We have definitely seen that capitulating on your position and getting nothing in return except demands to give up even more is very damaging. We get quite upset when Democrats engage in this practice, which in DC is called Bipartisanship. Why this is a bad thing to do is pretty obvious in terms of effective negotiation. You need to make your case as strongly as possible; in the end you may compromise, but make the most of your case to get as much as you can. With Obama's potential to rally support on the popular stimulus bill, for example, and the daily dour economic news, he held the trump card. Yet he gave away things as if he had a week hand. A mistake to negotiate against himself, and there's widespread agreement on this.
There's been a lot of reaction to Obama's unnecessary capitulation that has argued for more partisanship. This is very misguided, and sells our self short.
Our interests are a lot more noble than that, and we are unnecessarily putting ourselves on the same (low) level as Republicans. (BELOW FOR MORE)
Being partisan at its core is not about policy outcomes; it means doing things that help your party and puts the other side at a disadvantage. While I'd argue Republicans are often motivated to do things that they think will help their party at the expense of the country (opposition to the Stimulus Bill, for example, and Rush Limbaugh's wanting Obama to fail), doing what's right for Americans is what motivates us, and we should point that out as frequently as possible.
In many areas there are policies we support that are both what's good for the country and good for our party. It's not partisan just because the right thing benefits our party. We stand for the people broadly speaking, so that's natural the two coincide. That's why we're Democrats after all, right?
This is not true for Republicans; they often advocate policies that are not in Americans' interests but instead benefit their supporters (the rich, big business, religious fanatics) at everyone else's expense. A few more examples:
We support unions because that helps to protect what remains of the middle class.
We support letting everyone who's eligible to vote do so, not because doing so advantages us, but because allowing disenfranchisement to occur to anyone is wrong.
We support the stimulus bill because it is based on actual economic research that shows that the government needs to step forward to stimulate the economy because the private sector isn't capable of doing it - not because we're ideologically driven to that solution in a partisan way.
And how about how we arrive at our policy recommendations? Again, here's a big difference between Republicans and Democrats. If we were motivated in a partisan way, we'd decide on the policy before we even looked at the research just like the Republicans do. They want to help the rich get richer, so they decide on ways to do that (eliminate estate tax, for example, or lower capital gains taxes). Then they go about finding ideologically-friendly "experts" who will make arguments in favor of their preselected policies. It's not about what economic research suggests the result will be, it's about selling what you wanted to do all along. Republican partisans are a-OK with this approach.
Democrats on the other hand, want to know what's expected to work, and what's not, from people who have some professional qualification, and generally that's what we advocate our representatives to do. Does the research show that XYX spending will result in a high level of stimulus? We don't dredge up a fake expert from a fake think tank (the left doesn't have any); instead we consult those who have some right to weigh in, like the Congressional Budget Office re: the stimulus.
In a lot of ways, the problems we are experiencing so far in getting good legislation is because Democrats are being too partisan. You don't have Democrats being put in a bad spot when they go against core Democratic interests. The Republicans don't let any Republican off the hook if they go outside of the party line on policy. It doesn't matter who you are - you oppose tax cuts or support spending for the common folk, you're enemy number one. But it's the Harry Reid-style partisanship about protecting people - not policies - that's harming us.
Because of this partisanship, even the Democrats who do great harm to our party's policy aims get protected due to the (D) behind their names. If it wasn't Ben Nelson who was conditioning his support for the stimulus on gutting the best features of it (school construction, aid to states, etc), but was rather a Republican, then their would have been scoffing. But since it a Democrat, that changed everything. Reid accepts his conditions and waters down the bill instead of forcing accounability on the obstructors.
Let's not defend partisanship any longer; let's defend what we stand for.