Negotiations to reopen the federal government teetered this week as the shutdown became the longest in U.S. history.

In the meantime, Tuesday's elections brought resounding wins for Democrats across several states.

For analysis of all this and more, we turn now to Capehart and Gorman, that is, Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC and Republican strategist Matt Gorman.

David Brooks is away.

Good to see you both.

Good to see you.

All right, let's start off with some of the takeaways from those elections.

We heard President Trump earlier this week articulate the concern, Jonathan, that this party

lost some of those key elections because they're being blamed for the shutdown.

Democrats, meanwhile, riding this wave of wins.

Do you feel like both sides are taking away the right message?

Should Democrats dig in right now?

I don't know if they should dig in.

I understand the impulse to do that.

Maybe dig in because the president's out there saying out loud, much to Republicans'

consternation, the shutdowns hurting us,

affordability, a lot of things that Republicans did not talk about in these elections running

up. I do think that I don't understand why Republicans, and I'm thinking of Senate Majority Leader John Thune,

why they are not working really hard, sitting down with Chuck Schumer, the minority leader,

calling in Jeffries, calling in the president and saying, hey, let's get this done,

because it hurt us on Tuesday, but more importantly,

it's hurting the American people right now in real time.

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