By Krell, Roundtree7

A Zero-sum Game is a situation in which one side will have results of a gain or loss that exactly balances the gains or losses of the other side. Sounds more complicated that it really is.

Arm wrestling would be a zero-sum game, one person is going to win, the other person is going to lose so it equals out.

Another example may be a chocolate cake that needs to be divided up into portions for a Scout Troop. One way that the events may unfold, I will call it the “That’s not fair” scenario is that the first person takes ALL the cake and runs away.

This means all of the other Scouts get nothing. It’s still a zero-sum game because any gain by one individual means a loss to someone else.

There is a point to this discussion as it applies to presidential elections with a little thought experiment. I’m sure that everyone has heard this argument.. not supporting Obama is a vote for the Republicans. When you think about it on the surface, that may seem correct. Not voting for Obama is a vote for Republicans.

BUT… that is a short sighted zero-sum near sighted viewpoint.

Of course, the political parties would certainly like to keep the political thoughts along those lines, it’s a powerful force to maintain the continued party loyalty and gain the advantage in a presidential re-election bid.

But here’s a idea…. don’t think of each presidential election as starting the game with a clean slate. For example, the day after a presidential election when everyone comes out of the woodwork with their own opinion of why it went this or that way. Of course, political party specialists are way more sophisticated with their miles of data, statistics and analysis techniques of the election results.

They’ll break all the votes into demographics, geographical locations, even smaller sub-groups of a demographic group. Political think tanks that will pour over the problem for months at a time. Very detailed reports will be created. The reason they do this is for the power of information. They want to learn every nuance of why they lost or won. They want to know the hot issues for these groups and sub groups and sub.. sub.. groups, so they can have a better understanding of how to get their candidate in the next time.

So what happens when a party loses? They change slightly to make it more probable to win the next time. If they lose again, they will make even more dramatic adjustments to better their odds of winning. If a party is not winning, believe me when I say that even more dramatic changes will occur to better the odds of winning next time. They will change for survival. That’s politics and it’s NEVER a clean slate.

When you are voting for what you actually believe in, you must think beyond the short term zero-sum game, beyond the current election. It’s NOT a clean slate each time… more like a constantly evolving chameleon. You are voting for the evolution of the party, to shape the party by pressure to become the party of the majority idea by using your vote, cast with your beliefs, to create a ever so slight pressure to change that party. The more people that do the same, the more pressure.

When you vote just to maintain the party in power, the evolving of the party doesn’t stop. No, it’s just evolving into a party that doesn’t have to pay attention to ideology and opinions of the majority anymore.

Think about it.. casting your vote because of what you believe in. Not because the other political side is “crazy” or blind party loyalty for decisions that would be completely objected to….. if the other party were the ones doing it.

So which mode do you think is better for the long term future of the political process?

A mode that if a party candidate doesn’t get elected because a particular group expressed their different opinions by vote, we must bring the wrath of the zero-sum game upon them… blame, guilt, and calling them traitors to get them in line with the party march.

Or a mode that if the party candidate didn’t get elected, perhaps the party candidate doesn’t represent the ideas that the majority of its members believe in. The fault is not placed on the voter, but the Party and its CANDIDATES that didn’t represent the voter. The voter becomes the true master and the political process becomes its servant.

Sure.. one may say that the party is so far from what it needs to be that it will take a long while to effect change. But change will never occur if the first step is not taken. Wall Street investors are always saying that financial investment requires not the panic of day to day swings….. but a long term view to create that successful portfolio.

Isn’t that something that could be applied to the political parties and the process in general. Don’t look at the short term gains and losses, the zero-sum game.

Look to that long term vision and goals for success in your investment, your country.

SELECT COMMENT:

osori says:
July 28, 2011 at 7:17 pm
Excellent rebuttal to those who put party loyalty above policy. Prime example would be Wisconsin – the Democratic party did not deliver to its base, it lost voters and lost seats. Rather than chastise the party for failing its base and resolving to force change, partisans instead blamed the base for not accepting the party’s betrayal and continuing to vote Democratic.

The lesson taken from Wisconsin from party partisans is this – always vote Democratic, no matter what. If you don’t vote Democrat, the result will always be bad. The lesson taken by the party leadership is this – never do anything for your base, because the partisans will vote Democrat regardless – what’s more they will serve as junkyard dog for the base, attacking them for not toeing the party line and voting for anyone with a (D) next to their name. This enables the party to take money from both big business and whatever the base can scrounge up. They can deliver Republican policy because their neutered and gutless partisans will fight for that Republican policy as if it actually benefited them.

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Why Game-Show Hosts Vote Republican

He’ll take Michael Steele for $2,000, Alex.

With this, he cemented his place in one of the conservative movement’s most elite and rarefied constituencies: right-wing game-show hosts.

on the right when it comes to solving America’s problems.—Eds]

Sajak alone has given more than $10,000, including fat checks to Fred Thompson, Bob Dole, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, George Allen, and Rick Lazio, as well as Steele. Alex Trebek, host of Jeopardy!, gave $3,000 to former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

“I am a conservative thinker. My political choices usually follow that path,” says John O’Hurley (left), a former host of Family Feud who donated more than $2,000 to Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. “I am a strong believer in individual responsibility both in the quality of my actions and in setting the direction for my life.”

O’Hurley’s fellow hosts, like all successful television personalities, are loath to risk alienating even one possible viewer by talking openly about anything controversial.
Is there something about the traditional game-show format—its reinforcement of old-fashioned family values, its populist sensibility, its neat 22-minute crystallization of the American dream—that draws a more conservative type to host? Is it that the show’s core audience, residing in the flyover states, generally prefers a certain red-blooded sort of man in charge? Is it all just a silly coincidence?
“It makes sense to me that these hosts are pretty heavily Republican,” said Olaf Hoerschelmann, a professor at Indiana University, author of Rules of the Game: Quiz Shows and American Culture and perhaps the world’s leading (“only,” in his words) expert on game shows. “To have the right sensibility to be a game-show host, you do have to have a belief in rugged individualism—either you make it or you’re not worth it.” 

Game Show Hosts

Hoerschelmann’s research showed that these programs—while never exactly rocket science—grew precipitously less intellectual and more populist in the early 1980s, in tune with the Reagan years. With the exception of Jeopardy!, popular shows increasingly tested not actual knowledge but everyman intuition, he says. Family Feud, for example, challenged contestants to guess what 100 randomly surveyed people on the street would say in response to some hypothetical question.Supermarket Sweep had them run around a grocery store.

Wink Martindale operates Wink’s World, which attempts to spread a patriotic message—and many own a piece of their shows.

Trebek (right), a Canadian by birth who became an American citizen in 1998, was listed as a host for a February 2010 fundraiser in Malibu, hosted by the PAC Combat Veterans for Congress, supporting 18 Republican candidates. A spokesman for Trebek said the host “didn’t actually do that,” and that “My guess is that they asked to use his name, and since veterans were involved and he’s worked for years with the USO, there might have been some confusion. But he did not attend, or host, or sponsor. “

Sajak—whose first National Review Online column asserted that since “none of my family and friends is allowed to appear on Wheel of Fortune,” government employees shouldn’t be allowed to vote—declined, through the magazine, to comment. Carey also declined to comment, through a spokesman. The other hosts did not respond to repeated requests.

“To have the right sensibility to be a game-show host, you do have to have a belief in rugged individualism—either you make it or you’re not worth it,” says Professor Hoerschelmann.

O’Hurley, who listed his primary extracurricular interests as his wife and child, is involved with a company called Energy Inc., that processes landfill waste into energy, and is a founder of a charity called Golfers Against Cancer. He’s not one to trumpet his politics.

Rebecca Dana is a senior correspondent for The Daily Beast. A former editor and reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has also written for The New York Times, The New York Observer, Rolling Stone, and Slate, among other publications.

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COMMENTS (BE WARNED, SOME ARE ASININE, AS USUAL)

Mauiboy

(2)

2:25 pm, Nov 1, 2010

eurydice9276

3:10 pm, Nov 1, 2010

Matt Gilliland

3:15 pm, Nov 1, 2010

His Excellency

5:15 pm, Nov 1, 2010

TeddyKGB

2:38 am, Nov 1, 2010

10:20 pm, Nov 1, 2010

drstevebrule

i think jeopardy is like capitalism but wheel of fortune is obviously socialism. and that makes who wants to be a millionaire fascism, and tic tac toe a theocracy.

12:04 am, Nov 2, 2010

whipmawhopma

8:23 am, Nov 2, 2010

nycwerewolf

11:35 am, Nov 1, 2010

His Excellency

nycwerewolf: If Hagel is your favorite Republican you are a liberal Democrat. Enjoy your day tomorrow.

5:16 pm, Nov 1, 2010

12:01 pm, Nov 1, 2010

saskia520

12:24 pm, Nov 1, 2010

Pooner

1:01 pm, Nov 1, 2010

lillymckim

1:32 pm, Nov 1, 2010

Dylan111

9:11 pm, Nov 1, 2010

co-intheknow

3:38 pm, Nov 1, 2010

martymartymarty

Jeez, disrespect your mother (and seniors in general) much?

5:23 pm, Nov 1, 2010

webcommoner

All crash-and-burn political losers. Stick to your day job, Sajak.

4:08 pm, Nov 1, 2010

MistyKnight

4:18 pm, Nov 1, 2010

martymartymarty

5:22 pm, Nov 1, 2010

vercingetoriz473

OF COURSE they are Republicans! The are paid enormous amounts of money for a few hours of work each week, which requires no special talent or education. Sounds like a banker to me!

5:35 pm, Nov 1, 2010

5:53 pm, Nov 1, 2010

Chinanski

8:07 pm, Nov 2, 2010

The Health Care Hindenburg Has Landed

By Chris Hedges Posted on Mar 22, 2010 [print_link]

Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s decision to vote “yes” in Sunday’s House action on the health care bill, although he had sworn to oppose the legislation unless there was a public option, is a perfect example of why I would never be a politician. I respect Kucinich. As politicians go, he is about as good as they get, but he is still a politician. He has to run for office. He has to raise money. He has to placate the Democratic machine or risk retaliation and defeat. And so he signed on to a bill that will do nothing to ameliorate the suffering of many Americans, will force tens of millions of people to fork over a lot of money for a defective product and, in the end, will add to the ranks of our uninsured.

The claims made by the proponents of the bill are the usual deceptive corporate advertising. The bill will not expand coverage to 30 million uninsured, especially since government subsidies will not take effect until 2014. Families who cannot pay the high premiums, deductibles and co-payments, estimated to be between 15 and 18 percent of most family incomes, will have to default, increasing the number of uninsured. Insurance companies can unilaterally raise prices without ceilings or caps and monopolize local markets to shut out competitors. The $1.055 trillion spent over the next decade will add new layers of bureaucratic red tape to what is an unmanageable and ultimately unsustainable system.

The mendacity of the Democratic leadership in the face of this reality is staggering. Howard Dean, who is a doctor, said recently: “This is a vote about one thing: Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?” Here is a man who once championed the public option and now has sold his soul. What is the point in supporting him or any of the other Democrats? How much more craven can they get?

Take a look at the health care debacle in Massachusetts, a model for what we will get nationwide. One in six people there who have the mandated insurance say they cannot afford care, and tens of thousands of people have been evicted from the state program because of budget cuts. The 45,000 Americans who die each year because they cannot afford coverage will not be saved under the federal legislation. Half of all personal bankruptcies will still be caused by an inability to pay astronomical medical bills. The only good news is that health care stocks and bonuses for the heads of these corporations are shooting upward. Chalk this up as yet another victory for our feudal overlords and a defeat for the serfs.

The U.S. spends twice as much as other industrialized nations on health care—$7,129 per capita—although 45.7 million Americans remain without health coverage and millions more are inadequately covered, meaning that if they get seriously ill they are not covered. Fourteen thousand Americans a day are now losing their health coverage. A report in the journal Health Affairs estimates that, if the system is left unchanged, one of every five dollars spent by Americans in 2017 will go to health coverage. Private insurance bureaucracy and paperwork consume 31 cents of every health care dollar. Streamlining payment through a single nonprofit payer would save more than $400 billion per year, enough, Physicians for a National Health Plan points out, to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans. Check out www.healthcare-now.org. It has some of the best analysis.

This bill is not about fiscal responsibility or the common good. The bill is about increasing corporate profit at taxpayer expense. It is the health care industry’s version of the Wall Street bailout. It lavishes hundreds of billions in government subsidies on insurance and drug companies. The some 3,000 health care lobbyists in Washington, whose dirty little hands are all over the bill, have once more betrayed the American people for money. The bill is another example of why change will never come from within the Democratic Party. The party is owned and managed by corporations. The five largest private health insurers and their trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, spent more than $6 million on lobbying in the first quarter of 2009. Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, spent more than $9 million during the last quarter of 2008 and the first three months of 2009. The Washington Post reported that up to 30 members of Congress from both parties who hold key committee memberships have major investments in health care companies totaling between $11 million and $27 million. President Barack Obama’s director of health care policy, who will not discuss single payer as an option, has served on the boards of several health care corporations. And as salaries for most Americans have stagnated or declined during the past decade, health insurance profits have risen by 480 percent.

Obama and the congressional leadership have consciously shut out advocates of single payer from the debate. The press, including papers such as The New York Times, treats single payer as a fringe movement. The television networks rarely mention it. And yet between 45 and 60 percent of doctors favor single payer. Between 40 and 62 percent of the American people, including 80 percent of registered Democrats, want universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans. The ability of the corporations to discredit and silence voices that represent at least half of the population is another sad testament to the power of our corporate state to frame all discussions.

Change will come only by building movements that stand in fierce and uncompromising opposition to the Democrats and the Republicans. If they can herd Kucinich and John Conyers, the sponsors of House Resolution 676, a bill that would create a publicly funded National Health Program by eliminating private health insurers, onto the House floor to vote for this corporate theft, what is the point in pretending there is any room left for us in the party? And why should we waste our time with gutless liberal groups such as Moveon.org, which felt the need to collect more than $1 million to pressure House Democrats who had voted “no” on the original bill to recant? What was this purportedly anti-war group doing anyway serving as an obsequious recruiting arm of the Obama election campaign? The longer we tie ourselves to the Democrats and these bankrupt liberal organizations the more ridiculous and impotent we appear.

“I’m ready to listen to the White House, if the White House is ready to listen to the concerns about putting a public option in this bill,” the old Kucinich said on the “Democracy Now!” radio and television program before he flipped. “I mean, they can do that. You know, they’re still cutting last-minute deals. Put the public option back in. Make it a robust public option. Give the people a chance to really negotiate rates with the insurance companies … from the standpoint of having a public option. But don’t just tell the people that you’re going to call this health care reform, when you’re giving insurance companies an even more powerful monopoly status in our economy.”

CHRIS HEDGES, a former New York Times reporter, is now an activist journalist.