Chris Cuomo, in his podcast (The Chris Cuomo Project) The Shutdown That Could Decide the Midterms, enlists the Kalshi prediction market question, How long will the government shutdown last?

My training in prediction was through participation in a  DNI funded program, based on modified prediction market software,  as detailed in How it all started…”Forecasting World Events”.

My efforts began as a test of pure intuition, which had inauspicious results. I segued towards accumulation of specific knowledge about a question, but that alone did not bridge the gap to judgment. With that gap, a useful prediction is not possible,  except for the rare occasion when deterministic, logical reasoning suddenly appears to fill the gap. The gap-filler is intuition about human behavior, usually at the primitive level. It is underutilized because of our desire to conceal ugly aspects of our primitive selves.

There was always the opportunity to decline the question. But if the FWE participant failed to take a minimum number of questions in a period of time, his cumulative score would be removed, and he would become invisible. There was always the temptation to take a question to improve one’s score, but once a participation was decided, it was  impossible to withdraw. A “no knowledge” 50-50 prediction reduced the cumulative score, while non-participation had no downside.

Our inventory of knowledge specific to this  question begins with a capsulization of  the two parties. Prior to 2016, the  Republican was widely perceived as the party of fiscal responsibility,  and the Democratic as the party of social responsibility. These perceptions were rooted in binary choices, “spend more” or “spend less”, rather than ideologies.

But the recent primacy of ideology in both parties has much earlier roots. The decline of bipartisanship, and the incorporation of Christianity into  the Republican platform began with Newt Gingrich in 1991, and accelerated when the Republicans won  the South in the 1994 elections Quoting from (Axios) Trump up, Dems down in new polls; Politics Part 7,

Deprived of their rural southern base, which had a conservative cultural outlook, the mainstream Democratic ethos became unmoored. Union labor, which had been culturally conservative, was diminished by de-industrialization of the U.S. As the union rolls diminished, blue collar labor’s muscles atrophied. Deprived of the requirement of broad cultural inclusion of southern and union attitudes, the Democratic Party was free to drift to the left.

The Dem drift to the left has accelerated. reaching occasional extremes not seen before in the U.S. political mainstream. The Republican drift to the right, the child of Gingrich, accelerated in kind. The two movements are in linked opposition, each side rewriting a common, fictional history of the U.S. to disinherit the other. Quoting further from Politics Part 7,

New features of the Republican Party, of the Seventh  Party System are:

• • • De facto repudiation of American Exceptionalism, as the international and domestic responsibility to do good works.
    • Intent to remedy  structural economic defects which accumulated since 2000.
    • Intent to establish fiscal soundness.
    • Nativism.
    • Authoritarianism.
    • Possible obstruction of the democratic process by groups that seek protection of what they see as their birthright.

The Civil War was the epitome of violence, but the current war for minds has a unique feature. For the first time, the  divide is only secondarily based on economics. The histories of all nations are full of baloney contrived to  serve the state, and ours is no exception. This is the first culture war in our history, which brings us back to gap-fillers based on primitive behavior. Among primitive tribes, it is common to refer to members as “human beings”, while outsiders are savages, or animals. Culture wars are unique in dehumanization, in deprivation of empathy. Toleration of cruel outcome follows. Some Republicans have given voice, promoting a form of hard Christianity with diminished empathy replaced by absolutism.

This  implies that while the Dems are still vulnerable to empathic attack from Dem voters, the Republicans have some level of immunity to the same. This applies even though polls blame Republicans for the shutdown. They are nervous about the prospects of starvation in their districts, but not to the degree of Dems, for whom welfare remains a government obligation.

With Republican absolutism comes  the inability to compromise, and intolerance of loss, which might be the same thing. Lose once, and you’ll keep losing. Conversely, the Dems can win the battle for hearts by losing; they choose the date. If all emergency funds are released, starvation will delay another month, till November28.

This argument implies length of the shutdown of about 60 days. A round figure has more impact. With every argument comes a level of confidence. Mine is low to moderate. What’s yours?