In any case, the most important thing to know about these confrontations, whether they end before the shutdown starts, or, as happened two years ago, end after the government has been closed for a while, is this: the conservatives never get what they want. The last time they shut down the government, they were demanding the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which as you may remember was not actually repealed. And this time they’re not going to get Planned Parenthood defunded.

Which is how we get to Trump. The remarkable success of his candidacy can be explained by multiple factors, but a key one is the dissatisfaction among Republican voters with their party’s leaders. And a big part of that dissatisfaction is that those leaders keep promising their constituents things they don’t deliver. The defunding of Planned Parenthood will be simply one more thing to add to the list. So when Trump comes along and says that unlike all those stupid and ineffectual politicians he knows how to get things done, it’s extremely appealing.