Knowing when to go "all in"

BooMan has a great post up today showing that, contrary to "conventional wisdom," Democrats have a thing or two up their sleeves when it comes to strategy.

He points to an article by Greg Sargent back in April about the debt ceiling negotiations.

Executives like J.P. Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon are worried that playing chicken with the debt ceiling could be “catastrophic.” Dems are hoping to use the debt ceiling showdown to divide Republicans between their corporate benefactors, who want the debt ceiling standoff resolved with no fuss, and the Tea Partyers, who are demanding that the GOP leadership use the debt ceiling as a hostage in the push for ever more extreme and draconian spending cuts.

Imagine that!

As BooMan points out:

The Democrats could have insisted that the debt ceiling be a clean vote with nothing attached, but they also saw the advantage to allowing the bill to be conditioned on debt reduction. It would freak out Wall Street, kill Republican fundraising, divide the party, and highlight their extremism.

Obviously, all of those goals have come to fruition.

As I've said before, we're watching a major power play unfold because President Obama and the Democrats knew what the ultimate outcome would be given Wall Street's position on all this. They knew they had HUGE leverage.

One tool of successful negotiation is knowing where your leverage is. If you don't have any - take what you can get and avoid loosing it all by going "all in." When you do have it - go for broke and make the most of it.

This is what separates the folks who are into childish tantrums from the pragmatists.