"But we do not live in ordinary times. And from the standpoint of wielding the leverage they have to bring a power-drunk, increasingly authoritarian White House to heel, it's hard to argue this shutdown was anything but a Democratic failure."

"But what's most perplexing about the decision of these eight caucusing Democrats to fold now is the timing.

According to the grisly political scoring of the shutdown blame game, the Democrats' position was strengthening, not weakening.

Polls consistently showed the public was disproportionately blaming the GOP and the White House for the impasse. Democrats got a strong vote of relative confidence in last week's off-year elections.

And it's hard to argue Republicans weren't starting to sweat, with Donald Trump starting to push every button on the dashboard in an attempt to shake something loose:

demanding the Senate abandon the filibuster and firing off cockamamie ideas about mailing out stimulus checks in lieu of restoring healthcare subsidies."

more at the thread link

A few possible Silver Linings:

AOC will now Primary the current Dem Leader Schumer, he's done.

The Wall Street Wing Centrists of the Dem Party are now outed and exposed.

And... Spkr Mickey was going to wait until Dec 3rd for a possible new GOP House Member from TN to counter the swearing in of the 218th vote to release the Epstein Files.... now he may have to swear her in in a few days when the Gov opens.

Hillary was an FDR Dem who dealt with reality as she found it.

And had a much better chance to win than the guy who couldn't win the Dem primary much less a national election, even when he benefited greatly from caucuses, much as I loved him.