Compromise should be about haggling, not capitulating...

[Cleobulus]

Has anyone here ever been at a flea market? Or negotiated for anything at all?

There are certain rules to use, so you know you won't lose your shirt in the bargain, and hopefully even come out a little bit ahead, same for the other guy.

Granted, bargaining in this way is rather subjective, and has to do as much with skill at reading people as anything to do with the value of the goods being bargained, but I believe politics should work in a similar way.

Let's say you want to buy a, oh I don't know, an antique lamp at a flea market, what's the first thing you do? The choice here is rather simple, you can name a price or you can ask him to name a price. However, if YOU name a price, you do not highball it, go as low as possible, but not too low that the seller won't think a deal is possible. From there he can negotiate up in price, but a few things, one is you should have, in your head, a maximum price of what you think the lamp is worth, and don't exceed that price, walk away without the lamp, at worse you don't have the lamp, but you still have money in your pocket.

The other option is to let him name a price and then try to negotiate it downwards. Same principle applies, but in reverse, assuming the price isn't so high you don't even have a basis for negotiation, you try to get the priced lowered, until both you and the seller agree on a price you both can live with. In this situation, the seller will have a minimum price set for the lamp, and will not sell it to anyone at any price lower than that.

Is this any different than how negotiations in Congress should work? Coming to an agreement all parties can live with, even if its not ideal? The problem is that it seems to not work this way, I swear, if any Congressional Democrat came to my stall in a flea market, they would leave without even so much as the clothes on their back. They are seriously this bad at negotiating.

Classic example of this is the HCR bill, more or less it was a partisan, not bipartisan bill, so negotiations with the Republicans shouldn't have even entered into the discussion, outside of a few moderates, but not he party at large. So what happened was what should never happen, the Democratic Party immediately started negotiations(with its conservative wing) at a high price, and didn't even set, from what I can tell, much of a maximum price they were willing to pay. This wasn't a negotiation, this was a "let's pass something, anything, at any cost" capitulation. They needed brownie points, and they got them, and actually the biggest winner, considering the lack of overall leverage he had was Bernie Sanders, now there's a guy I wouldn't want to face off in negotiations, he'd make me lose my shirt, I don't doubt it.

The bill has some good points, no doubt about it, however it isn't what I would call comprehensive reform. If I were the one in charge of negotiations, of compromise, I would have offered single payer, and compromised on public option, but that's just me.

Note, I'm just using this as a somewhat recent example, there have been others, but when you start out in the middle, and then work your way rightward, that seems to not be compromise, but capitulation. Aren't compromises supposed to be about meeting the other guy in the middle?

[Gaedel]

1. Not capitulation, extortion

When you are running around buying votes to get something through, every vote you buy requires doing something you did not want to do. When you are buying votes one-by-one, you really end up with a bad bill.

Better to have gone to the Repub leaders first and just said, "what is possible with a bipartisan health bill?" and negotiated with them. It could not have been worse.

[hobbit709]

2. Compromise means you give a little, they give a little

It does not mean giving the other side everything they want and then letting them go on about how they killed it.

[WonderGrunion]

3. You're assuming there was ever an antique lamp available to buy.

You went looking for an antique lamp but found an old K-mart desk lamp. Your choice now is: Do you buy the lamp because you need a lamp? Do you keep looking for an antique lamp because you're really looking for an ornament and not lighting?

The public option was an ornament, not lighting.

[sendero]

8. Nonsense..

... the public option would have been the only real reform in the bill.

Without it, it is nothing more than a "mandatory insurance for all" bill.

[Cleobulus]

9. "The public option was an ornament, not lighting." Oh fuck, what a stupid opinion...

the Public Option was the LEAST that was necessary to make sure the people have access to affordable health CARE.

[Stinky The Clown]

4. Given your analogy, there are only a few possibilities

The negotiators on the left wanted the bill they ultimately got and the "negotiations" were for show.

The negotiators on the left were amateurs who got their clock cleaned in short order.

By the way, the same applies to "negotiations" between the self described pragmatists and the pragmatist described "left fringe crazies" (<--- of which I am a proud member). "We won. Get Over It" is not a sound way to start a negotiation. Neither is a knife stuck into the negotiating table's top.

Funny, isn't it, how, in both examples, it is the same group screwing up the negotiations.

K&R

[treestar]

5. If you're going to describe not getting everything you want as

"capitulating" there is no basis for any negotiation. Seems you merely don't understand the facts and realities and powers in the Senate.

[marmar]

6. Seems that those on our side (allegedly) start in the center and bargain to the right.

nt

[depakid]

7. That last preemptive concession- on oil drilling doesn't look like such bright idea

at this point, either.

One would hope that the administration would learn from their repeated mistakes- but that doesn't seem to be part of their inner circle's Cambridge/Chicago group think style of doing things.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. Our "negotiators" would discard 4 aces and draw 4 to get a straight.