Back in September, when I was reporting an article on whether Democrats should shut down the government, I kept hearing the same warning from veterans of past shutdown fights: The president controls the bully pulpit. He controls, to some degree, which parts of the government stay open and which parts close. It is very, very hard for the opposition party to win a shutdown.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that Democrats were winning this one. Polls showed that most voters blamed Republicans, not Democrats, for the current shutdown -- perhaps because President Donald Trump was bulldozing the East Wing of the White House rather than negotiating to reopen the government. Trump's approval rating has been falling -- in CNN's tracking poll, it dipped into the 30s for the first time since h

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