Democratic alternative. No senators budged.
Instead, Democratic leaders, emboldened and energized, are taking every opportunity to highlight their central demand: extend the expiring Obamacare subsidies to avoid health insurance premium hikes or coverage losses for millions of Americans next year. Insurers are already sending out notices of upcoming rate hikes in the mail, and bringing costs back down will get messy if Congress waits until the end of the year to act.
Republican leaders, facing a divided conference with many members who want to end the subsidies, are refusing to make any promises on the issue. Instead, they say, Democrats must vote to reopen the government, and then the two parties can discuss the subsidies.
The pivot to health care has frustrated House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.
"They're trying to make this about health care. It's not. It's about keeping Congress operating so we can get to health care. We always were going to. They're lying to you," Johnson told reporters.
"The health care issues were always going to be something discussed and deliberated and contemplated and debated in October and November."
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Related: C-SPAN caller confronts Mike Johnson about shutdown effects, by Megan Lebowitz
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