I haven't written on the shutdown because in the years I spent negotiating on a daily basis as a defense lawyer, one thing I learned was you can't analyze a negotiation strategy effectively if your negotiating partner is irrational. Trump's shutdown can't be competently analyzed.
2/ In other words, the only analysis of the shutdown worth a damn is an analysis that says Trump's mental and emotional pathologies are dangerous and mean the shutdown could last a few more hours or many months. That's been my perspective from the moment the government shut down.
3/ Trump's shutdown will therefore end whenever his dangerous mental and emotional pathologies permit it to—an unknowable in the equation—or Democrats decide to cave to Trump's instability, which would be just as dangerous a precedent as that instability is in the first instance.
4/ A third possibility, but one not worth discussing because Mitch McConnell is ultimately not a functioning human soul, would be the House and Senate bypassing Trump to strike a deal that's veto-proof. I think we're many weeks away from McConnell being willing to go that route.
