We talk about 800,000 federal government employees

I'll skip the numbers for the contractors.

But let's remember, that's 800,000 employees. How many of these employees are married? How many have children? How many are caring for elderly parents? How many of those spouses and children and family members require special, aka expensive, care?

How many businesses nationwide depend on the purchasing power of those 800,000 employees? How many of those businesses will fail because of a month's severe reduction in revenues.

How many social services directed to those chronically in need were further burdened by caring for federal employees not receiving paychecks?

Flights delayed, business funding delayed, business services not available, imports/exports delayed.

We've all seen the stories of individual people, and these are troublesome and touching. As always seems to be the case, Americans on the local level rose the the challenge.

I'll be interested to see the economists try to quantify the economic impact. And the social scientists try to quantify the impact created by so much stress-inducing uncertainty.

It will be interesting to see how many federal employees will retire or seek other employment as a result, further eroding government services.

Contrary to 40+ year of the Reagan "government is the problem" philosophy, we have seen that, well, the government really does perform valuable services at so many different levels. Sadly, that 34% "base" will never acknowledge this, even as they receive their Medicare or Medicaid or farm support or whatever. These people don't care about the shutdown of a New York airport. They don't care about some federal employee on the gravy train having to ration the money he has to pay for food, mortgage, or medical care. Because I would further bet that these people are not and will never be among those Americans who rise to the challenge.

There are so many opportunities for new messaging. I hope the Dems can stay focused and do what is needed.