Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer. Worst. Negotiator. Ever.

On Friday the word came down from the Democratic National Committee or whoever that the Democrats were going to give in on funding The Trump Wall.

My Congressman, Luis Gutierrez, a leading voice in Washington for immigrant rights, was making the rounds explaining what the Dems were up to.

Well, Gutierrez is signaling something. For instance, in an interview with ABC News, he said he could back a proposed compromise floated by Durbin and South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, even if it includes some funding for Trump’s wall—provided the deal takes care of DACA, too.

“I think the wall is a monumental waste of taxpayers’ money, and it’s to build a monument to stupidity and it’s just idiotic,” Gutierrez said. “Having said that, if that’s what it’s going to take in order to put 800,000 young men and women in the country . . . in a safe place and put them on course to full integration in our society . . . I say pay it.”

Gutierrez’s spokesman confirms that this is pretty much what Durbin has been floating, and that the congressman was “briefed” by Durbin before the senator went to the White House for that now-infamous meeting in which the president asked why the U.S. was accepting so many immigrants from “shithole countries.”

But Gutierrez’s spokesman also said something else. He confirmed that while the congressman is willing to vote to authorize building an entire $18 billion wall over the next decade as part of the right overall package, he now supports appropriating only one year’s worth of money, $1.8 billion.

That means that this time next year, if, for instance, Democrats control Congress, only a little bit of work on the wall would have been done. And should Trump lose his presumed re-election bid to a Democrat in 2020, any work likely would immediately halt.

By Monday, things had changed.

After what polling aggregator Nate Silver tweeted was a nothing burger of a government shut-down, the Democrats caved on DACA in exchange for bupkis, Mitch McConnell promising to talk about it later.

Even my compromising Congressman said he felt betrayed.

“They blinked because they’ll always put the party and the success of the party first,” said Representative Luis V. Gutiérrez of Illinois, one of the leading Democratic advocates for immigrants, complaining that Hispanics got short shrift. “It’s the one word they know in Spanish: mañana.”

Trump got what he wanted. He kept the Republicans united and split the Democrats down the middle, funding for The Wall and nothing on DACA.

Sixteen Democratic members of the Senate plus Bernie Sanders voted against the deal.

Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The Democrats couldn’t have made themselves look worse or more confused about what they were about.

Were they blaming Trump and the Republicans for the shut-down?

Or were they fighting for The Dreamers by forcing a government shut-down?

Apparently it was just about a four-day weekend.

It turns out – in case you need further evidence – that Chuck Schumer is the worst negotiator ever.

Two million people marching in the streets for women’s rights and against Trump just two days earlier wasn’t enough to give the Democratic leadership some spine.

I doubt anything can.