Key takeaways

• Though Democrats felt they were winning the politics of the shutdown fight, they’d made no progress on their specific substantive demands
• The only plausible endings to the shutdown were Democrats caving or the GOP abolishing the filibuster; Trump wasn’t making concessions
• With shutdown pain ramping up, and Democrats fearing a world without the filibuster, key members of the party cut a deal

After forcing the longest US government shutdown in history, Senate Democrats threw in the towel Sunday night.

Eight Democratic senators voted with the Republicans Sunday to advance a deal to reopen the government, even though the deal includes no significant concessions from the GOP or President Donald Trump.

The turnabout came as a shock to many highly engaged online progressives, who had believed their party was “winning” the politics of the shutdown fight — meaning, polls showed more people blamed Trump than Democrats for the shutdown’s impact.

So, to many on the left, a cave like this — which on its face just involved eight Democrats, but is widely believed to have won the tacit assent of many others in the caucus — seemed infuriating and inexplicable.

But the reality is that Democrats never had a plausible strategy to get what they said they wanted — an extension of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies — out of the shutdown fight. And after 40 days, they may have been winning the politics of the shutdown, but they had made no apparent progress toward getting Trump and Republicans to give into their substantive demands.

Indeed, rather than negotiate, Trump has in recent days started pressuring Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster — removing the tool Democrats........

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