Of Politics and the Prisoner's Dilemma. Or, "Why Do Politicians Do That?"

[Skinner]

I was thinking about this Alito filibuster over the weekend, and it struck me that the choice faced by politicians in this vote (and in almost every vote) is similar to the choice faced by the prisoner in the so-called "Prisoner's Dilemma." For those of you who are not familiar with game theory, the Prisoner's Dilemma is a deceptively simple game that illustrates the system of rewards and punishments for two players who must decide whether to cooperate or betray one another.

Entire books have been written on the Prisoner's Dilemma, so I'm not even going to try to do it justice. Wikipedia has a good primer, which is worth reading. The basic gist is this: Two people are caught by the police, and are interrogated separately. If these two prisoners cooperate with each other and refuse to talk, then they both serve six months. If one prisoner defects and rats out the other prisoner while the other prisoner stays silent, then the defector gets off scott free and the silent prisoner gets 10 years in prison. If both prisoners defect, then they both serve 10 years in prison.

The best outcome for both prisoners together is to cooperate, in which case they will only serve a combined 1 year in prison. But the best outcome for a single prisoner is to defect when the other cooperates -- thus getting off scott free. If you think through all the options, you will see that the better choice for any individual prisoner is to defect -- no matter what the other prisoner does, so there is a strong incentive to defect, and a strong disincentive to cooperate. In fact, it is not rational to *ever* cooperate. In order for mutual cooperation to take place, the two prisoners must 1) trust each other completely and 2) be willing to act altruistically toward the other prisoner (take a small personal penalty for the good of the group).

Which brings us to the Alito vote.

We can set up a prisoner's dilemma-style grid to show the rewards and penalties of cooperating (voting against Alito) versus defecting (voting for Alito). While I'm sure most Senator's weren't thinking of the prisoner's dilemma, I think it is fair to assume that they all think of votes in terms of rewards and penalties. In real life, the rewards and penalties for each senator would be different. (For example: A red-state Dem would likely perceive a greater penalty for cooperation than a blue-state Dem.) But here is the "generic" prisoner's dilemma grid for a Democrat deciding how to vote for Alito:

                           |      Democrat "A" Cooperates       |      Democrat "A" Defects          |
                           |  (Votes against Extremist Judge)   |    (Votes for Extremist Judge)     |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           | WIN - WIN                          | "A" WINS MUCH - "B" LOSES MUCH     |
Democrat "B" Cooperates    | Democrats claim victory.           | "A" joins high-profile victory.    |
(Votes against             | President humiliated.              | "A" positions self as bipartisan   |
   Extremist Judge)        | Extremist kept off SCOTUS.         |     and independent.               |
                           | "A" and "B" possibly seen as       | "B" publicly humiliated in         |
                           |     partisan and obstructionist.   |     high-profile defeat.           |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                           | "B" WINS MUCH  - "A" LOSES MUCH    | LOSE - LOSE                        |
Democrat "B" Defects       | "B" joins high-profile victory.    | Extremist elevated to SCOTUS.      |
(Votes for                 | "B" positions self as bipartisan   | Fortunately there is not much      |
   Extremist Judge)        |     and independent.               |     media coverage of defeat       |
                           | "A" publicly humiliated in         |     because there was unanimous    |
                           |     high-profile defeat.           |     vote and no public fight.      |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Obviously, this purely hypothetical grid has been written with the Prisoner's Dilemma in mind, and does not represent the exact choice facing each Democrat (for one thing, it assumes that the Senate has only two Democrats: A and B). But I think it is instructive. No matter what happens, the "rational" choice for any individual Democrat is to defect. But the best choice for all the Democrats together is for everyone to cooperate. So the bottom line is that each Democrat is balancing their own personal fate against that of the party as a whole (and that of the nation).

I know that it is easy to stand in judgment and point fingers at politicians and say, "What a selfish bastard! He sold the rest of the party down the river to save his own ass!" And you would be right. But I would argue that it is unreasonable to expect politicians to not act like politicians. After all, that's why they call them "politicians." :)

So, how do we get out of this? Ultimately, the system of rewards and penalties must be changed so that Democrats believe it is not risky to cooperate, and it is risky to defect. (This is what we were doing when we made thousands of phone calls to their offices -- we were sending the message that they weren't going to get off so easily if they defect.) There must be a carrot and a stick. The rewards for cooperation must be greater, and the penalties for defecting must be greater. Sadly, much of this is outside of our ability to influence: the media punishes cooperation, and often a politician's own supporters and constituents will do so as well. The bottom line is that politicians are not going to stray far from what they feel the media and their donors and their constituents will allow. We must change the environment so that it is not so risky to stick one's neck out and support a progressive agenda.

It is my personal opinion that conservatives have succeeded in doing this. The risks of cooperation for a conservative politician are much lower than they were 25 years ago. Republicans have good reason to trust that if they cooperate, they won't get stabbed in the back by their fellow Republicans. Democrats... Not so much.

The bottom line is that politicians are rational beings. They weigh the options -- considering the rewards and penalties for themselves, for their party, and for their country -- and then they do the rational thing.

ON EDIT: Fixed grid

[Beetwasher]

1. Ok, How The Hell Did You Make That Grid in The Post?

Damn, that had to take forever! Oh, and good post too!

[Skinner]

2. I used the "pre" tag.

<pre> Blah Blah Blah </pre>

But I used square brackets, of course.

[Junkdrawer]

3. Don't forget the Federal Aid (pork) that the defecting Senator will get...

for his/her state.

Byrd and Landrieu especially would probably factor such concerns into their decision.

[TahitiNut]

4. The Prisoner's Dilemma is one of my favorite paradigms.

There's no question that all of politics is now corrupted by (mythical) "win-lose" (zero sum) thinking. (Life is NOT a zero sum game.) There really is no such thing as "win-lose" ... it's either "win-win" or "lose-lose," as we can see from the economic predation that has decimated the customer base along with the labor base. The disdain with which reichbots sneer at "touch-feelie" social attitudes betrays a self-loathing that places little premium on their own good in rejecting the common good.

It's well-known that the Prisoner's Dilemma encourages a "tit-for-tat" strategy that harms all when the cooperation of "win-win" isn't achieved. What's not so well-known are 'out of the box' strategies like strike and renegotiate. When the 'rules' of the game are unacceptable, change the rules. I'd like to see the Democrats preemptively use the 'nuclear retaliation' option and shut down the Senate at this point. They can't lose much more than what they've already abandoned through cowardice, imho. That DOESN'T require all 44 to 'cooperate.'

On edit: I realize you've presented the paradigm with the Democrats as the 'prisoners' ... and I've broadened it to the larger population of all Senators. The Republican prisoners are playing a somewhat revisionist "tit-for-tat" ... venting spleen at imagined denial of the "rightful" privileges of the wealthy elite. They don't comprehend the fact that EVERYONE "wins" when everyone is included - and are fixated on the myth that if their opponent 'loses' then they 'win.'

If anything distinguishes the right from the left it's this worldview - the right pretends to be the Left Hand of Darwin/God and PUNISH the 'failures' in society by creating a system whereby the performance requirements of those ahead are constantly reduced while the hurdles are increased for those behind.

It's like having a football game and saying that the team that's leading only needs 9 yards for a first down if they're leading by 1-7 points, 8 yards for a first down if they're leading by 8-14 points, and so on while, at the same time, requiring 11 yards or 12 yards, respectively, for the team that's behind. This is what the fascist right is doing!

[stellanoir]

5. Stockholm syndrome as well

wherein people are lulled into a false sense of security by their captors or abusers.

That's the only way I can understand how anyone buys into all the BS.

Real thoughtful post Skinner. Thanks.

The corporate media and those riggable and hackable nefarious voting mechanisms are greater problems for us than the opposition because they insure they can rule and manipulate truth indefinitely. IMHO.

K & R

[Plaid Adder]

6. Here's the thing that sucks most about that theory.

And I'm not saying you're not right, just that it sucks.

Right now, the penalties for opposing the majority government are severe, cooperation or no cooperation. What's more, they are immediate. The rewards are in the future and are not guaranteed. This is true for any resistance movement: the rewards are not guaranteed, but the penalties are.

What this tells you, if you follow the PD logic, is that cooperation happens only when the people cooperating already have nothing to lose. In other words, the 'reward' for collaborating with the power structure is as bad as or worse than the 'penalty' for opposing it. If you are a Jew in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, for instance, your 'reward' for collaborating is that you are allowed to drag out your miserable existence while becoming complicit in your own destruction until you finally get put on a train and shipped to a death camp. The penalty for resisting is that you get found out, arrested, tortured, and either shot or shipped to a death camp. Same ultimate outcome; at least if you're resisting you have a few moments of righteous schadenfreude before you die, and there's always the possibility that it might actually work.

I figured maybe the Democrats in Congress had hit the point where they felt like they had nothing to lose. Obviously not. I'll tell you what, though: every day these assholes are in power, *I* personally have less and less to lose, because you know and I know who they're going to come after first when this country finally blossoms into full-blown batshit-crazy totalitarianism.

That's what I mean about People Who Get It. PWGI are the ones who understand that getting to stay on the Senate is not really a reward. There are more of them than there used to be. Alas, there will probably be more of them yet after 2006 and 2008.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder

[Rose Siding]

7. Not kicking out the leadership for doing as we asked would be a good start

Otherwise, the lesson is that voting progressively is no-win.

This observation was missing from most of yesterday's discussions:

snip>
The last time we had a serious outpouring from the grassroots was the Iraq War resolution. My Senator DiFi commented at thetime that she had never seen anything like the depth of passion coming from her constituents. But she voted for the war anyway. So did Bayh, Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Kerry and Reid. The entire leadership of the party. Every one of them went the other way this time. I know that some of you are cynical about these people (and ,well, they are politicans, so don't get all Claud Rains about it) but that means something. Every one of those people were running in one way or another in 2002 and they went the other way. The tide is shifting. There is something to be gained by doing the right thing.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_01_29_digbysblog_archive.html#113867908339927928

His whole post is well worth a read. The RFK remarks should be rubbed all over the body....Politic.

[KittyWampus]

8. GOP FORCES cooperation through threats and blackmail.

Remember the GOP Senator/Congressman who was a dentist (?) and opposed the WH's Medicare bill couple of years ago? Dude went into the WH opposed and came out CRYING and changed his position.

The White House has dirt on their party members and revels in using it.

The Democrats just don't have that means to enforce cooperation.

[Armstead]

9. I diagree that we should think as prisoners

I think Democrats too often see themselves as prisoners of a non-existant jailer. Thus everything is a defense or a need to placate a national mood that doesn;t exist.

Let's assume that instead of being divided into only two opposing camps, the nation as a whole is more complex.

It's simpler than this but let's look at it in Thirds, instead of Halves. In other words, One Third of the country is Rigidly Conservative (Hannitized), One Third is Rigidly Liberal/Progressive (most Duers) and One Third are Flexible Swing Voters.

To make it slightly more complex, let's assume that a lot of people have different stances on different issues. For example, someone who might be very liberal/progressive on economic issues, but is more socially conservative on issues like abortion and gay rights.

Thus, the real choice is not really between placating some imagined Unified Conservative Majority or plactating a Minority Left Wing Base. It is, instead, taking a position that will both appeal to the base and attract as many of the other two thirds as possible.

A lot of that is a gamble, whatever is done. But a lot of it simply requires a combination of guts and brains and a willingness to gamble.

In the case of Alito, it boiled down to taking a stand, and selling that to voters. What's the difference? It is not just whether to quietly cave in or fight some imagined Conservative majority. Instead it is taking a unified position, and then aggressively selling it to the public as a whole.

The Rigid Conservatives will never be persuaded. (But as Bob Barr illustrates, getting the cooperation of right wingers isn't always a lost cause on every issue either.) The Rigid Liberal Base will feel like they are stuck with you anyway. The real fight is to persuade that One-Third in the middle that a judge like Alito is worth fighting against.

Thus, instead of a Prisoners Dilemma, it is more of a contest of equals. The GOP is obviously in a stronger position, but they also have their own dilemmas to grapple with.

The issue, then, is not whether to react to the GOP/Media spin. It is to stake out a position that we believe in, sell that aggressively and then roll the dice.

[Skinner]

10. Um, for the record...

...I never said we should think as prisoners. The term "prisoner's dilemma" is just an arbitrary name for a particular type of theoretical game.

[Armstead]

22. Point well taken.

I realize that Prisoner's Dilemma is the name of that particular game.

But I do think it is unintentionally just one illustration of the whole frame of defeatism that we have bought into.I think one of the biggest problems for progressives and liberals is the perception that we are a persecuted minority.

I'm guilty of doing it myself.

But we all have to start recognizing that we are part of a pissed off majority instead. My current mantra is that we are AT LEAST half the country, and probably more when you boil it down into specific issues.

Anyway, don't mind me. I've been rather jagged the last few days, with all of the roller coastering between the hope and frustration that the whole filibuster fight raised. :)

[TahitiNut]

11. It is INCONSEQUENTIAL that they're called 'prisoners'.

That's merely a device to portray the varying 'rewards' for choices. The essential lesson is to learn how people will make choices that benefit themselves only marginally over a cooperative choice while resulting in enormously grater harm to the 'other.' People aren't motivated by "net benefit to the group" ... but by self-centered advantage.

This is, for one thing, the reason why there are Quislings and Vichys even in the most culturally 'nationalistic' societies. It's almost inarguable that France has a very strong "national identity." France also saw their Vichy collaborators. It's almost inarguable that Norwegians have a very strong social bond and cultural identity. Norway saw Quisling.

The fascist right in the U.S. makes a LOT of noise about 'homeland' and 'country' and 'nation' and all kinds of jingoistic crap. I regard it as an absolute certainty that, if the U.S. were to be occupied then the collaborators would come from the jingoistic, fascist right. No question about it! The 'right' is the ideological home for the 'me first' crowd.

[realFedUp]

12. Republicans face bigger penalties for defecting....

Democrats don't and that needs to change.
There don't seem to be any penalities like
withholding PAC monies or taking away chairs.
Incumbents don't face strong challengers in
the primaries and that needs to change.

The staid state Democratic party leaders see it
in their interests not to put challengers
up against their incumbents. That needs to change.

I think more of us would vote for a third party
challenger in races where Dems aren't voting in
our interests.

[Pithy Cherub]

13. The bottom line presented is where

the current calculus went off course for these Dems that went off to join hands with their fellow conservatives. The Alito nom was filtered through the political calculus of 20th century or Clinton Era politics. It also did not include a new weighting system for the 21st century politics because of exactly what you stated: The rewards and public accolades were not high enough and the punishment would be a bug bite on a summer night.

The feedback loop through which they are weighing their "options" is full of group-think home cooked and self-served right in D.C. Also, these politicians are engaging in some magical thinking that the middle will save them when necessary. The liberal and progressive players realize that inspiring, We the People, to cooperate is the road out of the political wilderness. The more centrist groups want guarantees, qualifying statements and mutant modifiers first, before packing for the road trip. Therefore, those who most feel the need to change the game are more committed to doing so, getting us closer to a major tipping point in the game, November 2006.

As a matter of public record, they (on edit:mostly) already deeply regret the IWR Aye vote and splitting to join conservatives. It means that the game is lasting much longer than before and that the weighting of their options is being reformed, most unwillingly. The question is how long will the Democratic Reformation/Enlightenment take during these dark and dangerous times?

Great post Skinner!

[TahitiNut]

15. The Risk/Reward calculus

What's the 'risk'?? Is it a risk to the Senator or a risk to the country?
What's the 'reward'?? Is it a reward to the Senator or a reward to the country?

I absolutely reject the "ends justifies the means" argument that selling out in the short term assures some long term advantage. There is NOTHING but the short term under that delusion ... and a series of sell-outs.

Again, I think that the underlying truth that MUST be remembered is that we're talking about an ideology where only the already-privileged gain entitlements versus an ideology where narrow privilege is eschewed in favor of "liberty and justice for all"!

In short, it's a "win-win" ideology versus a "win-lose" ideology! We're talking about fighting an ideology favoring marginally greater rewards for the already wealthy and powerful at a cost of health and life itself for the least advantaged.

Ultimately, if the politics of "win-win" does not prevail then the politics of "win-lose" will result in a bloody and destructive revolution - if the complacent and self-indulgent American public ever awakens. The path towards that outcome is painful, indeed.

[Pithy Cherub]

18. Machiavelli was the "architect" of the Dem strategy on Alito.

The Angels of our Better Nature were playing on the other side. The bridge collapsed in the middle because the "end game" on Alito had a spectrum of reward/consequences for each of the individual political players that justified (in their minds) a different ending.

Considerations for the "least of us" never entered the calculus on the Machiavellian side. The hearings themselves were a testament to the fact that the endgame was already decided before the curtain went up on D.C.'s latest kabuki effort. Life and Death issues are only important to those who have "skin in the game". The public-at-large still has no earthly idea how much "skin in the game" they have until Consequences breaks and enters into their homes and lives.

Who should have told The People how much was at stake?

[TahitiNut]

20. This is at the heart of the corruption of a 'representative' form of ...

... government, of course. When our 'representatives' effectively live in a different 'world' they cannot be regarded as representatives. This is why democracy cannot be a spectator sport. "Power corrupts ..." as Acton said. It is essential that the People re-immerse these power-brokers into the 'real world' and penetrate the barriers that isolate them from the pain and suffering their constituents experience. Unless and until those barriers are breached, we will experience years of political pendulum swings of action-reaction, protest-suppression, riot-oppression, until there's a real house-cleaning or complete collapse of the "American Experiment."

It's going to get a LOT worse before it gets better. Unless and until there's a rejection and repudiation of the current oligopolistic "two-party system" (a complete denial of a 'free market' of ideologies), many will suffer and many will die.

[sundancekid]

14. actually more like Theory X or Theory Y in management - because

the PD analogy works only when the situation is clear that the 2 "prisoners" DO NOT KNOW each other's intentions or planned responses ... ergo, in light of NOT KNOWING, the default context becomes distrust and the "decider" reverts to "better me than him" to catch a break ...

In the political arena, all these politicos KNOW VERY WELL what the others in their "tribe" are going to do -- ergo, "to cooperate" or "to defect" is a decision tree exercise unfortunately tied to carrot/stick

The Dems are sooooo much about "carrot" that it's so much harder to see/accept stick, but when sticks have been used or are clearly seen on the horizon, they're not self-flagellating fools.
OTOH, the R's are all about punishing sticks FIRST, and carrots will be handed out by using capricious criteria or more subsets of carrot/stick. The Dems (and plenty of Indys) continue to BELIEVE in the causes greater than themselves, but get tongue-tied when the message delivery moment arrives. The R's are so much more about their own narcissistic and selfish needs being met or exceeded, BUT they have been scholars of doublespeak and it sucks in the masses BIG TIME.

OK, that's the end of an over-simplified view of 2 polar political perspectives.

[izzybeans]

16. The only two problems with the prisoner's diemma argument

is its founding assumption as to what constitutes rationality and that rationality is not a cooperative excercise.

What constitutes rational action is only knowable post hoc, and is a normative judgement as to an appropriate course of action. Game theorists forget that social actors belong to groups and communities and have loyalties beyond them. Of course some folks forget that and can't get beyond selfish means, but these folks are always left behind. You can see this brewing right now. The progressive community is geared up to punish them. And this is why their decision was irrational. The power of a group is always most potent when that group is unified and organized. This is why bureaucratic organizations are labelled hyper-rational by organizational analysts, because they are extremely efficient and powerful units for carrying out singular tasks; i.e. educating children, turning legislation into practice, accumulating capital, etc. This is why every corporation, school, government, etc. has elements of bureaucracy. You could easily label defection from the organization as irrational, since its long term end goal is defeated and overridden by a short sighted venture into short-term gains. But rationality, in a non-normative sense, means a streamlined means of achieving goals. selling out the mission statement for short-term profits would be irrational, because it is an inffecient means for goal oriented actions. That is of course, if their goals are truly group oriented and not individual oriented. Looking out for self to the detrimate of others is the hallmark of a person doing nothing other than trying to maintain their position of power, an irrational scramble to protect yourself; these are the fistfighters out to save face by stomping on others. This type of decision is highly irrational within a context of public governance. The truly rational thing to do would have been loyalty to the fellow prisoner. In 6 months we are both out and back to work. If I go to jail, I'm there until old age and the world has passed by. Meanwhile, my partner is back on the street, yet is alienated from like-minded individuals and has a hard time finding work or support. The public backlash for a filibuster would be short-lived and forgotten after the new nominee was confirmed. At this point, the dilemma would have been turned back on the republicans. But now, there are several democratic senators who will be facing tough challenges in their next election, partially because they sold their fellow prisoner out for a short-term polling bump.

I find it funny that game theorists suggest the same solution but call it irrational. No wonder they can't figure out the dilemma. They take a cultural idiom, such as "we are all individuals" and transform it into an ontological presupposition. We may be individuals, but we survive in packs.

[TahitiNut]

17. Reductionist vs. irreductionist thinking ... a question of boundaries.

Game theory ignores exogenous influences and engages in myths about closed subsystems in both time and place. Closed subsystems are non-existent in the natural ('real') world. One of the most popular (and false) of such myths is the 'free market' which just does not exist in the 'real' world. When politics is relegated to the 'market' and the false paradigm of a 'free market' perpetrated, we become irrational in a de facto sense - disconnected from the reality

[izzybeans]

25. That's the problem with the rational choice program in general.

It's an ideal imputed into reality.

[TahitiNut]

26. It's also the source of the maxim "man is irrational."

In neoclassical economics, man is assumed to be 'rational' - asssumedly predictable and making self-serving choices according to the accepted constraints of the 'game.' That's the 'easy' model. What's not 'easy' is the game-within-game model and irrational choices. We've seen the simplistic 'free market' model of competition get 'gamed' by oligopolistic horizontal aggregation and vertical disaggregation. Henry Ford's world of vertical integration and competition has been inverted, but he'd be like a pig in shit in this "brave new world" of vertical disintegration (e.g. class warfare) and horizontal integration (e.g. global hegemonies). Profit is King and competition is M&A'd.

[leveymg]

19. In the end, the really important decisions will be made outside the box

That is, the prisoner's dilemma is a self-contained game which can only continue so long as there are two players who still have options. Once one or the other "wins", the game stops. After that point, in the real world, it's all about lawyers, judges, and probation officers. The prisoners no longer have anything to do with the decisionmaking.

The political process in the United States is quickly approaching the point where the Republicans have total control, and the game will stop. The important decisions will no longer be made inside the box of politics by politicians. That endgame is foreseeable, and those with remaining interests have, I'm sure, run their own scenarios to plan for such an eventuality. At the point where the political process has ceased to operate, the game will move into another phase. Just at the moment where they believe they have "won", the Republicans will discover their game is over.

In the next phase of play, the Bush-Cheney Administration, the Republican Congress, and the Conservative Judiciary will face much more powerful opponents than Democratic Senators. The consequences of losing will be far more severe.

[The Straight Story]

21. My simplistic view of it (religious view of it in a sense)

(though I love your prisoner's dilemma reference as it should be used more in things)
Principles.

They just don't stick by what they really belive (ie, defectors). You post gives some reasons why they don't (in a general way) but to me the biggest reason are they are not 'fundie' enough when it comes to our core beliefs and values (versus overly fundie fundies whose core beliefs cover a much larger spectrum and can be quite contradictory).

If they don't share the same beliefs we do either they need to convert or we need to kick them out of the church and excommunicate them. Vary on the small issues, fine, we are a big tent - but even in a big tent you have some stakes holding it there.

[Indy Lurker]

23. Democrats need focus and unity

Democrats are running in too many different directions.

They need to pick 3 topics and talk about nothing else for 2 years.

Such as:

1. Healthcare
2. Education
3. Economy (Including Energy)

These use to be only Democratic issues, but they have been stolen.

Yes, the enviroment and other issues are very important, but everything can't be fixed at once.

Once Democrats are back in power, they can do more. The key now, is to get back into power, and that can only be done by addressing issues of those who bother to vote more than the Republicans.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. Politicians don't lead. They follow. That's the problem and the solution

As long as we mindlessly allow them to play the "not as bad as" game, and vote for anyone with a (D) after their name because they're "not as bad" we encourage them to straddle the fence. As long as they can count on our votes they have no incentive to fight for them.

As someone else said, "It's a big tent". However, giving someone a pass because he voted to have a bridge named after Reagan is a helluva lot different than shrugging about a vote for a murderous war or a fascist judge.

The solution is to make them work for our votes. Not with empty rhetoric but with real votes, real opposition, real ideals that they will support. We must never forget that they are politicians, and will act like politicians, with their number one priority being to save their seats at the trough. We have to make that seat expensive. And, that includes voting third party or sitting on our hands.

[FULL_METAL_HAT]

27. Excellent illustration ... now if you don't mind back to the bottle!

It does take away a bit of the sting! Thanks Mr. S!
{B^>

[bigtree]

28. great read of the situation

I do think most of their calculations are illusory. Who knows what the risk/benefit will be down the road, for anyone? We do have the ability, however to effect the future by our actions now, and I don't think that figures enough into their calculations.

I've gone through my decades of incrementalism and patience, victory and utter defeat with our party. We had a long lasting batch of legislators during that time. Now we have a group of younger mavericks (and some older ones, too, just arrived).There is an immediacy in our causes that should be reflected in these legislators view of their own purpose during their term. If they spend most of their capital preserving their seats they will not serve our immediate interests and concerns. There has to be a willingness on their part to sacrifice their short term acceptability- at least to a potentially devastating bubble of criticism- to refocus the exercise of their responsibilities back to ensuring the balance of power is maintained between the legislation they pass and the other branches who impose it on the rest of us.

[Neil Lisst]

29. That is a great assessment.

Each senator answers to his or her constituency, and those who are UP for reelection in November 06 are more pressured to find the middle than those who are not.

Likewise, those who hail from "red" states have a tougher time voting against cloture than those who hail from safe blue states.

I try to keep that in mind when judging the senators on their votes.

When you are in the minority and have no power, you have little to hold over the heads of defectors to the cause. They need not fear voting against the party line.

The answer is simple. We have to win more seats in both houses in November. Once we are in the majority, THEN we punish the quislings by denying them committee chairs.