While this issue may never disappear as long as Trump is president — don’t be surprised if three years from now he’s telling voters that if they reelect him, he’ll finally build the wall and get Mexico to pay for it — Harvey just dealt that insane dream a crushing blow.

To see why, you first have to understand the tremendous time pressure Congress and the White House are under right now. They’re facing two urgent deadlines: First, they have to raise the debt ceiling by the end of September or the United States will default on its debts; second, they have to pass a budget bill by then or the government will shut down.

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Democrats have taken the firm position that they aren’t going to vote for any budget that includes funding for a border wall. In response, Trump has threatened to shut down the government in order to get his wall. As he said at his rally in Phoenix last week, “Believe me, if we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall.”

That was always an idiotic idea both substantively and politically, but Harvey has made it even less palatable than it was a month ago. Natural disasters remind people of how important government is, undercutting the occasional Republican argument that it wouldn’t really be that big a deal to shut it down (something they said before the 2013 shutdown, and that some of them would no doubt say again).

For instance, in this 2015 Pew Research Center poll, despite low marks for government overall, 88 percent of respondents said government has an important role to play in responding to natural disasters, and 79 percent said it was doing a good job on that task. Similarly, in this 2013 Gallup poll, 75 percent said they were satisfied with the job government does responding to natural disasters, higher than for any other task it performs.

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So if you try to shut down the government just weeks after we all got a vivid instruction in how vulnerable Americans can be and how much they need government to be there for them, it will look even more foolish and reckless. How are Republicans and the administration going to respond when Democrats say, “What if another hurricane hits while the government is shut down because you’re insisting on funding your stupid wall?”

And keep in mind that the wall itself is extremely unpopular. Polls have consistently shown that a border wall is opposed by around 60 to 65 percent of the public (and only 15 percent or so believe Trump’s preposterous claim that Mexico will pay for it). It’s one thing if you’re shutting down the government to do something popular. But if you’re shutting down the government for something most people don’t even want, you won’t get a lot of backup.

Even Trump’s supporters may not be behind him if he tries. According to a new Politico/Morning Consult poll, the idea of shutting down the government to force funding for a border wall was rejected by a margin of 61 to 28, and Trump voters supported it by only 50 to 40. On one hand, you can be appalled at the fact that half of Trump’s voters favor a government shutdown over the wall. On the other hand, it means that even his supporters are divided on the question. We should also note that Morning Consult polls consistently have much more favorable numbers for Republicans than other polls, and this one began its interviews before Harvey hit.

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There’s one more problem for Trump: He’ll have precious little support in Congress for a shutdown over the wall. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) have been clear that they don’t want a shutdown. Even Rep. Mark Meadows (N.C.), the head of the ultra-right House Freedom Caucus, says his people want to put off the argument over the border wall. “In talking to a number of my members, if there was a vote for a continuing resolution next week that did not include border wall funding, the majority of those members would be supportive of that,” he told ABC News. Tory Newmyer reports that some of Trump’s aides are trying to convince him to put off the border wall fight until the questions of funding the government and raising the debt ceiling are behind him. So he’ll be all by himself.

We know that Trump has little problem making threats and promises, and then later pretending he never said any of it. But the border wall is close to his heart, and the hearts of his most ardent supporters. It was the symbolic centerpiece of his campaign, a vessel into which people could pour all of their disappointments and resentments over a changing country many felt was leaving them behind. So Trump will never abandon the idea.

But Trump likely will put it off when he has little choice. And even he may realize that the more he makes the wall the subject of a high-profile showdown, the likelier he is to lose. So my guess is that over time he’ll ask for a billion here and a billion there, which will be used to shore up some fencing and build some new structures that vaguely resemble a wall in a few spots along the border. Then if anybody asks he’ll say, “We’re building it, and it’s spectacular.”