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

The longest government shutdown on record is finally over after 43 days, but most Democrats are still unhappy about it.

They're especially angry at Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader who voted against

the compromise to reopen the government, but that isn't getting him off the hook because

he failed to keep his caucus together to keep the, I guess, keep the shutdown going.

What does this tell us about Schumer's future as a leader of the Democratic Party

in the Senate and the party itself as it goes into the midterm year of 2026? Plus, the Jeffrey Epstein

story returns with a release of emails from Epstein and others regarding Donald Trump,

among others. What did we learn that's new in these emails,

if anything? And what does it mean for Trump's political standing? Welcome, I'm Paul as you go here on

Potomac Watch, our daily podcast of WSJ opinion. And I'm here with my colleagues, Bill McGern, and Kim

Strassel. Welcome to you both. Let's talk about the Democratic fury over Chuck Schumer. He actually kept most of his caucus together for 43 days, which was no small feat before some of the swing state senators broke away, negotiated with Republicans and decided to vote to reopen the government.

But is Chuck Schumer really to blame for what happened?

Let's listen to Seth Moulton, Democratic congressman from Massachusetts.

I think there's a leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party right now, and it's time for a new generation of Democrats to step up.

And that's the message I'm running on in Massachusetts,

and it's the message that we need to hear across the country.

The two brightest spots for Democrats in the past week were Abigail Spanberger in Virginia

and Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey, representing a new generation of leadership and now taking over entire states,

that's what Democrats are excited about right now. We're frustrated, frankly, with the status quo,

with the same old playbook that Schumer and others are using that's led us to a second term of

Donald Trump where he's hurting a lot of people. Now, Seth Moulton's kind of an interesting figure

...