What the [BLEEP] was that?

Forty days. Forty days of genuine hardship for hundreds of thousands of federal government employees. Forty days of wrenching anxiety as families and older Americans watched their food money dwindle down toward zero. Forty days of crucial systems—from air traffic control and airport security to small-business loan applications that represent big dreams and big risks to food safety inspections, for goodness sake—all of them and more buckling as the money stopped flowing.

And then the Democrats caved. And whatever their motives, they forgot the central lesson of American politics since Trump came down that escalator ten years ago:

A government shutdown is a stupid thing that no sane country would subject itself to. This particular American insanity did not even exist until 1980, when Benjamin Civiletti, Attorney General under Jimmy Carter, made it up in a memo. Attaboy, Ben. Before that, from the Founding Era on, when government funding lapsed, the government continued to run. We were adults back then.

Now the shutdown is a political weapon, usually wielded by the party out of power. These days, it often seems like it’s the only leverage a minority party has in hyper-partisan Washington. So the shutdown temptation is very strong and getting stronger—but it’s wrong. Shutdowns are always and without exception, losers for the party that triggered them.

So when the Democrats united to shut down the government in an effort to save millions of Americans from crushing increases in their health-care premiums (which they face because the GOP needed to fund tax cuts for the super-wealthy), I was cool to the idea. I knew the history; my trepidation about the consequences of the shutdown tactic is longstanding.

Then something happened. The argument at the heart of the fight remained a policy matter; but it was the fight itself that mattered so much more. Trump reeled. For a moment, he seemed frustrated and angry because he was no longer dominating the narrative. The class war he is waging Americans was exposed, and Trump stood (or dozed) before the country as the threat to American middle-class prosperity and decency that he is.

It was invigorating for many Americans, who had long feared that the Democrats might lack what it takes to battle Trumpism. Now they seemed united, determined—and for once, wining. Something seemed to have shifted in the balance of power, and the president himself felt it. He certainly heard it in the deafening, two-minute long cascade of booing and jeering that greeted him when he appeared at the Washington Commanders game on Sunday.

And then the Democrats caved.

Some Democrats convinced themselves that voting to reopen the government , to “end the chaos,” would calm the storm. But—surprise!—NOT— Trump has now pocketed their concession and declared victory. He claimed Democrats had “come to their senses.” For Trump there is no compromise in a fight. There’s no civility. That’s for suckers. Every day of his life, every minute of every day of his life—he must be a winner. His very existence depends on it.

The only explanation I can come up with is that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the South Dakota Republican who had been resisting Trump’s public demands that he end the filibuster and just steamroll Democrats, told his Democratic friends he could no longer hold out, begging them to preserve the old Senate rule by joining him in caving to Trump. And eight of them did just that.

In return—a promise that there will be a vote in the Senate to extend the COVID-era Obamacare subsidies, and protect millions of Americans from those shattering premium increases. As my mother used to say, that promise and a nickel will get you a pack of gum.

Here’s the thing: We have left the old ways behind. That makes me sad. I liked the old courtesies and rules and informal practices in official Washington that were once the grease in the gears of the American government. (My favorite Washington movie preserves that era beautifully.) But those customs are all gone now, battered first by a generation of big money that fueled partisanship for profit, and by Fox News and its progeny. Then came Trump, who gleefully trampled anything that was left of the old American political propriety for his own personal gain. There is no going back.

Think of the great white-shoe law firms that thought they could manage Trump or buy their way out of his grasp. Nine firms cut deals with Trump, and pledged a total of $1 billion in unspecified legal pro bono legal services to him. Now they are trapped, and will be forced to undertake work—defend his enterprises, adopt his arguments, rationalize his assaults on the rule of law—that is anathema to many of their partners and would-be partners. The reputational and financial damage to these firms is real. And Trump will never let them get out of it.

Or look at my friends and former colleagues in the corporate media. No matter how hard they try to normalize Trump, no matter how hard they try to avoid reporting what is actually happening in this country because to do so accurately would mean angering Trump—they are forever repaid with endless “enemy of the people” abuse and constant lies that corrode trust in journalism itself.

There is no going back to the old ways. The only way forward for our country is a fight. I don’t like that, either. But if you have to fight, Democrats—win.