Faced with an impasse over the government shutdown, Democrats are now hoping Republicans will provide a resolution.

Democrats recognize that victory is unlikely in this standoff, yet they are also aware that conceding would alienate their fervent supporters. Their strategy now involves urging Senate Republicans to employ another “nuclear option” to dismantle the Democrats’ ability to filibuster and halt government operations.

So far, Senate Democrats have successfully blocked 13 Republican efforts to bypass their filibuster, including a proposal to compensate essential federal employees who continue to work during the shutdown. This attempt was also thwarted by Democrats.

Within the Democratic caucus, only Senators John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and Angus King (I-Maine) have aligned with Republicans to support funding the government, showcasing a rare bipartisan effort. The rest have stood firm, contributing to the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

In their negotiations to reopen the government, Democrats are insisting on the continuation of enhanced COVID-era subsidies to maintain affordable Obamacare premiums, a reversal of Republican Medicaid reforms, and the restoration of funds that President Trump has redirected from federal agencies. Essentially, they are making significant demands while leveraging the shutdown to achieve them.

As outrageous as Senate Democrats’ demands are, they are just a sampling of what their extremist demands. The radicals now constituting the core of the Democrats’ support want to effectively overturn 2024’s presidential election and return to the losing Biden-Harris agenda.

Want to know what Democrats are up against with their base? Just look at the recent No Kings rallies. These urban Renaissance Fairs for radicals, were collections of the unappeasable pushing every unelectable extremist notion under the sun.

Embodying the same sentiment, you have democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani becoming New York City’s mayor. In Virginia, Democrats’ fear of their base compelled them to stand by Jay Jones as their nominee to be attorney general, who is now attorney general-elect. This is despite Jones’s revealed text fantasies of shooting a political opponent in the head, calling that same man’s children “little fascists,” and hoping that they would die in their mother’s arms to advance his gun control position.

Oh yes, and Jones also had a reckless driving conviction for which he claimed 1,000 hours of community service in just one year — 500 of them for own PAC. That is under further investigation.

In Colorado, the Democrats’ base is celebrating the reopening of an abortion clinic that specializes in third trimester abortions for any reason — a position far beyond what Roe v. Wade allowed. There are similar clinics in deep blue Maryland and Illinois.  

In California, Democratic extremists have bragged about creating a nationwide system for tracking ICE agents and sharing that information­, likely with even more extreme individuals.

Democrats know that within their asylum, the lunatics are in charge. They also know that the anger those lunatics vent against Republicans is nothing compared to their rage against Democratic apostates.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) received an ample sample from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) the last time he voted to prevent a shutdown. Now, he is terrified of being primaried by her in 2028. 

Schumer is hardly the Senate Democratic caucus’s only timorous soul. All fear their own version of Ocasio-Cortez, because the danger is twofold. 

They could lose outright in a primary decided only by left-dominated Democratic voters, or they could be driven so far leftward in defeating an extremist primary opponent that they too appear as radicals to a more conservative general election electorate. 

Democrats are thus trapped. They cannot win — lacking control of the White House, House, Senate or Supreme Court — but they cannot appear to have conceded either. Only Republicans can rescue them from this mess of their own making. 

What Democrats want and desperately need is for Senate Republicans to again detonate the so-called “nuclear option” of limiting the filibuster. This way, Senate Republicans could pass a funding bill without the Democratic votes needed to end a filibuster. Democrats would get out of their shutdown corner, while also telling their extremist supporters that they had done all they could.   

Yes, this would give Republicans power while they remain the majority. However, Democrats — including Ocasio-Cortez — have cast their eyes at ending the filibuster if they win a Senate majority. So Republicans would have only accelerated the work for them. 

Of course, Democrats cannot really worry about Senate procedure when they are too terrified to cross the aisle even to pay essential federal workers who are still working. 

To Democrats, the choice is simple: They would rather put themselves at the mercy of Republicans than to receive none from their own extremist base. 

J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, “Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left.” He has more than three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management, and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.