For the 29th straight year, Congress is about to fail to fulfill its most basic duty to pass full-year appropriations for the coming year.  Talks have begun about yet another “continuing resolution” to avoid a government shutdown.

Only this time it’s different.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted the right to ignore statutory appropriations and spend or not spend whatever sums he chooses, including closing down entire programs and agencies created and funded by Congress. 

With the Supreme Court so far unwilling to halt this extravagantly unconstitutional power grab, members of Congress of both parties have a stark choice: Either leverage the looming shutdown to reassert their control over the federal purse or retreat into political and constitutional irrelevance. 

This year’s shutdown drama is likely to play out first in the Senate, where 60 votes are needed to overcome a filibuster of any funding bill. While in the past, Democrats have been wary of being blamed for causing a shutdown by refusing to go along with continuing resolutions, many have signaled that this time they are prepared to stand their ground. To win such a showdown, however, will require more than partisan unity and bravado.

For starters, Democrats would need to put aside their navel-gazing about how to win back the working class in the next election and focus on the existential constitutional challenge and the imminent danger of sliding into one-man rule. 

That means keeping their demands clear, simple and thoroughly reasonable: Explicit language in any funding bill requiring agencies and departments to spend all of what Congress appropriates for the purposes and in the manner that Congress designates, with swift and severe legal consequences for any official who intentionally refuses to carry out these statutory instructions.

Focusing on congressional power and prerogatives is the best way to win support from the dozen or so Republican institutionalists in the Senate who are serious about legislating, and whose votes could create a working bipartisan majority in the Senate willing to stand against Trump’s power grab. 

Moreover, by sticking to constitutional issues, Democrats could begin to regain credibility with cynical swing voters who have learned to dismiss their poll-tested bromides about saving the middle class as little more than self-serving partisan gamesmanship. 

The looming shutdown offers Democrats a golden opportunity, in fact, to create the kind of political theater that would allow them to dominate the daily news cycle and shape the narrative as things unfold. 

Imagine the attention they would get if all 47 of them showed up at the normally empty Senate chamber each morning from now to Oct. 1 ready to debate and negotiate a funding compromise and restore Congress as an independent, co-equal branch of government. 

Their collective presence in the chamber would certainly highlight the urgency of the moment. It would also signal to voters that if the issues are important enough to force a shutdown of the government, they also ought also to be important enough to upset the rhythms of their personal lives and their notoriously unproductive three-day work week.

A refusal by Republicans to join such debate and explain why they won’t agree to join in asserting Congress’s rightful role would shift the blame for any shutdown back on them.

Unfortunately, too many Democrats continue to harbor the resistance fantasy that if they simply hang together and hang tough, they can somehow force Republicans to acquiesce to their constitutional budgetary demands. 

The more realistic strategy is to lure a dozen Republicans to break with their caucus by appealing to their sense of duty to the country and their instinct for political survival. 

Turning public opinion against Trump is certainly a necessary first step in that strategy, but hardly sufficient. To give Republicans sufficient incentive to defect, Democrats would need to promise to not provide campaign cash to primary challengers (as they have in the past) and refrain from funding an aggressive Democratic campaign in the general election if they choose to skip the primary and run as an independent. 

Getting Republicans to defy their president and caucus may also require concessions on spending that many Democrats will find distasteful and will stir anger among their own base voters.  That’s the necessary price that a legislative minority must pay to win the battle for American democracy.  

Despite their public displays of fealty and unity, Republicans are not all of one mind. A growing number of Republican members have had it with Trump’s bullying and defending his unrelenting stream of misguided policy initiatives.

With independent voters turning against Trump, those from swing states and districts have begun to worry not only about the country but about their own political survival. Reaching out to those Republicans with the aim of accelerating some sort of party realignment in purple America may be the best strategy for stopping the Trump steamroller and winning back the White House and Congress. 

Unfortunately, that kind of bold, creative thinking is unlikely to come from the current crop of Democratic leaders who remain stuck in the mindset of partisan blood feud and lack the credibility, vision and rhetorical skills to revive a tarnished Democratic brand.  The urgency of the moment demands something different and something better. 

Steven Pearlstein is director of the Fixing Congress Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a longtime writer and columnist for The Washington Post. He is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. The views expressed here are his own.