Backing Off or Not
With the midterm elections just having finished, there have been many posts on Reddit regarding the government shutdown of last year. The article linked below actually was written before the “shutdown” occurred but it talks about how we got to the point and the effects of what would happen to Americans as a result.
The shutdown actually presents us with a game theory like situation where each party can choose to back down or not as the two strategies. For Republicans, if they back down then they will not have gained any ground in curbing Obamacare and even lose out on other areas; however, if they continue to fight, then they will have to explain to voters why they risked economic mayhem. Democrats have similar payoffs: If they back down, Obamacare would take a major hit and they will seem weak and voters will wonder why they got into the mess in the first place; whereas if they do not back down and continue arguing over spending bills then the same issue of risking economic mayhem would exist for them to explain to voters. Taking the option to back down is not a viable option because then both sides would look weak so they both had to continue.
Though the shutdown caused a lot of distress, the voters still decided to go with the Republicans as the Senate majority. I found this to be interesting as I would have thought, since Obamacare is in effect, voters would have decided to go with Democrats.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/us/politics/questions-and-answers-on-a-possible-government-shutdown.html?_r=1&