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Trump surrendered to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats and reopened the government with no funding for the wall. His base feels betrayed with Ann Coulter calling Trump the "biggest wimp ever to serve as President of the United States." With IRS staff not showing up for work, Trump was about to get the entire country far more irate as tax refunds would be arriving late if the shutdown continued. Additionally McConnell told Trump that he couldn't hold the Republicans together on the shutdown any longer. Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson blamed Mitch McConnell for letting the government shutdown go on for so long while a poll in Wisconsin showed that 49% of Wisconsinites absolutely will not vote for Trump in 2020 to 27% who would. Trump's approval was falling despite his bully pulpit and fruitless prime time address. All the suffering and financial costs that Trump caused with the shutdown was in vain - Trump's inexperience and incompetence at its finest.
We're still in the middle of this thing. "Victory" for either side is still three weeks away.
Nothing has been done on the immigration issue for how many presidents now? 5? 6? I'm pretty sure you have to go back to Reagan's amnesty of 1986.
So I'm predicting nothing magical is going to happen in the next 3 weeks. Wanting to avoid a second Shutdown the PTB will then claim "they are making progress" and extend the extension to September 1st (next fiscal year).
At that point no legislation will have gotten out of Congress but everyone will have moved on to the next Cause Celeb. Then you can proclaim "victory", but really with nothing getting done everyone has lost, citizens and non-citizens alike.
Our politicians are stuck in a never ending cycle of playing to the "next election" (even when those elections are 2, or 4 years off). No one is willing to take a stand on the tough issues that will alienate potential voters at the "next election".
I used to think that the idea of term limits was silliness, now I'm not so sure.
