No, not Beat the Press. I confess I haven’t watched it yet. I’m talking about Goldstein’s analysis of today’s startling denouement of the Deval/Trav kerfuffle. It’s a thing of beauty.
In September, DP made the final table, and in November, he won the whole tourney.
But that’s over now.
He’s in a whole new tourney from now through June. Scoreboard back to zero. All the pots are small again for a while.
1. It’s nice for the new guy to win an early pot, however small. Eyebrows go up a bit, a tiny bit. A grudging: “Maybe the new guy can play.” Then we’ll forget about this by Tuesday.
2. You relax for a few hands, just like with the first touchdown or run crossing the plate, and try to get a read on other players.
And you try to avoid getting sucked into playing bad hands. “Oh, what the hell, maybe I’ll play this Jack-Nine just to see if I get lucky, I’ll probably just fold, oh look, the flop has a nine in it, maybe I’ll stick around……”
The political equivalent of getting sucked in with a bad hand might be Clinton 1993 suddenly dealing with gays in the military instead leading on his issue, “the economy, stupid.”
3. The blinds go up in January, but the first really big pot is DP’s first budget, House 1. There is almost zero chance that DP will have a powerhouse hand for his first budget — it’s inherent, no? You can’t have a budget that pleases everyone. At best, you’ll have a good hand, not a great one.
By the time you’re playing the big hands, you better know two things — how you’re going to play your own cards (tight, loose?) and how other folks play their cards.
It wasn’t pretty, but Clinton in 1993 decided to play it tight (balanced budget) and read the other players (barely) well enough to win the hand. That pot gave him enough chips for the rest of his economic presidency.
I think I jumped the analogy shark at #1.
by: GoldsteinGoneWild @ Fri Dec 15, 2006 at 18:51:26 PM EST
Breathtaking.
My only problem with the poker analogies is that they posit clear winners and losers. There’s always the pie analogy: Ideally, negotiation tries to make the pie higher make more pie rather than fight about how to divvy it up. One hopes and expects that Deval, Sal, and Trav will find many opportunities to make more pie.
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Ah, screw it. The poker analogies are way cooler.
plus more/bigger pie analogy
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equals more gambling initiatives incl. slots, perhaps? đŸ™‚
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i hope not. economic policies that rely on preying on a person’s addiction vulnerabilites are bad policy. imho a similarly lousy funding mechanism is paying for health insurance expansions with increased tobacco taxes.
…specifically, the climactic match in Rocky I, Rocky vs. Apollo Creed. You’ve seen Rocky training for all this time, and in your heart you know he’s done it, he’s ready to take down the champ, but when the big match comes you wonder, can he really do it? It was easy against the punching bag, now it’s Apollo Creed … round 1 starts and the fans get pretty much what they expect, Apollo jabbing fast, dancing in and out, getting some early points … looks like it’s going to be the lopsided win that was expected when the underdog goes up against the World Champ. First round runs on, more of the same, the Rocky fans are starting to wonder…come on Rock, don’t let him do that to ya … come on, hit him Rock, hit him! But Rocky continues to play defense, getting tagged here, tagged again, you think maybe all that training wasn’t enough, Apollo is too fast for him to find an opening. Tap, Tap, Apollo tags him again, and again, and again…whoa careful Rock, he’s throwing a big one…
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Rocky sidesteps.
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Apollo connects with empty air, lurches forward as he tries to catch himself.
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BAM!!!
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Rocky swings. Connects. A perfect left uppercut, the kind of shot you don’t expect to see against a world champ this early in the match. Apollo’s so out of position he can’t block, can’t even absorb.
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He goes over hard.
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He’s down. The crowd is on their feet.
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Rocky caught Apollo off balance; the fall looked more dramatic than it was. Apollo isn’t really weakened, but he’s affected psychologically. So is Rocky, so is the crowd. In that moment, the match changed. Now everybody in the stadium knows:
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1. The champ isn’t invincible.
2. The challenger can throw a punch.
3. 1 Round down, 14 to go … we’ve got a match on our hands.
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And he doesn’t care. Trav Wins. HANDS DOWN
Trav and Deval have become pretty good friends….
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Did anyone hear the wooden clappers on Wednesday morning opening this Kabuki play…..put together solely to draw attention away from the $1.6 million inuaguration festivities…..
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Just a thought but have you heard much about the Inauguration plans since??
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Wooden clappers again…..closing this Kabuki play….