After the shutdown

Thank goodness that’s over. On Monday the Senate voted 81 to 18 and the House 266 to 150 to reopen the federal government and fund it through February 8, as well as to stop holding hostage the health care of almost nine million poor kids — and not a moment too soon. Shutdowns may make good partisan theatre, but they don’t make any winners.

Now perhaps Congress will finally get around to taking up a bill to protect the nearly 700,000 so-called Dreamers, immigrants who were brought to this country illegally as children — legislation that almost nine in 10 Americans support.

That, at least, was the offer the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, made to break the stalemate. It wasn’t an ironclad promise, of course, and given McConnell’s record, it’s fair to question his word.

Nonetheless, the spotlight is now where it should be: on the failure of President Trump and Republicans in Congress to take care of the Dreamers, despite their repeated claims that they want to.

So what does this White House want? No one seems to know, including Trump himself. The nation is stuck with a party that controls the entire federal government, even though its agenda is deeply unpopular with the American people. Yet even that is an obstacle that could be overcome — if the president had any aptitude for leadership.