With Trump spouting off about able bodied fraudsters snagging some undeserved SNAP, and either Trump brow beating TSA and air traffic controllers into working for free? Gee, I don’t know. Give him enough rope instead of wrapping it around your own neck?

That doesn't answer the question. What does that metaphor actually look like, in the real world? Do you believe that had the shutdown continued, the GOP would have relented and agreed to the ACA subsidy extension? What is the actual path to an end outcome that you think would have happened? Do you think that this gets to a point where 13 Republican Senators were willing to vote for ACA subsidy extensions against the opposition of Trump?

The dems were winning public support, and the one poll that definitively showed that—Nov. 4th—is the one poll missing from your analysis.

The Dems weren't winning public support on this issue. They were able to win elections, but neither Spanberger nor Sherrill (and certainly not Mamdani) ran entirely - or even primarily - on the shutdown. They positioned themselves front and center on affordability, on bread and butter economic issues. And while the Democrats did a fairly decent job of communicating the importance of extending the ACA subsidies, that is not the same thing as getting public support for continuing the shutdown.

So here's the last poll I was able to find on the subject, published by KFF (Kaiser) on November 6th. It directly asked the question of whether respondents supported the tactic of using the shutdown to try to lever an extension of the ACA subsidies. When asked to choose between:

"Democrats in Congress should.... refuse to approve a budget unless it includes extending these tax credits, even if it means the government remains shut down."

and

"Democrats in Congress should.... approve a budget that does not include extending these tax credits in order to quickly end the shutdown, even if it means the cost of health insurance will increase for some people."

...a slight (50-48%) majority said end the shutdown.

kff.org - Kff health tracking poll public weighs in on health care debate and government shutdown

Which is why the CR was able to draw enough Democratic votes to pass. There was never enough public blame to get the GOP to change their position. As Angus King put it:

“The position the Republicans have been taking all along is, ‘we’re not going to negotiate about the ACA as long as the government is shut down.’ Maybe in the first week, we weren’t so sure they were for real. In the second week, third, fourth, fifth, sixth week, it became clear that the [Democratic] strategy wasn’t working. They weren’t going to come back and say, ‘We want to do something on the ACA,’” King explained.

thehill.com - Democrats abandon schumer strategy

Democrats did very well, in the limited sense that they were able to buck the odds and not be overwhelmingly blamed for the shutdown - as historically the party seeking a policy concession from a shutdown has typically been. But they never got enough of a shift in the public perception of the GOP and the shutdown that would get the GOP to give them what they wanted, and that wasn't going to change as the shutdown went on.