I'm sure this is rhetorical but let me respond anyway in case it advances the discussion--people aren't born Democrats and Republicans. It's a social construct, it's tribal, and in the wake of diminishing religiosity one might even say it's a spiritual doctrine. I'm guilty of this, too, Republicans have basically had a policy platform consisting of "let's be selfish assholes" my entire adulthood.
I'm not interested in entirely abandoning virtue in the interest of winning elections, but if this board is at all representative, there continues to be this faith or belief that the best candidates show fidelity to Democratic core values and there's a lot of electoral evidence to the contrary. You've got people (sorry, picking on you) like @BrickHorn who make light of Republican voter ignorance and think the solution is that they need more information or better shaming, and perhaps that's correct on the margins, but it's been the default strategy for Democrats over the past 50 years and then Democrats are surprised when they lose elections.
I feel like Jon Lovett on PSA brings this up a lot and uses trans rights as a good example--are they better protected now than they were four years ago? Whatever the intention was, it didn't work. You can use that same methodology for crypto, women's health, hell, now it's the very foundation of what is true and what is not.
TL:DR, nothing matters if you don't win elections. Getting this back on target, nothing about the shutdown matters if it doesn't lead to an electoral victory (i.e., protecting a relatively small number of people from unaffordable insurance can't be the endgame).