There seems little point in spending a lot of time trying to assess the political implications of what turned out to be a relatively brief government shutdown. The initial reading of the deal is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell got the better of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, but it is the assessment of voters after the dust has settled that makes the biggest difference. Usually there are no winners from shutdowns; one side just loses more than the other. It still seems difficult to believe that a party holding the White House as well as House and Senate majorities doesn’t get the lion’s share of the blame, but we shall see.
What we do have is a raft of high-quality new national polls from ABC News/Washington Post, CBS News, CNN, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, and the Pew Research Center measuring public attitudes towards President Trump at the end of the first year in office. The data is overwhelmingly bad for Trump and his party, though there are some kernels of hopeful news for the GOP. CONT.
Charlie Cook