The conventional wisdom about government shutdowns is that they always fail. Senate Democrats probably assumed as much when they shut down the government. Perhaps they thought they were giving partisan activists something to root for, even fleetingly, before eventually caving.

That was a reasonable, if somewhat cynical, calculation. The odd thing is that the shutdown was actually working for Democrats, but in a way that some Democratic senators did not fully internalize, and which makes their ultimate capitulation tonight much harder to understand.

The reason shutdowns always fail is that the public eventually turns against the party responsible, applying more and more heat until its most vulnerable members feel compelled to give in. Presidents have little reason to give concessions to e

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