Saints or Sinners? I guess we’ll all have to just wait to see how this plays out, but right now I’m still in the Lucy-and-Charlie-Brown-Football camp.

From Palmer Report:

The Democratic Party just won – and Trump just lost big time

The Trump-Republican government shutdown has clearly hurt Trump and the Republicans, as we’ve seen in polling and in last week’s elections. This has given the Democrats the upper hand, and now they’re using it. Senate Republicans have caved and given Senate Democrats essentially everything they wanted in a deal to reopen the federal government. And Senate Democrats are smartly taking it.

There will be thirty-seven different hot takes on this deal, with many if not most pundits on both sides looking for a way to spin this such that they can position themselves as being smarter and fiercer than the Democratic Party. But that’s just how it always goes. The real story here is that the Republicans realized they’re going to get wiped out in the midterms, and they panicked and caved.

So why should the Democrats take the deal at all? It reopens the federal government. It keeps Americans out of bread lines. It’s the morally correct thing to do. It’s also likely the politically advantageous thing to do, given that it’ll allow the Democrats to campaign on having reopened the government after Trump and the Republicans let it rot for a month.

This also makes Donald Trump look even more powerless and irrelevant in all of this, given that Senate Republicans ended up having to do his job for him. Trump has no idea what’s going on to begin with, and he hasn’t had a clue about this shutdown. It’s his shutdown, and yet beyond his desire to keep the Trump-Epstein files from being released, he really hasn’t been involved in the shutdown at all. He’s an empty suit, and everyone can see it now more than ever.

My take is that Senate Republicans were stupid for having offered the Democrats this deal. Now, not only do the Democrats get to be seen as the party that isn’t making a mess of things, they also get to be seen as the party that knows how to govern. Senate Republicans looked at what happened last Tuesday and panicked. Panicked people make stupid moves. This one just happened to work out well for both the Democratic Party and the American people. But then that’s usually the case.