Bozo's not wrong, he's just an asshole. By most measures, the Dems still "won" the shutdown. But they won this like Auburn beat Mississippi State 3-2 in 2008, when they had the chance to run up the score.
Most of the people who will be marginal voters in 2026 in potential swing districts/states will have completely forgotten about this within a month, probably sooner. The undecided American voter has the memory of a goldfish and the tidal wave of shit Trump and the GOP have been and will keep dumping on everyone will overwhelm everything else. Dems should absolutely be better at messaging, but the GOP is about to make things so bad that dysfunctional Dem messaging likely won't even matter.
My preference would've been for them to stick it out another week or two after which time I think Trump would've gotten the Senate GOP to cave and abolish the filibuster, because that needs to happen and this set of Dems won't do it if they manage to take both houses and the presidency in 2028. That would've also made it easier to pin the entire thing on Trump and the GOP, which would've been a nice bonus and probably would've shifted the odds in 2026 further in our favor, but the gains would've been marginal.
What's frustrating is that there's still somewhere between 8 and probably 20ish Senate Dems that for various reasons just can't really adequately fight GOP fascism. We all want those fuckers to wake up and understand that the Republicans who are smiling to their faces are killing their friends and family and that they need to stop pretending that it can still be politics as usual, but it's pretty clear that's asking a leopard to change its spots. So the debacle in March and this cave are at least useful in illustrating who need to catch some primary challenges.