As I watched House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speak ahead of the inevitable passage of the “clean resolution”, all I could think about was how tired I am.

Fight back, we have to keep up the fight, I heard him recite the same platitudes I’ve been hearing time and time again. What I couldn’t get over, though, was how he seemed to be smiling while saying it. The party had just agreed to what is essentially a measured surrender, and he had the audacity to have a smirk on his face.

Since the start of the Trump term, I’ve felt such an overwhelming bleakness in attempting to engage with politics. Every day is a flurry of headlines of some judicial ruling being ignored, swaths of people, citizen or not, being detained and beaten without cause, and at times, just general absurdity.

Through it all, I’ve desperately been wanting to look towards the elected leadership of what is meant to be my party, the “only legitimate option” for someone on the center-left. Time and time again that leadership has shown no desire to actually stand up and exercise their power to represent their constituents.

After rolling over on essentially every cabinet nominee except sacrificial lamb Matt Gaetz, we were served up Cory Booker’s marathon speech — a wonderful performance that had no actual impact at all in any legislative capacity.

But hey, he broke Thurmond’s record.

Jeffries has insisted that Democrats have “no leverage.” I find that amusing. You certainly didn’t see Mitch McConnell roll over and weep about leverage when Democrats held the majority in the Senate during the Obama years. No, he played hardball and forced Dems to work around him and, at times, change rules in their eventual favor.

Thus, we arrive at that great tool of the minority party: the government shutdown. Since the beginning of this current shutdown, Democratic leadership has maintained the hard line that Republicans are totally to blame for this shutdown. They are the majority party, aren’t they?

I think this is a cop-out. No, Republicans have been essentially 100% in line in voting for their resolution. Democrats are responsible for the shutdown, but that’s not inherently a bad thing.

Filibusters and shutdowns are intentionally obstructive measures. When you obstruct the motions and functions of government, it has real consequences for people. SNAP shuts down, workers are sent home, air traffic is disrupted. You don’t make the conscious decision to shut down the government unless you believe that the issue you’re fighting for is worth those outcomes.

In this instance, that issue is extending federal subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. These subsidies are designed primarily to help those who are unable to obtain a private plan through their profession yet still make too much to qualify for Medicare.

Forty to 50 million Americans fall in that bracket. If these subsidies lapse, their premiums could skyrocket, potentially out of the range of affordability.

While I still hold some bitterness about the fact that this all could’ve been avoided if Democrats actually stood up for the public option, I strongly believe that the mission of improving healthcare is one worth making bold moves, and even significant sacrifices, to pursue.

Evidently, Senate Democrats agreed, otherwise, they would’ve let the resolution go through with no issue. Soon, after a disastrous performance in the off-year elections, even President Donald Trump was advocating major structural changes like filibuster reform to end the shutdown as polls started to turn sour for Republicans. The heat was truly on.

Then, just as they have been, Senate Democrats caved to their nonexistent pressure and accepted a worthless promise for a meaningless vote in exchange for selling out the American people.

What was this entire exercise even for? Why bother going through this ordeal at all if you weren’t going to get anything out of it?

Last year, in South Korea, when the President attempted to unlawfully institute martial law, lawmakers barricaded the entrances to the legislature and climbed over fences to ensure the vote for impeachment was passed. If that were to happen here, I don’t think our leadership would even get out of their front lawn.

Gordon Crawford is a 19-year-old political science major from Gonzales, La.