This is how the government shutdown was always going to end.For the past 30 years, the party that has forced federal agencies to close their doors in a funding fight has never actually achieved the policy outcome it was demanding. Republicans did not successfully pressure then-President Barack Obama to defund his signature health-care law when they shut down the government in 2013. President Donald Trump, during his first term, failed to persuade Senate Democrats to authorize his border wall in 2019.And over the past two weeks, a pivotal faction of Democrats abandoned their hope that Republicans would agree to extend insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act anytime soon. So late last night, they provided the key votes to begin the process of reopening the government after what has become the longest shutdown in United States history. (Final votes to end the impasse are expected in the coming days.)“I came to the conclusion that they were not going to cave on that red line,” Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, one of five Democrats who flipped his vote yesterday after previously backing the shutdown, told us by phone this afternoon. He acknowledged that many of his colleagues disagreed. But when he would press them on whether they believed that Republicans might come around on health care, they could not say. “There really was no evidence to suggest that they would.”The decision to fold by a few senators infuriated other members of the Democratic caucus; indeed, it was hard to find an elected Democrat inside or outside Washington who praised the move today. These critics could not fathom why the party would yield after an election in which voters appeared to vindicate their fight against Trump. Why abandon a winning hand?But even though polling had swung in the Democrats’ favor, it was not enough to move the president or GOP leaders in Congress. They refused to negotiate on a proposed extension of insurance subsidies, which expire at the end of the year, as long as the government remained closed. For weeks, the Democrats’ best hope for achieving their shutdown goals had been to persuade Trump to strike a deal on health care. Over the weekend, however, Trump dug in further. After earlier suggesting that he might be open to an eventual agreement, the president reversed himself and called on Republicans to forgo a subsidies extension in favor of a new plan for direct payments to consumers through health-savings accounts. Any chance of quick consensus on the Democrats’ terms seemed to be dead.“I understand that not all of my Democratic colleagues are satisfied with this agreement, but waiting another week or another month wouldn’t deliver a better outcome,” Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, another Democrat who switched her vote, told reporters.Shaheen, Kaine, and their colleagues accepted terms similar to those that Republican leaders had been offering all along. Senate Majority Leader John Thune agreed to hold a vote within the next several weeks on a Democratic proposal to extend the subsidies, but that is widely expected to fall short. The deal clears the way for passage of a package of bipartisan appropriations bills providing full-year funding for the Departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, as well as Congress. If approved by the House, those measures would ensure that food assistance continues for the next fiscal year and would limit the impact of another shutdown if the parties cannot agree on another spending bill by January 30. Democrats also secured GOP support for a provision forcing the Trump administration to reinstate federal employees laid off during the shutdown and preventing it from implementing another round of mass firings for the next three months.[Watch: How lawmakers are responding to the shutdown]Kaine disputed the idea that voters were endorsing Democrats’ shutdown strategy in Tuesday’s election. He pointed out that Abigail Spanberger, who coasted to victory in the Virginia governor’s race, called after her win for the government to reopen. But Kaine argued that even though Republicans did not relent on health care, their electoral defeat prompted Trump to reengage in shutdown talks—and resulted in more protections for federal workers. “He knows he was getting blamed,” Kaine said. “And as soon as he realized that, we found the off-ramp that does some good for some of the people he’s been kicking around, like SNAP recipients or federal workers.”Yet Democrats won nothing on their core demand, except for the vague promise of future negotiations on health-care subsidies. Critics in the party were especially galled that the senators caved at a moment when Trump, who had lashed out after blaming the GOP’s election losses on the shutdown, appeared to be spiraling. “I think a bunch of adults looked at a toddler’s temper tantrum and came to the conclusion that you can’t negotiate with a toddler who’s going to pitch a goddamned fit in Toys ‘R’ Us,” a Democratic aide, dismayed by the decision to fold and granted anonymity to speak candidly, told us. “They were like, ‘Give him the Barbie and leave the store.’”Inside the West Wing, Trump’s aides greeted the end of the shutdown as evidence that the White House’s take-no-prisoners approach to the crisis worked: Sure, it took longer than expected, but Democrats were always going to cave.Beyond the bluster, there was some relief in Trump’s orbit that the Democrats had offered a reprieve from a shutdown that was dragging down Republicans’ poll numbers. It likely would have gotten worse had it continued into Thanksgiving and ruined holiday travel. Aides also worried that the issues at the heart of the shutdown—increased health-care costs—could flare up again next year. Predictably, Trump focused on claiming a win, believing that he had bested Democrats once more. He also reveled in the Democrats’ divide, even though, people close to him told us, he was miffed that Senate Republicans rebuffed his calls to abolish the filibuster.[Jonathan Chait: How Trump wants to help Democrats ]Ultimately, Tuesday’s elections were not the turning point in the shutdown; they served more as a temporary interruption in negotiations between Republicans and a group of wavering Democrats. But as bipartisan talks resumed, the impact of the shutdown spread from furloughed federal workers to SNAP beneficiaries, air travelers, and others. In recent days, the Trump administration ratcheted up the consequences of the shutdown by appealing to the Supreme Court to block a full payment of SNAP benefits to needy families, and by causing chaos at airports with an order to reduce flight volume because of staffing shortages. The Democrats who flipped their votes concluded that the shutdown wasn’t worth the damage it was causing.Historically, shutdowns have ended when the pain they cause becomes too much for the party that provoked them. Democrats may have been winning the political fight this time, but they had made little headway on policy. They are now vowing to keep up their push to extend health-insurance subsidies, this time with the government open. The next funding deadline will be in late January, and with it comes the risk of another shutdown. At the end of a press conference yesterday, Shaheen was asked whether she might again vote to shut down parts of the government if Republicans haven’t relented by then. “That’s certainly an option,” she replied, “that I think everybody will consider.”