Resolved within a week, both the debt limit and the shutdown. And the main reason is the polls. Reid and probably Lew deserve full credit for holding the line, and Obama gets lots of points for having their backs, despite his communicated willingness to negotiate. The early 2014 deadlines set up a window for a grand bargain negotiation this winter, which is going to get both the right and the left ruffled up. The media gets their conciliation narrative, then moves to a splintering right narrative, and then as budget negotiations start up, a splintering left narrative, mingled with a lame duck president narrative, interspersed with periodic unscheduled dramatic narratives.
Having successfully touched the stove and experienced a 2nd-degree burn of the lowest polls ever and strong establishment backlash, Republicans make noise but do not pose a serious threat on the next deadline go-around. The grand bargain alleviates but does not eliminate the sequester, various tax reforms increase revenue but do not cross the symbolic line of raising or creating taxes, defense funding is improved in strategically beneficial ways, and social benefits are trimmed over the long term.
Republicans are offered an opportunity to realign their position on immigration and after brief turmoil reject it, and then everyone settles in for the next campaign cycle and status quo management by crisis. Not the prettiest of pictures, but it consolidates the centrist democrat position as the demographic tide continues to rise.
