Chuck Backs Down

What exactly was the point? That’s the question everyone’s asking after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Democrats voted to end the three-day government shutdown. So much for their defiant line in the sand: In return, they got nothing they didn’t have before — and certainly not their main demand: an ironclad bipartisan agreement to protect the Dreamers.

In fact, all the Democrats got was a promise to hold a “free and open” Senate debate and vote on DACA by Feb. 8 — which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had already said was going to happen.

Little wonder why the Dems’ hard-left base is furious and busily tweeting out #SchumerSellout messages. And why the party’s 2020 wannabes voted no on reopening the government.

In fact, Democrats learned the same painful lessons Republicans were handed back in 2013, when they shut down Washington over ObamaCare.

In this case, it’s that while most Americans want the Dreamers protected, they don’t want a government shutdown over the issue. In fact, most don’t want their government shut down for any reason.

But Democrats knew the GOP had taken the blame for every other shutdown of recent decades, and saw polls last week that suggested the same would happen again this time.

So they figured they could claim the moral high ground and the public would back their defiant stand to protect the Dreamers. They went ahead and filibustered Friday’s resolution to keep the government open — even though it included a major new Republican concession: six years of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

By Monday morning, however, they woke up to smell the coffee — and to read the latest polls, showing a huge shift in blame to their own party: “SchumerShutdown” was winning over “TrumpShutdown.”

Credit Schumer with being smart enough to cut his losses quickly, folding as soon as McConnell gave him a tiny bit of cover for his backdown with a perfunctory speech late Monday morning.

In the end, Democrats have nothing to show for their grandstanding except lost political leverage and an even angrier base.

Let’s hope that both parties take this latest lesson to heart.