The federal government shut down operations deemed nonessential on Wednesday over an impasse about whether to continue subsidies for buying health insurance at current levels. The stakes are high. In the short term, 750,000 federal workers will be furloughed each day. Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested that he’ll take the opportunity to make deep and permanent cuts to the federal workforce, so they’ll also have to hope they get their jobs back when it’s all over. Hundreds of thousands more whose jobs are deemed essential are expected to keep working for free until funding resumes. In the long term, if Democrats cave, many millions of people could see their health care costs skyrocket.

On Tuesday, ten hours before the shutdown was set to begin, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer stood behind a podium and addressed the assembled media. It was an important moment. What stirring words would the Democrats’ leader deliver as his party went into this fight?

Well, here’s how it started:

Before I get to my substantive remarks, I just heard something that Trump said. Here’s what he said: “We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible and bad for them and irreversible like cutting vast numbers of people out.” Well, there it is. Trump admitted himself that he is using Americans as political pawns. He is admitting that he is doing the firing of people if, and God forbid, it happens. He is using Americans as a pawns. As I said, Democrats do not want a shutdown. We stand ready to work with Republicans to find a bipartisan compromise and the ball is in their court. He . . . when he says he will do things, he is taking ownership. He is taking ownership.

Top Democrats’ messaging hasn’t gotten much better since Tuesday afternoon. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, while a bit more animated than Schumer, often seems at least as bothered about a juvenile deepfake video that Trump posted parodying Jeffries as he is about the shutdown and the related health care issue.

Schumer, Jeffries, and other senior Democrats always mention health care at some point in their statements, but it’s hard to escape the impression that their real passion is reserved for issues of process and decorum. They seem especially concerned with establishing that the other side drew first blood. Their core complaint seems to be that Trump and the Republicans broke from precedent by presenting the Continuing Resolution (CR) that would have continued funding as an ultimatum rather than negotiating about details.

A video released on Thursday by Schumer’s Senate colleague Bernie Sanders exemplifies a strikingly different approach. In this walk-and-talk video, Sanders starts by saying he just ran into democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC). After an opening thirty seconds of sweet and slightly silly greetings, the two cut to the case.

Bernie asks AOC why she didn’t vote for the Continuing Resolution. She replies, simply and directly, that by cutting subsidies for buying health insurance for state exchanges, the immediate effect of the CR would be that millions of Americans would see their monthly insurance premiums double.

Bernie reminds us that this is happening at a time when Americans are already paying “the highest prices in the world for health care” and many already can’t afford their premiums. He tosses things back to AOC, who spells out exactly what that’s going to mean: “people getting bankrupted over chemotherapy, people going to the pharmacy and not being able to afford their insulin, and frankly, it means that a lot of Americans are going to be in danger.”

Bernie adds that studies from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania show that the doubling of these premiums and the Republicans’ Medicaid cuts will combine to lead to 50,000 more preventable deaths every year. “If you don’t have the money to go to a doctor and you’re sick, you die,” he says. The video ends with the pair reminding us that their ultimate goal is Medicare for All. The health care system is already broken. America is already “the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people.” But “these guys want to make it worse,” and that’s exactly what’s going to happen if Democrats relent in the shutdown fight.

The difference between the simple and powerful message delivered by the two democratic socialists and most of what’s been coming from top Democrats is stark. “When he says he will do things, he is taking ownership,” on the one hand, makes zero sense to the average voter. “If you don’t have the money to go to a doctor and you’re sick, you die,” on the other hand, makes perfect sense and sharply clarifies the political stakes.

Anyone considering how best to oppose the Trump administration should think carefully about that contrast. Which do you suppose is going to be more effective in this fight and all the others to come against the most reactionary and authoritarian administration in recent American history?

Centrist Democrat leaders like Jeffries and Schumer are spending this moment emphasizing that the shutdown is Trump’s fault because he was inflexible about negotiating. Meanwhile, left-wing leaders like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are emphasizing that it’s already a moral obscenity that America doesn’t guarantee health care to all its people as a right, and they’ll be damned if they vote for anything that will make our health care system even more cruel than it already is.

Trump is only growing more aggressive and confident. We need an effective and credible opposition to stop him. To build that, our leaders can either emphasize Republicans’ refusal to negotiate for a bipartisan compromise, or they can emphasize making sure that chemotherapy payments don’t bankrupt cancer patients. Choose wisely.