The government shutdown we're all supposed to believe is a terrible crisis is nothing more than a stunt – political theater designed and focus group-tested last year by a Senate Democrat super-PAC.  The Washington Post revealed its scoop on the premeditation hundreds of words into a long article on the shutdown yesterday.  (This is known as "burying the lede.")

One worrisome data point: A super[-]PAC allied with Senate Democrats commissioned a poll in 12 battleground states in early December 2017, and it found that in more conservative states, blame for a shutdown would be split between Trump and Republicans and Democrats in Congress.  But when interviewers asked respondents about a shutdown that might be tied to the legal status of [DREAM]ers, Democrats absorbed more blame.

The poll was conducted by Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group on behalf of the Senate Majority PAC.

It says a lot about the priority Dems give to protecting illegal aliens that despite the relatively unfavorable cast of the polling, they decided to go ahead anyway with a DACA shutdown.  Apparently, they used the focus group polling to guide their strategy, as they pander to their base and long-term interest in changing the electorate via mass illegal immigration supplemented by amnesty and outright voter fraud.

And we are supposed to panic at this theater:

Chris White adds in the Daily Caller:

The results of the survey might help explain the all-out ad blitz Democrats conducted shortly after the government shutdown.  Democratic[-]affiliated groups are working overtime trying to shore up support for Sens. Robert P. Casey[,] Jr. of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio after both sided with their parties during the budget fiasco.

Democrats, who knew [that] the attacks were coming, have blasted conservative states with videos and online ads that point to muddled quotes Trump made in 2013 and 2017 about how a government shutdown would be beneficial for his party.  Priorities USA, a Democratic super[-]PAC, for instance, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a digital ad buy targeting swing seats.