Shutdown Fights Energize Democrats, but Strategists Say Voters Want Economic Answers

Over the past six months, Democrats have done something strategists say their own voters had been demanding: they picked a fight and refused to back down. The party held firm through a 43-day government shutdown last fall—the longest in U.S. history at the time—and is doing it again in the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding standoff, which reached its 55th day on Thursday with no resolution in sight. Democrats have framed the shutdowns as a refusal to fund agencies they say are overstepping their authority. Republicans have cast the same actions as obstruction that is preventing the government from functioning....