Now that the election is over, and having successfully circled the wagons to protect our guy, it is incumbent upon us to maintain our positions, turn our attention inward, and form a circular firing squad. Let me be among the first to take a shot, though, as always, as I work days (even on this federal and state holiday ) there are those that have beat me to it.
The Grand Bargain is in the air. The Democrats having won, they are busily trying to figure out ways to win the approval of those that Krugman has aptly named the “deficit scolds”; give the Republicans a club with which to beat them; and quickly disappoint the base that had to work so hard to re-energize itself in order to deliver the victory.
In this morning’s Times we learn that Obama may just do now what he should have done with health care and the stimulus: rally the people for support:
As he prepares to meet with Congressional leaders at the White House on Friday, aides say, Mr. Obama will not simply hunker down there for weeks of closed-door negotiations as he did in mid-2011, when partisan brinkmanship over raising the nation’s debt limit damaged the economy and his political standing. He will travel beyond the Beltway at times to rally public support for a deficit-cutting accord that mixes tax increases on the wealthy with spending cuts.
(via NYTimes.com)
A great idea, but I see trouble ahead. Paul Ryan spent much of the campaign defending himself from well-founded charges that his numbers didn’t add up, and that the voters were entitled to know where he would cut. Of course we knew where he was going to cut, but he didn’t want to say because, after all, he wanted to win. So, will we now be treated to the spectacle of Obama touting what may be illusory tax increases on the rich while he evades or misrepresents the details of the cuts? If this is any indication of his current thinking, he’ll be selling us all out and doing his best to reinvigorate the Republican party which will be able to do what is supposedly impossible: have its cake and eat it too. Gleefully will it cut Social Security and Medicare, and then just as gleefully will it blame those unnecessary cuts on the Democrats, who will indeed be guilty of both bad policy and bad politics.
So look for Obama, should he hit the road, to get at least some supporters to cheer for their own destruction, while Ryan-like, he avoids telling us what he has in store for us. Not needing to run again, he is free to burnish his legacy by shepherding a bi-partisan shafting through Congress. Here’s hoping that the likes of Warren, Sanders and Murphy will disabuse the White House of the notion that all Democrats will go along, and lemming like, follow him off that non-existent “fiscal cliff”.
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