Remember the last government shutdown? It wasn't that long ago. It was, in fact, the longest such shutdown in American history. The Democrats refused to help Republicans pass a budget because they were making a principled stand on an important political issue. Now that we may be days away from another government shutdown, it saddens me to say that the cause that was worth forcing the previous shutdown seems to have completely fallen off not just the Democrats' radar, but everyone else's, too. And that is a shame, because it will bring continued hardship to tens of millions of Americans.

I do realize, of course, that Democrats have a bigger political fish to fry right now, as the thuggish brutality of Donald Trump's immigration crackdown tactics have become such a flashpoint. So I am not sorry that Democrats seem to be ready to use their budget leverage once again in order to try to force some real changes and accountability to ICE (and perhaps the Border Patrol as well). Such congressional oversight is quite obviously sorely needed, to rein in the militarization of American cities and the complete unaccountability of masked men with weapons of war roaming the streets. People have needlessly died, and drastic changes are indeed necessary. So I'm not arguing against Democrats using their leverage to force this issue this week.

Even so, by focusing solely on the problems with ICE and immigration enforcement, the previous issue has now all but disappeared from the political debate. Which means that tens of millions of Americans using the Obamacare websites to buy their insurance will either be completely priced out of being able to afford any health insurance, or they will be straining under the huge financial burden of suddenly paying twice or even three times what they paid last year. This is a big problem, and it is precisely why Democrats shut the government down late last year.

For a while, over the year-end holidays and into early January, it seemed like a compromise might have been within reach. The Obamacare subsidies that had ended on the first of the year would have been reinstated for two years, with a few minor changes that were unobjectionable to most Democrats. A three-year bill (without the minor Republican changes) even passed the House (by using a discharge petition to force the vote) with bipartisan support.

Then the Republicans got tied up in knots over the abortion issue. The hardliners in the GOP demanded Draconian changes to the way federal dollars are spent on health insurance, even though this money is already heavily restricted against paying for abortion insurance. The Democrats let it be known that this would be an unacceptable "poison pill" amendment to the compromise, and rather than stand up to the hardliners in their own party the Republicans who had been working on a compromise just crumbled. The compromise talks -- and the compromise bill -- just faded away.

Which means that as things stand nothing is going to get done on the issue. Republicans aren't interested in being reasonable anymore, and Democrats don't have the power to get a bill passed on their own, so the subsidies will indeed expire for the entire year. This leaves millions of American families in dire straights.

The political reality is that a government shutdown fight is hard enough as it is, and the only way to achieve any positive success in one is to keep it as simple as possible. To put it another way: only one issue per shutdown. Demanding both ICE reform and Obamacare subsidies would probably backfire and Democrats would wind up securing neither one. Keeping a tight focus means giving the Republicans fewer ways to refuse to deal. I get all of that. But I still find it a shame, because of who will be left out in the cold.

If Trump hadn't decided to invade Minneapolis, perhaps we would be in a different political place right now. Perhaps the Democrats who had been bargaining for a compromise would have a strong political hand, and would have now been urging their fellow Democrats to join with them in shutting the government down to demand a deal on the Obamacare subsidies. The issue does indeed already have some Republican support, and might have been solved by a standoff, because the rest of the Republican Party has staked out such an unpopular position with the general public.

But now because the issue will instead not be solved, millions of Americans will be unable to afford insurance, and unnecessary deaths will almost certainly happen as a direct result. The issue has all but disappeared from the political headlines, but that doesn't change the facts at all.

Democrats will console themselves by using the issue as a bludgeon in their midterm election campaigns. They will quite accurately point out how much suffering the Republicans have caused. They will fit it all into their big-picture messaging on affordability, which is shaping up to be a potent political issue and which may indeed hand control back to the Democrats of one -- or even both -- of the chambers of Congress this November.

But that's a bitter silver lining when you consider the human cost of not solving the issue now. A whole lot of people are going to get shortchanged by the way the politics played out. Because even if the Democrats do successfully manage to force through some serious ICE reforms in the next week or two, the Obamacare subsidies will still expire for millions.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant