A Great Victory?

I just read a piece by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine online celebrating the great "victory" by the Democrats in the budget battles today.  I figured that I must have missed something, so I read the entire article.  After all, the resolution of the battle has been that the debt ceiling will be raised for three and a half months and the government will be funded for three months at levels that the Republicans but not the Democrats wanted.  In addition, the income verification requirements in the Obamacare law will now have to be enforced even though president Obama had decided months ago to ignore them.  Finally, there will be ongoing negotiations to try to resolve budget matters so that there will be no repeat of the crisis in three months.  To me, that sounds like they all kicked the can down the road and agreed to continue to negotiate. 

So why is that a Democrat victory?  The Democrats had said they would not negotiate; that is how we got a shutdown in the first place.  Now they are negotiating.  On the other side, the GOP wanted defunding of Obamacare, although they had already abandoned that position prior to the start of the partial shutdown.  Clearly, it is not a Republican triumph either.  The resolution is really just another one of those typical Washington outcomes where each side proclaims its great victory and nothing has been changed.

In any event, I thought that maybe Chait had found something major that I missed.  No, Chait considers this a big Democrat victory because the Republicans did not get what they wanted.  How silly.