I've been predicting for some time now that Democrats actually want a shutdown, and frankly, I expected this process to be drawn out until the final hours before the deadline to fund the government ended on November 17.

Democrats previously said that they couldn't support Speaker Johnson's "laddered" continuing resolution, but this week Democrat leaders started to signal support for it.

What changed? Perhaps the most significant thing is that five Republicans had come out against Johnson's stopgap funding bill. Johnson could only afford four Republican defections. That means that the onus was on Democrats to save it and avert a shutdown, which turned out to very much be true, as 93 Republicans voted against it. Even the White House called it too extreme, but there's little reason to believe that Biden wouldn't sign it now.