With a bipartisan Senate vote to approve funding the federal government now in the books, the longest shutdown in US history appears to be drawing to a close.

Furloughed federal employees will return to work. They, and those who were deemed too "essential" to send home, will start receiving pay cheques – including back pay – once again.

Air travel in the US will return to a somewhat tolerable normal. Food aid for low-income Americans will resume. National parks will reopen.

The ordeals, great and small, that the shutdown had triggered for many Americans will end.

The political consequences of this record standoff, however, will linger even as the government returns to work.

Here are three major takeaways now that an exit ramp has come into view.

In the end, the Democrats blinked. Or, at least, just enough centrists, soon-to-be retirees and at-risk politicians in the Senate to give Republicans the support needed to reopen the government.

For those who voted along with Republicans, the pain from the shutdown had become too severe. For others in the party, however, it was the cost of backing down that was unbearable.

"I cannot support a deal that still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they are going to pay for their health care or whether they will be able to afford to get sick," Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said in a statement.

The way this shutdown is ending is sure to reopen old wounds between the party's activist and left-wing base and its institutionalist, centrist establishment. The divides within the party, which last week was celebrating electoral victories in Virginia and New Jersey, are sure to sharpen.