What can I say, except "you're right!"
Clearly, the bloggers screaming about this are not political scientists or strategists. (Not that I am, either, but at least some of use see things realistically.) 
:sigh:
I am trying to make heads or tails of this development. I was of the understanding that anything short of "nuclear option" was a loss. However, you make an excellent point as well.
It sounds like there is a silver lining, I guess we better grab what we can, take names and fight like hell for additional nominees. Certainly not throw in the towel.
Your analogy breaks down based on a fundamental assumtion. In chess their are two players, who's stated goal is to defeat one another.
That was the case before this deal was struck. The deal, if it has done nothing else, has added a third player to the game -- namely the 14 Senators who have carved out a space of their own.
Now every move made by one side must be made with consideration of how the opponents will react, but now too must take into account how this new, more centrist player will react.
The extremists on both side will seek to dissolve the power of this new player, but that is by no means fait accompli at this point.
JackSc,
Yes, there are 100 Senators and innumerable political operators, advocates, and lobbies. In the end, this all projects down to the two-player game.
Here is a link of the Senate roll call votes being data mined: Cluster Blocks in the US Senate. Note that we have a pretty good division (with Jeffords and Chaffee being most ambiguous).
Not sure whether that's reductio ad absurdum or merely a false dilemma.
But clearly its a two-player game, until there is a third player. Then it is a three-player game until the third player is rendered impotent or irrelevant.
I'm only saying that the forecasts reached in your post (of continuously raising the bar until the Democrats are forced into a bad move) is already presupposing a two-player game -- but it is far from clear when the third-player will drop out, and how it will play before it does.
JackSc,
Through associations, multiplayer games project down to lower dimensional relations. Along the way, there are natural points at which the dimensionality of a projection is relatively isolated from external influences.
This is actually an interesting area of investigation (finding the divisions). The information-theoretic method of division finding (which I believe Aleks uses in his clustering methodology) is the most general that I know of and hence is as unbiased as we might hope to find.
In short, you may study this as a multiplayer game is you choose the divisions correctly. However, the projection to two-players is well supported and so the two-player analysis makes sense also.
We have no fundamental disagreement.
zugzwang. Now there's a term I haven't heard in many a year. Although as a conservative I believe the best solution would have been to stand on principle and hoist the no quarter flag, my reaction last night was that the Republicans definitely come out ahead. I agree with Paul: the certain confirmation of the three (most bitterly opposed) nominees will set a very useful standard--a standard with a tripwire attached.
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