For your consideration, this pushback against what I can only describe as a bit of nonsense floating around certain circles of the blogosphere. To wit:
If only Party A had taken a stronger or higher negotiating starting point on issue X, then it is more likely that we would have ended up in the resolution of the conflict with outcome Y being closer to what Party A truly wanted, as compared to the position of Party B.
This particular view of negotiation theory reared its head during the health care debate and has arisen time and again with regularity in the comments, most recently in this currently top-recommended diary.
I quote:
Everyone on the left understands the need to compromise. People on the left aren't threatening to sit out the election just because of compromise, but because of lack of leadership. To take just one example, taking single-payer and (in back room deals) taking even the public option off the table before health care reform negotiations even started isn't leadership. It's not change we can believe in. It's not even a negotiating tactic because only an idiot would fail to realize that in any negotiation you start out asking for more than you expect to get. Only an idiot would fail to see that advocating for single payer and a public option would lay down a marker for the future. And since Obama is not an idiot, that means he didn't want single-payer or the public option in the first place.
I have no quarrel with the first two sentences, which are sheer opinion (no quarrel for the most part; I might quibble with the sweeping assertion that "everyone" on the Left understands the need to compromise based on comments I have read on this site over the last 18 months that belie that generalization).
What drives me to drink, even at this hour, is the inexcusable inanity of the emphasized portion of that quote.
It is simply not true that "in any negotiation you start out asking for more than you expect to get." That assertion embraces a single theory of negotiation and compromise to the exclusion of all others: the theory that if you start at a much higher position than you are willing to accept, you will end up with more than you would have gotten if you started at a lower position. That's absolute nonsense.
I have yet to see someone -- anyone -- provide a description of how starting off at, say, single payer, would have necessarily meant that the health care bill would have come out as a stronger law (i.e., at an end position closer to the position progressives wanted). No rational explanation has been offered. Instead, we get the kind of glib "only an idiot could fail to see" kind of reasoning that is of the same ilk of "conventional wisdom" we rightly comndemn when peddled by mainstream media and the Right.
This is supposed to be a reality-based community, but I have yet to see anyone explain in any rational and realistic way how if we had started with single payer (or more "progressive" positions on financial reform or energy or take your pick) we would have gotten a better deal.
Academics who study negotiation theory will note that while there are competing theories of negotiation, one of the basic tenets is the assumption that parties who negotiate agree in at least one fundamental respect: they share a belief that their respective purposes will be better served by entering into negotiation with the other party.
One look at the Republicans will see that's not the case. So how would this "Opening Maximum Strong" approach to negotiation work where the other side wants nothing to do with negotiation? Well then, you say, the real party the Democrats had to negotiate with was not the Republicans, but the Blue Dogs and conservative Democrats in the Senate: the Nelsons, the Lincolns, the Liebermans, and the like.
Of course, no one here (or anywhere, as far as I can tell) has made the argument that if single payer was the opening position against Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and Joe Liberman (and maybe Bayh and Landrieu and who knows who else), they would have softended their positions and come closer to what progressives wanted.
Instead, we get the sort of tiresome syllogism that "because a higher starting point would have resulted in a better bill, and because Obama (and others) did not come in at a higher starting point, the failure to do so necessarily led to a weaker bill."
(Or, worse, we get from those who may recognize the barriers set by the likes of Nelson and Company the hackneyed and wholly unsupported salve that if only someone had "twisted their arms" we would have ended up with a truly progressive bill.)
Whether the White House and this President in particular showed leadership on a particular issue is certainly a ripe topic for debate and discussion.
But the argument that by starting from the position of single payer (or its analogue in other contexts) would necessarily lead to a better law is simplistic and unsupported. It's junk science. And we should abandon it as a point to make or end some other argument.