How can Democrats win on DACA and shutdowns? Remind America GOP is in control. When I worked for the minority party while Obama was in charge, we never let the country forget that the onus for action was on the party in power.

Kurt Bardella | Opinion columnist

The headlines were definitive: “Democrats get rolled in shutdown standoff,” “Democrats’ shutdown deal looks worse and worse,” “Democrats Blink in Shutdown Impasse, Hope for a Bargain.”

These weren’t headlines from Republican-sympathetic platforms like Fox News, Breitbart News or The Wall Street Journal. This was the narrative from Politico, CNN and The New York Times.

How did things go so bad so quickly for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his party? And are they doomed to be seen as losers in the next round?

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Not necessarily. The undocumented young people in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, so-called dreamers brought here by their parents, are the main point of conflict. They face a perilous situation — and it was 100% the making of President Trump.

On Sept. 5, 2017, Trump fulfilled a campaign promise to “terminate” DACA, tweeting, “Congress, get ready to do your job — DACA!” On Jan. 11, in a spectacular display of racism and ignorance, Trump reportedly referred to Haiti and Africa as “shithole countries” and asked “why do we want people from Haiti here?” instead of people from places like Norway.

That episode was a political gift to Democrats. Yet a few weeks later, Trump and Republicans were perceived as winners of the shutdown conflict.

I spent the better part of a decade working on Capitol Hill for Republicans in the House and Senate, including the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. During my time there, it became the epicenter of confrontation in Congress with high-profile hearings serving as the weekly battleground for the parties to collide.

The natural tension created terrific theater. On one side, a vigilant Republican chairman — Darrell Issa of California — who embraced his watchdog role and the media profile that went with it. On the other, congressional Democrats convinced that Issa represented an existential threat to Barack Obama's presidency.

The perception that Issa was such a danger to Obama was built on a reputation crafted during two years in the minority, not the majority. Obama had become president on a tidal wave of popularity. Democrats had firm control of both the House and the Senate. That meant that at the committee level, we had no real power. There was no subpoena authority to yield meaning, no enforcement mechanism to compel anyone from anyplace to respond to our questions or demands. That power rested exclusively with the Democrats and we made sure everybody knew that.

Somehow, as the story of DACA has unfolded, Democrats have allowed the public to forget that this crisis was entirely of Trump's making. It was Trump, through his Justice Department, who made the unilateral decision to end DACA last September. And yet, last week he tweeted that “Democrats are doing nothing about DACA” and encouraged people to “Start pushing Nancy Pelosi and the Dems to work out a DACA fix, NOW!”

Our recipe for success in the minority at the Oversight Committee revolved around two very basic principles: 1) Manage expectations and 2) Define success.

Whether the confrontation with the majority party was about an investigation into the Wall Street bailout or a call for a subpoena of a Cabinet secretary to testify at a hearing, we always made sure that onus for action was on the party in power. If something didn’t happen, it was on them, not us. Too often, Democrats have let Trump and the ruling Republican majority off the hook for owning DACA.

At the Oversight Committee, success for the minority party was using the bully pulpit to compel the majority to take action. If a subpoena of the Treasury Department was issued, we declared victory. If an Obama administration official had to testify at a public hearing, we felt like we won. Our success was measured not by the outcome of the hearing or investigation itself, but by the event taking place.

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Progressive Democrats believed that their congressional leaders would not back down from a shutdown until the status of the DACA dreamers was definitively addressed. If that wasn’t the case, why go through with the shutdown spectacle in the first place?

Despite the GOP's majority in both the House and Senate, the shutdown was cast as an instrument of Democratic action rather than Republican governing failure. Nearly 40% of Americans blamed Democrats for the shutdown compared to just 18% for Republicans.

With the possibility of another shutdown just days away, Democrats have inexplicably allowed the narrative on DACA and dreamers to flip against them. Trump is pressing them — not his own Republican majority — to solve the DACA problem.

Democrats need to remind Americans that it’s Republicans in Congress who have the unchecked power and authority to govern. Nearly nine in 10 Americans support allowing the hundreds of thousands of DACA dreamers to stay in the United States. This was a crisis of the president’s own making and Democrats should make clear it's the responsibility of the Republican majority to find a solution.

Kurt Bardella, a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, is a former spokesperson for congressional Republicans and Breitbart News who left the GOP late last year. Follow him on Twitter: @kurtbardella