From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

Great news to anybody tuning in today from one of America's busy airports.

An end to the government shutdown appears to be in sight.

On Monday, midday, as we record, the Senate is working on getting a final deal done.

House Speaker Mike Johnson says after that he'll call the House back to Washington to vote. What happened behind

the scenes to end the funding impasse? And what are the lessons of this episode for both

Democrats and Republicans? That's what we're here to discuss today on Potomac Watch. Welcome. I'm

Kate O'Dell. I'm here with my esteemed colleagues,

columnist Kim Strassel and Bill McGurn. Welcome to you both. Before we get into our conversation,

let's listen to a little bit of what a House Speaker Mike Johnson had to say at his press

conference on Monday. We applaud the seven Senate Democrats and one independent senator who did the right thing.

They decided to put principle over their personal politics.

And my urgent plea of all my colleagues in the House, and that means every Democrat in the House,

is to think carefully, pray, and finally do the right thing and help us to bring an end to the

pain of the American people. This is going on too long. Too many people have suffered, and it's

long overdue. Kim, why don't you walk us through what breakthrough happened here and what's in

the deal? Mike Johnson also used the metaphor that Democrats have been 40 days wandering

in the wilderness. So fill us in on what happened over the weekend. One thing that I think

is really important is just that Democrats got through this election that we had last week.

And that was a huge thing that was standing in the way of this because there was enormous

belief up and down the Democratic ranks that

if they were to fold prior to that election, that it might depress their turnout, whereas

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