A scant few months ago, the topic du jour at the Washington cocktail parties was whether Nancy Pelosi would even become the next speaker of the House. Maybe a revolt-from-within would take her down. She was seen as (pick one): too old, too weak to fight Trump effectively, too centrist, or too squishy when the going got tough. These arguments now seem laughable, but an outsized amount of attention was paid to them in the punditocracy, and not all that long ago. Is anyone now still wondering whether Pelosi can effectively take on Trump, or whether her age precludes her from being an effective Democratic leader?

Pelosi just won a symbolic victory over the president, after Trump backed down last night and agreed to Pelosi's demand that the State Of The Union speech be postponed until after the government has reopened. Trump caved, to put it plainly, and Pelosi emerged victorious. This was a small victory, to be sure (it is of little comfort to the 800,000-plus who still aren't being paid), but it was a clear victory nonetheless.

Trump's position was always weak, for three glaring reasons. The first is that he promised -- ad nauseam, in fact -- that Mexico was going to pay for his big, beautiful wall. The second is that Trump himself was pressured into saying he would be "proud" to shut the government down and he'd take all the blame for it, before the shutdown even began. And the third is that Trump could not get a thin dime for his wall for the entire two years when Republicans ran Congress. Trump's promise that Mexico would pay was obviously nothing more than a gigantic lie. Trump has tried to blame Democrats for the shutdown, but each time he does all the television networks just re-run that clip of him saying how proud he would be to shut the government down and promising Chuck Schumer that he'd take all the blame. And Trump had a lot more leverage with a Republican House, and still doesn't seem to quite grasp that with a new House sheriff in town he no longer has the unfettered ability to get Congress to do what he wants.

Trump's position, in fact, is getting weaker by the day -- another fact he hasn't fully faced up to, if insider reports are correct. Trump has somehow convinced himself that as more time passes, more and more Democrats will be flocking to his position. This has not happened. In fact, the Democratic bill to reopen the government just got more votes in the Senate than Trump's plan. Six Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for it, while only one Democrat voted for Trump's plan. There is movement, in other words, but the movement is away from Trump.

Trump's position with the public gets weaker and weaker the longer this goes on, as well. Next month is the start of tax filing season. The I.R.S. has seen record numbers of people who are refusing to show up for work (since they aren't getting paid -- a clause in their Union contract states that financial hardship is an acceptable reason not to show up), which will delay (if not grind to a halt) the processing of everyone's returns. Farmers are going to see an end to their federal payments in the very near future (especially the billions of taxpayer dollars Trump is giving them because his trade war with China is hurting them so badly), if they haven't already stopped. Airports are already feeling the strain of T.S.A. workers calling in sick in record numbers, which is likely to increase as time goes on. All of this is being dutifully reported by the news media, as the pain of not being paid continues to get worse for federal workers. Trump's own approval ratings are headed downward, and the public overwhelmingly supports the Democratic position and not Trump's wall. This will also get worse over time. Sooner or later, Trump is going to have to wake up to these realities.

We're really in the ultimate "let Trump be Trump" moment. All the so-called "adults in the room" are now gone from the White House. This has left Trump surrounded by sycophants, assorted yes-men, and his own family members. There are no brakes on Trump's worst impulses any more, which is how the whole shutdown mess started. Trump is now doing precisely what Trump wants to do, without any pointy-headed weenies telling him it's not the smartest thing for him to do. And there is apparently no one willing to tell him that it's not working out the way he had hoped for, either. So the Trump tantrum continues unabated.

Trump did do one thing right, but it has now backfired on him in the Senate. Because the media is addicted to "both-sides-ism," they have continually been misstating the Democrats' position. They try to squeeze what is happening into the storyline of: "the two sides are at odds over the amount," which is just not true and never has been. Democrats have a deal-breaker, and it is refusing to fund Trump's new wall. Period. But Team Trump, seeing the opening the media provided, offered up their "compromise" bill -- temporary action on the DACA kids for the full amount of wall money Trump was demanding. This allowed them to move the media narrative from "they're squabbling between $1.3 billion and $5.7 billion" to "Trump offers Democrats some of what they want, why can't they compromise?" Both of these were false narratives, but they benefited Trump's side of the argument.

But then a funny thing happened while the actual bill was being drafted -- Stephen Miller got his dirty paws all over it. Tossed in without previous mention were several poison-pill clauses which virtually guaranteed there would be almost no Democratic support. Radical changes in immigration law were added, which Democrats simply could not support. This resulted in the measure only getting 50 votes in the Senate -- in a Senate with 53 Republicans, mind you.

Now it is the Democrats' chance to change the narrative once again. Reports are that Nancy Pelosi will make a new offer either tonight or tomorrow. It won't be a bill on the House floor, because she will still stick to her "open the government, then we can negotiate" position, but it will be a clear response to Trump's previous offer. Pelosi will reportedly offer to agree to give Trump more money for border security -- perhaps even the full $5.7 billion that he's asking for. Importantly, however, none of this money will go towards Trump's wall. Democrats are going to propose boosting all the other border security measures -- more agents patrolling the border, more technology to stop drugs from coming in, more immigration judges, etc. -- which could effectively end the mistaken media narrative about "squabbling over the amount." If Democrats propose $5.7 billion with no wall money, and Trump is holding out for $5.7 in wall money, then the issue becomes should become crystal clear, even to the pundits: the dealbreaker is the wall, period.

So, to recap: Trump's Senate bill got fewer votes than the Democratic bill. Six Republicans crossed the aisle to vote to reopen the government with no wall funding. With a new offer on the table from Pelosi and the Democrats, the ball will now be back in Trump's court. It should become clear even to Trump that the only way he's getting his wall money is to declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether. And the longer the impasse goes on, the more Trump bleeds public support. The more media stories about federal workers in dire circumstances and the closer we get to tax time, the more the pressure is going to mount on Trump to give in (especially when his top advisors go on television with a "let them eat cake" attitude).

Nancy Pelosi has made her position clear. She wants federal workers to be paid again, but at the same time, she will not give in to Trump's hostage-taking. This is pretty easy to explain to the furloughed workers: "If I give in now, then you'll get paid sooner right now, but then every single time Trump wants something in the future, he's going to stop your paychecks once again. If he knows this will work, he will do it over and over again. Which is why we cannot give in now -- to protect your future paychecks." That's an argument that's pretty easy to understand, really.

Nancy Pelosi -- for the first time in American history -- has forced the president to postpone his State Of The Union speech. If she were vindictive, she'd give a major speech on the House floor next Tuesday night, in the hopes that the networks would carry it live (they've already got the timeslot open, since they expected Trump to give his own speech then). She would pack the House with unpaid federal workers and make the case directly to them why she had to stand up to the bully. She could remind everyone about all the "Mexico's going to pay for it" nonsense Trump spouted on the campaign trail. She could ask Trump if he was still "proud" to shut the government down. She could hammer him mercilessly, in fact.

She probably won't, though. She's already winning this faceoff, so spiking the football in such a fashion would be superfluous and unseemly. Her message is simple: open the government, pay the workers, and then -- and only then -- we can all have a big political debate over the wall, border security, and anything else under the sun. We may even give you your full $5.7 billion, but not for the wall. But that entire discussion will not even begin until the government reopens. And you won't get your State Of The Union speech until that happens, either. Nancy Pelosi is no stranger to hardball politics -- in fact, she learned such things at her father's knee. She's seen it all before, and she knows how to fight political bullies. She not only has a backbone of steel, she's also got the entire Democratic caucus solidly behind her (instead of the usual "herding cats" situation). In other words, the best way to effectively fight "letting Trump be Trump" is to let Pelosi be Pelosi.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant