Losing the Argument

This budget deal, its consequences and ramifications, is an elephant (in more than one way) that has to be consumed in many small pieces.

Zandar begins:

So, Obama went all pragmatic instead of all cowboy, and a deal was reached. A shutdown was averted, and Obama does look, well, presidential. They say a deal that everybody hates is a fair one.

But the stakes in the next few months will have a hell of a lot more zeroes attached to them. We get to go through all this again heading into the summer.

[UPDATE] BooMan's take is excellent.

I notice a lot of commenters here are taking the position that the Republicans came out ahead in these negotiations. In a certain basic sense, they did. But most of that was baked in the cake the moment they took over the House by gaining an historic 63 seats. Despite all the angst over the slashing of discretionary spending (this was the biggest one-year cut in history), this battle was over a tiny sliver of the overall budget. The big battles over entitlement spending loom on the horizon, and the Republicans expended a tremendous amount of political capital to get a very small victory. You can count on them to threaten a government shutdown at least two more times this year. First, they'll threaten to default on our debt, and then they'll threaten "no deal" on the 2012 budget. They were wise enough not to close the government on the first and smallest fight, but they'll pay a higher political price every time they hold the government hostage.

We all complain about the Democrats' lack of unity and fighting spirit, but they finished these negotiations completely unified and on message. Yesterday was the best performance by the Democrats that I've seen in years. They blistered the Republicans for wanting to shut down the government to prevent cancer screenings and breast exams, and they did it in a very bold and coordinated way. It showed the power of the presidency when he decides to draw a line and he actually has the undivided support of his party. They were well-prepared for a government shutdown, and that bodes well for later battles.

And that is a very fair argument. But if we're calling cutting government social spending in a recession and it taking Republicans threatening to shut the government down before the Dems can finally be unified and on message as the "best performance in years" we're in deep and abiding fecal matter.

[UPDATE 2] To clarify, the argument in Washington is not "How do we strengthen our economy with the government as spender of last resort" but "How much government spending do we feed to the Tea Party wolves to make it through to the 2012 elections." There's nobody talking about how to pull us out of the hole we're in. It's only how much the American people are going to have to tighten their belts again to give tax cuts to the people at the top.

We have decisively lost the "spend or cut" argument. The argument is now how much we will lose. Obama will be blamed for that loss even as Republicans call for more sacrifice from 95% of Americans in the name of the wealthy at the top.