Today on the Playbook podcast, it's day three of the federal shutdown and Democrats are still

struggling to form a coherent and cohesive message that excites and unites their party.

Meanwhile, Republicans have been mostly on the same page, but there is some unease among the Senate to OPEO over some of what they're seeing from the White House.

And President Trump declares war on drug cartels, but the White House backtracks.

Hello, I'm Adam Wren.

And I'm Megan Messerly. It's Friday, October 3rd.

And this is the Playbook podcast.

Well, Megan, it's day three of the government shutdown and there is not yet an end in sight.

No, there's not.

There's a procedural side of what's happening to all of this.

The Senate Majority Leader John Thune said yesterday that he's going to give his chamber the weekend to think

about the shutdown and a stopgap spending proposal and they're aiming for a vote Monday.

So essentially we have a shutdown going into next week.

The political side of that, though, is that amid this public posturing Democrats are struggling

to unite around a singular cohesive message. We're seeing

them win the message war and a lot of public polling, but when we saw AOC and Bernie Sanders

released their video about fighting for health care, I noticed that it really caused a lot of

wishcasting among Democrats that it was those people who were messaging this shutdown

and not Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries.

Megan, what are you hearing as you talk to people adjacent to the White House and other Democrats

about how this is all playing out?

The thing that just has struck me, and to your point, that video, this has just been Democrats' problem for a long time now.

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