Democrats cave, voting to end government shutdown and sending the bill to be signed by Donald Trump.

The Capitol. New York Times. 

The Democrats have ended the government shutdown and sent a spending bill to Donald Trump, who has signed it. New York Times. The agreement will fund the government until February 8th and will extend funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for six years. The vote passed in the Senate, where the shutdown had originally came from, with a vote with 81-18. Two Republicans voted with the remaining Democrats and one Independent against the funding bill, with John McCain abstaining due to poor health. Chuck Schumer did not get much of a concession in exchange for restarting the government as all he and the Democrats got was an assurance that the Senate would address immigration. Immigration was the main reason why Schumer and the Democrats shut down the government, as they wanted to force legislation granting amnesty for  the so called "Dreamers" allowed in under Obama's DACA program. Supporters of DACA were crushed by Schumer's agreement.

My Comment:

Well that was a complete waste of time. After three days of hand wringing and stupidity, nothing was accomplished at all. All Schumer got out of this was an agreement with Mitch McConnel that they would try to cover immigration. There is no guarantee that Schumer will get anything else and their DACA plans are not going to pass. 

It makes you wonder why Schumer tried to do this in the first place. It never made any sense to link an immigration deal to the budget. The two things have nothing to do with each other and by linking them it really made the Democrats look unhinged. It was a baffling move and one that had zero payoff in the end. 

My guess is that Schumer and the Democrats thought they could control the narrative. They wanted to blame this on President Trump, who has taken a hard line on the issue of immigration. To that end they tried to label the shutdown as the #TrumpShutdown. Though this did trend on Twitter, it trended after the competing #SchumerShutdown and even after that tag was banned from trending, it didn't matter. 

The GOP arguments wrote themselves. It looked to almost everyone that Schumer and the Democrats were trying to put illegal aliens over the citizens of the United States. Fighting so hard for legal status for the DACA illegals while at the same time jeopardizing military pay and shutting down national parks was horrible optics and it was almost impossible for the Democrats to argue otherwise. They were never going to win the meme war on this one and even their allies in the mainstream media were wavering.   

I don't know what the polls were saying about this, as I have seen it go both ways depending on who was paying for the poll, but my guess is that the Democrats more accurate internal polling was showing that they were losing on this issue. Though the incumbent party often loses seats during the midterm elections, there is no hard and fast rule that will happen in 2018. The GOP got a boost recently due to the tax bill and will likely get another one when the various scandals brewing under the surface finally erupt. An unpopular shutdown was going to hurt things even more for 2018 if it had gone on further and I am guessing even the three days that it went for did quite a bit of damage for their chances. 

But even worse is that Schumer backed down right away. This also completely undermined the Democrats and pissed off the immigration wing of the party. As it looks to them, Schumer backed down and got nothing in return. They are calling this the #SchumerSellout and are fairly disgusted with him. It's telling that 16 Democrats voted against the bill. I am guessing that this will demoralize some of the Democratic Party's base and cause some of them to stay home or go 3rd party...

So what was the point of this anyways? I am not sure. It's possible that Schumer just miscalculated. After all, he thought he had the media on his side and though he could bully his narrative into existence. He also might have underestimated the resolve of Donald Trump. He's been somewhat wobbly on immigration, giving mixed signals on DACA, but if Schumer though he could get Trump to back down, he was very wrong. 

I also think that this was at least partially due to the Democrats trying to distract from the FISA memo story and all the other Democratic scandals that are bubbling under the surface. #ReleaseTheMemo was trending and was getting quite a bit of traction. They desperately needed something to distract from that and the shutdown did nicely. 

Overall though, this whole thing was pointless and rather embarrassing for the country. Funding the government is one of the most basic functions of the Senate and failing to do so is just stupid. Doing so made us a laughing stock and made people lose even more faith in our government. The only good thing is that it is finally over.