It is not about holding something hostage but expecting compromise on both sides. The Dems need to stop compromising if the other side refuses to.
I think this situation is a little more nuanced than that.
In the Ted Cruz shutdown he did it in September, right up front, by saying "you need to repeal ACA or we're going to shutter the government." There was no negotiating. He took the hard line that democrats needed to overturn their single most important piece of legislation, and nothing else would matter, and he pounced on the chance to shut it down on October 1.
In this case, democrats have been angling for a fix to the daca problem for years. Obama used an executive order because republicans in congress refused to pass a real fix. These days, even most republicans want it fixed. Democrats have been talking about this fix for like a year now. When they couldn't come to a deal in September, democrats folded and voted for the CR. When the second deadline came they pushed for a fix, and when republicans refused democrats folded again and voted for another CR. When the third deadline came, democrats folded a third time. It's been almost four months, and democrats have been nothing but accommodating on this issue. Spineless, even. They have deferred to Trump at every possible turn, agreeing to fund the government with short term CRs without getting the fix that everyone agrees is going to happen before March anyway.
So this fourth time around, some of them actually took a stand in the hopes that a real deadline might incentivize a real compromise solution, and it worked! They agreed on one! They even offered to let Trump declare victory on the border wall to get the daca fix, and he still turned it down. Some Republicans stood with them, because continuous short term CRs are no way to run the greatest nation on earth. It's embarrassing.
Eventually, I think democrats will fold like spineless worms again. They always have before, so why should this time be any different? Trump is never going to agree to a daca fix that lets Pelosi smile at a press conference, so the only way this gets fixed is if McConnell and Ryan write it and beg Trump to sign it while flattering is very large tie. I think his petty vanity prevents him from giving democrats the appearance of a win, even if it's a win that republicans also want.
Which makes me think the real problem here was democrats publicly adopting the daca cause in the first place. By making it a party issue they drew too much attention to it. I suspect congress would have quietly resolved things on their own without so much popular coverage. Now that's it's a widely known party issue, republicans won't let it pass because it looks bad for them. It's like it was previously an obvious bipartisan solution, but now that dems are championing it and getting it media coverage and the country is behind it, it's suddenly too popular to pass.
Let this be a lesson to congressional democrats;
anything you support Trump will burn to the ground just to be obstinate. Please don't make an issue about not nuking North Korea! Please don't support a national infrastructure plan! Please don't come out in support of children's health insurance! (shit, too late on that last one.)