PBS NEWSHOUR: NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including the Senate voting to clear a path to end the longest-ever government shutdown.

GEOFF BENNETT, PBS NEWSHOUR: Well, pick up on that point, Amy, because the message from the Democratic base has been clear. They want to see a fight. And there’s a recent poll by NBC which shows why Democrats broadly speaking are – take issue with the way this all came together. When you look at these numbers, what do you see? AMY WALTER, COOK POLITICAL REPORT: Right. So this is back in Trump’s first term. Most Democrats tell the NBC poll we think that Democrats should work or compromise with Donald Trump over sticking on principles and potentially doing more damage. Now, we’re going to put up the next slide. The next slide, you will see is in 2025, those numbers have completely flipped, and so now 65 percent of Democrats saying Democrats should put up a fight no matter what, and only a third of Democrats saying we think you should compromise with Donald Trump. We talk a lot about how much the Republican Party has changed in the 10 years since Donald Trump has come on the scene. We don’t spend as much time talking about how much the Democratic Party has changed in the years since Donald Trump hit the scene. And this poll is a great reminder of that. This is a party that is much less interested in giving the benefit of the doubt to this administration. They’re much less interested in believing that there is compromise to be had, and they want that fight, which is why the roiling is going to continue for some time. And it is kind of remarkable. It’s across the ideological spectrum. It’s not just liberals who are upset. You saw moderate groups like The Third Way come out with a statement also saying they shouldn’t have done this, that those eight Democrats shouldn’t have compromised or given their votes to Republicans. I think the bottom line though, Geoff, and all of this is that in the short term, what Democrats are seeing is they lost a political fight that they thought they could win and they come away – after 40 days with nothing tangible to show their base. There’s no extension of the ACA credits. However, for Republicans looking at this, I don’t think they should feel entirely comfortable saying they won, because if we learned anything from Tuesday’s election and looking at the polling up until then and continuing, the number one challenge for Republicans in 2026 is this issue of affordability. And without a vote – I mean, one way to fix their affordability problem is actually to take a vote on extending Obamacare subsidies. That doesn’t look likely to happen in the House, but Democrats are still going to make that affordability issue a top one in their campaign next year.

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