WASHINGTON — Democrats shut down the federal government to secure a key demand: extending health care subsidies for millions of Americans.

After a more than 40-day standoff, they threw in the towel — with no guarantee from Republicans that they would agree to renew the expiring Obamacare tax credits.

Progressive activists and their Democratic allies in Congress, who had wanted the party to fight on longer, decried it as a monumental “cave” to an authoritarian in Donald Trump.

But others in the party see a silver lining in the six-week standoff. The eight Senate Democrats who bucked their own leadership and negotiated an end to the longest shutdown in American history said the bipartisan deal protects federal workers who had been laid off during the shutdown — at least temporarily.

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