You'd need a truck scale to measure all the weighing-in the Daily Kos gang has done regarding the partial federal shutdown, so for reasons of brevity let's focus on shutdown-related musings from the boss Kossack, site founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas.
On Tuesday, day one of the shutdown, Moulitsas lectured congressional Republicans on legitimate and illegitimate means of halting Obamacare:
...If you want to truly get rid of [Obamacare], you have to do it the proper way, as specified in that Constitution you pretend to cherish...
So what are your options? Certainly not shut down the government and threaten a national default on our debt. That's not in that Constitution (seriously, read it!). Your options are to win some elections. Hold that ill-gotten gerrymandered-fueled majority in the House. Get a simple majority in the Senate and then get rid of the filibuster. Seriously, get rid of it. I won't complain. Then win the presidency. You'll have a better shot at that if you don't nominate Ted Cruz, and you might want to broaden your appeal by being less of a bunch of assholes...
Moulitsas charged on Wednesday that the GOP was "waging a scorched-earth terroristic campaign to kill a law via extra-Constitutional methods because they can't do it the right way—by winning elections and running through the proper legislative process," and Thursday morning, he opined that with Democrats unified against the "bullies," Republicans had "painted themselves into a corner." He added helpfully, "Good luck with that, assholes."
Then, on Thursday afternoon, Moulitsas asserted that even though the GOP still can do considerable damage to America, in the long run it's doomed:
...[C]onservatives are scared. Their world has been turned upside down by the a nation that has elected a Kenyan usurper—TWICE! They see brown people everywhere, and they're convinced that poor ol' white folk like them are being swamped...
...[A] government that is representative to the people will, by definition, be run by the party that best represents all Americans. Republicans, too busy retrenching into their regional redoubts, cannot be that party. But they won't spend energy trying to rebrand and become more responsive to the general public. Instead, they'll double down on their asshole policies while doing their damndest to keep people from voting or gerrymandering their vote into irrelevance.
That isn't just the sign of a minority party headed toward permanent minority status, but one that is snarling, wounded and backed into a corner.
That wounded, rabid animal is undoubtedly dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than ever before. But like all wounded, rabid animals, it will eventually die.
