Calling the 'crats on their cowardice

You know, no matter how many times I watch "Celebrity Poker Showdown", which I do fairly often, I still don't know much about the game. No matter how many times I see that little tutorial narrated by Dave Foley that they run at the beginning, there seems to be something in my brain that rebels against the knowledge.

That does not keep me from enjoying this Op-Ed that uses poker as a metaphor for what the Democrats need to do to win:

In poker, one must have courage: the courage to bet, to back one's convictions, one's intuitions, one's understanding. There can be no victory without courage. The successful player must be willing to wager on likelihoods. Should he wait for absolutely risk-free certainty, he will win nothing, regardless of the cards he is dealt.

Control of the initiative is control of the battle. In the alley, at the poker table or in politics. One must raise. The American public chose Bush over Kerry in 2004. How, the undecided electorate rightly wondered, could one believe that Kerry would stand up for America when he could not stand up to Bush? A possible response to the Swift boat veterans would have been: "I served. He didn't. I didn't bring up the subject, but, if all George Bush has to show for his time in the Guard is a scrap of paper with some doodling on it, I say the man was a deserter."

The press, quiescent during five years of aggressive behavior by the White House, has, perhaps, begun to recover its pride. In speaking of Karl Rove, Scott McClellan and the White House's Valerie Plame disgrace, they have begun to use words such as "other than true," "fabricated." The word that they circle, still, is "lie." The word the Democratic constituency, heartsick over the behavior of its party leaders, has been forced to consider applying to them is "coward."

I don't know why I like that so much, seeing as, as I said, I don't know much of anything about the game. Oh. Unless of course...well, you don't think the fact that screenwriter, playwright and director David Mamet wrote it has anything to do with it, do you?