The Brambles

The Glenn Beck variation

I like to analogize politics to chess, mainly just because I like both politics and chess. Both games, however, demand strategic thinking, and in this sense the chess analogy is apt.

There often comes a moment during the latter sequence of an opening variation where the chess player must give back some previously gained material. For example, White is up two pawns, but he faces a choice between gaining development at the cost of a pawn (or even two) and keeping his material advantage at the cost of going into the middle game potentially unprepared for a massive counter-attack. It’s dangerous to get too smug about being up a pawn or two. Having two more pawns than your opponent will be of great advantage to you in the end game, but those pawns will turn into fool’s gold if you get checkmated in twenty-five moves.

That said, any player who accepts material losses with complete equanimity is a fool. First of all, gaining material gives your opponent a psychological boost. The gambit would never work if it didn’t feel so good to eat pawns for free. Moreover, material advantage is usually the decisive factor of a win. Most chess players (i.e., those that don’t commit variations to memory) can’t see more than one or two moves ahead, so material advantage is the hedge against unforeseen eventualities.

What has all this got to do with politics?

The conservatives went into the health care fight down a couple pawns. Their political party was decimated in the 2008 election and the President’s popularity was high.

The Democrats pushed health care reform to the top of the agenda, just below economic stimulus. Health care was always going to be a tough fight — may the toughest of all domestic issues — so the Democrats wanted to fight it when they were at the peak of their strength.

However, the conservatives gained at least one pawn back in August by disrupting the town hall meetings on health care. They inserted terms like death panels into the lexicon. The hope for the Democrats was that the conservatives would expend most of their energy before the public began paying attention to the issue in earnest and/or conservative tactics would embarrass the GOP as they had, for example, during the Terri Schiavo episode.

The Glenn Beck 9/12 march on Washington has shown that this hope did not materialize. If anything, the Tea Party movement is gaining strength. The GOP doesn’t have to officially endorse that movement to reap the political gains it is creating.

The Democrats can’t let the conservatives take another pawn in September. If they do, it is likely health care reform will be dead by Halloween.

How do the Democrats stop them? Frankly, I don’t know. In chess, when you start to lose momentum you have to reevaluate your strategy. That’s not easy to do. Personally, I start by trying to pinpoint one or two of my opponent’s weak spots. Has he neglected to castle? Has he left any developed pieces unprotected or in position for forking? I try to resist the urge to attack the king prematurely. This almost always fails, especially when you’ve recently lost the initiative.

Most of this does not relate to the health care fight in any way, which is why Garry Kasparov will probably never be the president of Russia.

1-0, sucker

After 6,000 games, I finally beat the Little Chess Partner, though, admittedly, only on the easy setting.

What if computers were real people

After five humiliating loses in a row against the computer, I finally broke out of my losing streak with a devastating king hunt. The only thing is the computer made two bad moves at the beginning of the end game and allowed me to advance my pawns. Was the computer so bored with my poor play that he/she/it let me win just so I’d finally feel satisfied and stop challenging him/her/it? (via Eyes For The Brambles)