Why is the government open and why did it shut down?

"Dear Mr. Speaker,
I hated the Iraq war. I think I hated it as much as you hate the Affordable Car Act. [...] In those days, when President Bush was Commander in Chief, I could have taken the steps that you are taking now to block Government funding in order to gain leverage to end the war. I faced a lot of pressure from my own base to take that action. But I did not do that. I felt it would have been devastating to America. Therefore, the Government was funded."

Thus Harry Reid on why the continuity of gov't operations and the credit rating of the U. S. Treasury outweigh any opposition to an illegal and unpopular war. That being so what does justify a shutdown within the logic of American politics?

The Republican Party is clear on its motivation: the defense of America against socialism. The Democratic Party will deny it with reason. Obamacare was designed to protect the private healthcare industry and deflect demand for a single payer system. But, as the party of vigilant capitalism, the Republicans should be given their due. Whatever level their analysis of Obamacare is operating on it does point at an underlying fact. The demand that healthcare be affordable and universal is unmistakably socialist.

The Affordable Healthcare Act owes such mass support as it may have to its admission of this principle, however nominal that may be. And the Democratic Party, five years into the systemic crisis which placed it in the White House, has little else to boast of to its working class base whose socialist instincts are rising to the surface. Conversely, the Republican Party cannot retreat from its stand against Obamacare without sustaining substantial damage with its own mass base even as its strategy loses support within the heights of capital. The "tea party" is separated from its rival base by its ideological inversion which makes the program of the working class, socialism, the greatest threat to itself. But its circumstances are closer to those of its enemy than to its own political allies in the business class. It isn't ideological hostility which drives the animosity of the tea party to the "official" GOP, it's the lack of a comfortable distance protecting it from the economic crisis.

With the historic organizations of the working class weakened capital senses historic opportunities. It sympathizes with the struggle against socialized medicine but, by and large, and, with varying motivations, has thrown in with ACA. The Republican Party has been weakened nationally as the business class finds itself more and more comfortable with the Democrats. As this happens the relative weight of the purely reactionary section of the party has increased, as the budget standoff illustrates. However, the approach of the debt ceiling resolved the standoff by devaluing the contest between the party brands and asserting their identity as defenders of capital and empire.

This underlying identity lies behind the safe for all settings opinion that the politicians should "do their job" and keep the government up and running for the sake of us all. Hidden in this non-partisan vent of frustration is a real deterioration in the standard of living for most in this country; a situation that will not always be resolved by the nostrums of the media or contained within the current partisan landscape.