The alleged "cave" by Donald Trump over the shutdown caused some disappointment.  However, he's the dealmaker, so we can assume that he has an alternate route to building barriers along the southern border.

The air traffic controllers warned that people might suffer actual injury or loss of life due to the shutdown.  This is obviously far worse than financial embarrassment.  The shutdown was over an item that affects the lives of most Americans: a wall to keep them safer.  This is more serious than money.  However, the lives of those killed by illegal aliens are only of equal, not greater, importance compared with the lives of those who might suffer in air accidents.

In neither case do the Democrats care.  Administering a political beating to Trump is their goal.  To reach it, there's an "end justifies the means" attitude that doesn't account for who suffers.  President Trump, however, cares deeply.  If he were a tyrant, he might have held out even when air accidents happened and people died, trying to blame the Democrats (and being at least partly right in doing so).

Sure, the Democrats are celebrating "beating" Trump, but imagine the headlines if two planes had collided.  And the Democrats wouldn't have cared, so long as Trump could be blamed.  The odds are that about a third of the victims would be "deplorables," about a third would be "useful idiot" lefties/progressives/Democrats (easily replaced), and about a third would be "independent" (so not with the Democrats and thus expendable).

President Trump's commitment to keep Americans safe is thus weaponized by those who see American deaths as freeing up space for "undocumented Democrats."  Would you have him throw aside the respect for life?  I wouldn't, and therein lies our weakness.

Now the big question: What can we do?  Write and call the Democrats in Congress, especially if you live in the area they represent.  Call or email the White House with encouragement to the president, and the Republicans in Congress as well, to get the barriers constructed.  They need to have the will to fight, whether they win in the end or not.  And realize that sometimes, battles are lost.  Worst case, as Kurt Schlichter points out, we still got 90% of what we wanted overall.

Don't abandon Trump.  Don't be as fickle as Democrats negotiating an end to a shutdown.  Don't let them win by, as Sun Tzu suggested, sapping your will to fight.  Don't give up.  Remember: we still have lots of winning in our corner.  Fight on.