Steve Kornacki: Republicans took a political hit in the shutdown. How long will it last?

With the government shutdown now poised to end, it’s clear Trump and the Republicans are in worse shape politically now than when it started.

With the government shutdown now poised to end, it’s clear Republicans are in worse shape politically now than when it started. The question is whether that will prove to be temporary — as has been the case with past funding showdowns — or if the political atmosphere has been reset in a way that will linger into next year’s midterm elections.

As the six-week shutdown played out, President Donald Trump’s job approval rating ebbed to the lowest point of his second term, with a majority of voters pinning the blame on him and Republicans in Congress. Democrats opened up a wide lead in the generic congressional ballot — 8 points in our NBC News poll, a level last seen in the run-up to the “blue wave” in the 2018 midterms.

And then there was last Tuesday, when Democrats posted an unexpected landslide in New Jersey, a state where both parties saw the gubernatorial contest as competitive and recent elections had suggested Republican momentum. Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill’s victory was so staggering that it lifted a host of downballot Democrats and gave the party its largest state Assembly majority in a half-century. The Democratic rout was even bigger in Virginia: The party’s deeply flawed candidate for attorney general, Jay Jones, coasted easily on the coattails of Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger.

An unpopular president, a wide generic ballot gap and off-year election results like this are all early warning signals of a midterm debacle for Republicans.

But they have been here before. And in two previous shutdowns, Republicans saw their public standing buckle only for it to recover in its aftermath.