Michael Barbaro

after last Tuesday's election, which seemed to ratify their strategy of keeping the federal government shut down as a way of forcing Republicans and President Trump to reckon with these sky-high healthcare costs.

In fact, it seemed to be working so well that in the aftermath of that election, Trump declared that the shutdown was being blamed on Republicans and was helping Democrats.

He articulated that idea.

And then Democrats tossed this entire idea

seemingly winning strategy out of the window.

I didn't see that coming.

Right.

A clutch of Democrats who did not believe that the shutdown was the height of Democratic success.

So tell us who these senators are and what they started to do.

And what made them so sure of that?

With Republicans starting to openly acknowledge that the shutdown was going well for Democrats,

That meant them acknowledging that the health care issue was not going well for them.

And what furthermore made these Senate Democrats comfortable with the idea of giving up on the central rationale for shutting down the government in the first place, health care?

Mm-hmm.

And what kind of negotiation does this clutch of moderate Senate Democrats enter into with Republicans knowing that health care is off the table?

Such as?

Gotcha.

Fascinating.

So in short, these Democrats negotiate a deal that pretty much undoes a lot of the damage from the shutdown and preserves this government accountability office that matters to them as an institution that keeps the president in check.

And finally, and it seems somewhat significantly, they get...