Trump isn't likely to suffer politically because he's not doing anything his supporters find objectionable. A Quinnipiac poll last month found that 43 percent of Americans, including 86 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of independents, support building the wall. Support for the wall is so high among Trump supporters that even Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said this week that he supports it while blasting the president's character in a Washington Post commentary. When your most prominent internal critic supports your position, you know you're dealing from strength.
Now that Democrats run the House, they will increasingly bear some political responsibility for ending the crisis. Americans generally want both sides to cut deals in the national interest, and that's likely to be as true in this case as in others. People didn't want the government to be shut down, but now that it is, they're likely to want a deal to get it back open. That plays into Trump's hands - as long as he demonstrates that he's willing to deal, too.
