beutler's gotten to this point where, no matter what the democrats do, it's wrong. every single choice, every single time, on every single issue. he's a smart guy, but if you come to the exact same conclusion on every issue, every time, the problem with your analysis is you.

keep in mind that this is on an issue senate republicans literally *just* started discussing, and apparently the house doesn't exist in this discussion at all.

i'm not being facetious, i do actually like beutler and think he's capable of good, smart analysis. but he's dug himself into this hole where all possibilities are visible to him at all times, and, no matter what the circumstances are, he's quite certain the democrats are wrong.

further, first-mover advantage isn't a sure-fire thing in a negotiation; it can be an advantage in a marketing strategy, in many cases, but in a negotiation, it can end up being more costly than waiting to see what your opponent does.

this is my semi-regular plea for journalists to actually study things and hold jobs other than journalism, because if your knowledge of these concepts is academic and conceptual at best, you're going to mangle them when you try to apply them.

yglesias is better at this than most of his peers, because he (usually) has done quite a bit of research before applying these quasi-business concepts (which are questionable to begin with) to political analysis, and doesn't trip himself up using terminology he's unfamiliar with.

but coming back to the initial problem, if your analyses of every issue, regardless of the context or the contributing factors or anything else is always the exact same, e.g., "dems are fucking this up", then you should be investigating the common denominator in your analyses.

forgive the sports metaphor, but if you think something is "game over" before either team has even gotten on the bus to the stadium, your analysis is lazy and premature. it's no different than all the horserace punditry he's criticized, rightly, over the years.

i will also add that there’s plenty of good reason to be pessimistic. schumer has not been an especially effective negotiator or tactician. but absolute certainty with this little information is lazy and presumptive.

something that everyone who gets paid to do this for a living should internalize is that not having a take for everything in real-time, as it happens, is the responsible way to cover these topics. resist Big Tweet!

one last thing to add here, there are a lot of complicated factors having a negative impact on media at the moment, but an underrated one is that, when all of the writers have the same take, every time, on every issue, there's not much reason to read *any* of them.

if jacobin, current affairs, the new republic, crooked, jezebel/the slot, etc., etc., are all writing the same interchangeable column with the same takeaway, i've no incentive to read *any* of them, because they'll all filter out through twitter with the same basic summaries.