Steve M at No More Mister Niceblog:
When we talk about why American politics doesn't work anymore, a a simple message is rarely uttered: It's the Republican Party, stupid. That has to change.Keep repeating it: this kill-the-government-just-to-watch-it-die behavior from the repugs is not rare or crazy or even unusual. It's how the repugs deal with everything. Every time. Forever.
AynRandy Paul, Candy Barr and Teabagger Tommie Massie all voted No on last night's Do Your Fucking Job bill in the Senate and House.
Isn't that the kind of lack of personal responsibility that those three think should be punished by starvation and homelessness? Let's keep that in mind when the motherfuckers are up for re-election next year (the Tribble-Toupeed One in 2016.)
Our congressional veterans McConnell, Yarmuth, Guthrie, Rogers and Whitfield all voted Yes - the latter four out of utter lack of fear of electoral defeat, and Mitchie-poo out of pants-shitting fear of everybody and everything, and thus having no good options.
Ed Kilgore at Political Animal:
It was a foregone conclusion that the bill to end the manufactured fiscal crisis would sail through Congress once Ted Cruz foreswore a filibuster and John Hastert abandoned the “Hastert Rule.” The actual votes were anticlimactic, but still interesting.
The eighteen Senate Republicans who voted against the bill were far short of what it would have taken to sustain a filibuster, obviously. But still, the “nays” included all three senators thought to be mulling a 2016 presidential campaign (Cruz, Paul and Rubio), plus one previously mainstream senator facing a right-bent primary challenge (Enzi).
The 285-144 House vote showed why abandonment of the Hastert Rule was necessary. Actually, the 87 Republican votes cast for the bill (as against 144 GOP “nays”) was higher than most people anticipated. But it showed that unreasonable conservatism remains a majority proposition in the House Republican Conference.
SNIP
Cohn also notes that House GOPers with distinctly less ideologically conservative voting records and those from very marginal districts voted overwhelmingly for the deal. But any way you slice it, the majority of the Conference voted to continue a government shutdown and a debt limit threat that were not working very well for the GOP or for the country.
James Carroll should know better than to cite polls that ask broad questions with multiple interpretations.
There isn't a single sentient person in this country who "just wants the fighting in Congress to end."
Everybody wants her side to win.
I defy James Carroll or anybody else to find a Democratic voter who wants the fighting to end by President Obama surrendering the presidency to a minority of the repug minority in Congress.
I defy anybody to find a republican voter who wants the fighting to end by repugs in Congress surrendering to President Obama on Obamacare and the budget.
The polarization in Washington perfectly reflect the polarization in the nation as a whole. There are no independents, no swing voters. Just repugs and Democrats who always vote the party line, and repugs and Democrats who vote the party line when they are sufficiently inspired to get out and vote at all.
I think that is a good thing. Polarization clarifies issues and where politicians stand on those issues. Polarization forces elected officials to fight for the laws and policies their voters want.
But polarization makes politics a zero-sum game. For one side to win, the other side has to lose.
The fighting won't end until somebody loses. And nobody wants that somebody to be them.
David Atkins at Hullabaloo cites an apparently nonsensical quote from Georgia Rep. Paul Broun::
“America is going to be destroyed by Obamacare, so whatever deal is put together must at least reschedule the implementation of Obamacare,” he says. “This law is going to destroy America and everything in America, and we need to stop it.”Allow me to translate: "If the signature achievement of that Ni**er in the White House succeeds, that means the death of White Supremacy in America."
First off, I would love it if someone in the press would identify a federally elected Democrat who said anything remotely similar even about such far reaching laws as the Patriot Act or the Iraq War, much less anodyne efforts to expand the reach of private sector health insurance. There's no "both sides do it" equivalent for this.
2) What do you suppose the consequences to be of this sort of rhetoric? What if you were the sort of person who actually believed that your elected representative was telling you the truth? If a President your pastor suggested might be the Anti-Christ bringing on the end of days refused to budge on killing a law your Congressman said would literally "destroy America and everything in America," what sort of action would you be forced to take? And what if the sort of people who generally elected such politicians were armed to the teeth?
The Tea Partiers in Congress aren't just playing with political fire. They're playing with civil war. Just as the big money Chamber of Commerce boys let loose a Tea Party dragon they've already lost control of, so too may these Pied Piper Tea Party boys lose control of the people who follow them.
It won't get that ugly just yet. But wait until their demographic winter becomes fully apparent and all three branches of government revert to Democratic control. Do you suppose all these people will just lie down quietly and accept the dictates of democracy?
No, it is not remotely like your family budget; no, it's not a fake crisis drummed up by President Obama - fake crises is what repugs do - and no, it's not anything Democratic members of Congress have done, ever. Not once.
Steve Benen at Maddowblog:
First, a little common sense is in order. The right would have us believe that debt-ceiling increases and debt-reduction agreements simply go together -- they're the chocolate and peanut butter of U.S. fiscal policy. But even casual observers might notice an obvious flaw: the debt ceiling has been raised about 90 times over eight decades, and there haven't been 90 debt-reduction agreements over that period. So just on a surface level, we know there's a serious flaw in the argument.
Second, and more important, are the details Republicans choose to overlook. For example, since President Reagan, Congress has approved 45 debt-ceiling increases. How many of them were tied to budget deals? Seven. In other words, over the last several decades, 38 out of 45 debt-ceiling increases were not part of debt-reduction agreements (or any other policymaking measures).
Indeed, we should highlight an inconvenient detail: many leading Republican members of Congress, including a cast of characters that includes John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Mitch McConnell, have each voted for clean debt-ceiling increases unrelated to budget deals.
And third, while Boehner desperately hopes you have a short memory, his references to the 1980s and 1990s overlooks the fact that neither party ever held the debt-ceiling hostage before. Before 2011, the notion of American policymakers threatening to crash the economy on purpose unless their demands were met was considered so hopelessly insane that neither party dared go that far.
Boehner wants to talk about the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton eras? That's a great idea -- let's talk about the fact that Republicans of these eras were open to concessions as part of budget compromises, and never once said they were prepared to trash the full faith and credit of the United States on purpose unless they got their way.
What Boehner wants to present as routine is, as a matter of reality, wholly outside the traditions of the American experiment. He's the first Speaker to ever make this threat, so he should hardly be surprised when President Obama balks at paying a ransom to encourage lawmakers to do what they have to do anyway.
As Jon Chait recently explained, "Part of the confusion is that the debt ceiling used to be an opportunity for the opposing party to denounce the fiscal irresponsibility of the president. On occasion, but not usually, debt-ceiling hikes have been appended onto budget agreements that were negotiated on their own terms.
What's completely novel is Congress using the threat of a debt default to force the president to make unilateral policy concessions. The conventions of he-said, she-said journalism have allowed this radical development to insinuate itself into the routine backdrop of partisan squabbling."
The Republicans' favorite argument is garbage. Whether they're aware of this or not is unclear, but either way, it's not to be taken seriously.
Now I don’t know anything about the president’s relationship with Boehner. But it’s becoming a matter of national security for him to find some way to take him aside, maybe give the Speaker a cigarette from his secret stash, and say: “I will see you in Hell before I negotiate over the debt limit. And if you let a default happen, I will devote the rest of my presidency to making sure you, personally, bear the blame, and go down in history with our most despised traitors and criminals. For generations, little school children in Ohio will cross themselves and make hex signs when your name is mentioned. So do not, do not, go back and tell your crazy people they can win if they just stick together."
It's the same secessionist motherfuckers playing the same motherfucking games they've been playing for 200 years.
aimai at No More Mister Niceblog:
They are treating the debt ceiling like it is a normal part of the budgeting process, part of the annual round of funding, rather than the part of the script where you sign your credit card reciept before leaving the restaurant. This has, of course, been observed many times before but it bears repeating--their world bears no resemblance to our earth world. In the real world the 14th amendment ought to bar them from refusing to raise the debt limit because to do so is to say that the previous congress (which many of them were in) did not lawfully appropriate the money which we now owe or that they are repudiating the payment of our just debts.
To refresh everyone's memory we passed the 14th amendment because we were about to accept back into political life our former rebels and traitors--these men, once they were back in public life, were quite likely to repudiate the war debts of the victors or to once again engage in sabotage of the union. That is what this neo-southern confederate rump is doing: they are sabotaging the US Government and using the budget to do so. They are both smarter and more cowardly than the previous batch of Confederates. Lets hope the current President can save the Union.
Of course they get to threaten, Mr. President - they already have. The question is whether they get to succeed this time, like they did in 2011.
Full transcript here.
Four today nailed it on the same theme.
David Atkins at Hullabaloo:
We're well beyond simple partisanship at this point. To be a Republican official in early 21st century America is to belong not to a political party so much as a cult of big business and religion that allows no evidence to sway its belief system and no crisis to alter its principles.Zandar:
That's a very dangerous thing, and it goes far beyond politics as usual. Every action the Republican Party takes, whether it be to take the debt ceiling hostage, threaten government shutdown over healthcare legislation they themselves had recently championed, or implement institutional rape by forced transvaginal ultrasound, needs to be seen in that light.
The GOP will destroy the country in order to hurt Obama. That's all that matters to them now. They will leave a country of ashes and millions suffering in their wake. If they can't run the country as a Christian fundamentalist Dominionist theocracy, they will raze America to the ground.Rude Pundit:
Here's the entire strange, ominous, and enraging place we find ourselves in our politics right now, boiled down to a simple conversation, a playlet, if you will:And finally, Wonkette puts the right label on it:
Sane Person: We need food. Can I use your car to go to the store?
Crazy Person: We do need food. However, you can use my car only if you punch yourself in the balls until you vomit.
Sane Person: That's ridiculous. One thing has nothing to do with the other. How would that accomplish anything?
Crazy Person: It's what I want.
Sane Person: Well, I guess we'll just starve.
Crazy Person: Yes, but remember that if we starve, it will be your fault because you didn't punch yourself in the balls until you vomit.
Just because John Boehner is demanding that Mitt Romney’s entire economic agenda be implemented in order for the Republicans to even consider allowing us to pay debts we’ve already incurred is no reason to call them “terrorists.” That is mean to terrorists haha just kidding OR ARE WE???
What should we be calling the Republicans instead?
- The guy from Long Kiss Goodnight who gives Geena Davis’s daughter a doll before he locks her in the freezer, because he is “not a monster.” Oh wait sorry, that guy was a terrorist actually.
- The guy from the Kenyan mall attack who gave that boy a Mars bar because he is “not a monster.” Oh wait, sorry, he is a terrorist too.
- Terrorists.
You certainly sound like you've learned the lesson of the 2011 debt ceiling fight, Mr. President. You even sound like you finally acknowledge that congressional repugs are not rational beings. I sincerely hope that is enough to make you hold firm.
Full transcript here.
I hope all you Democrats who sat at home in November instead of stopping this conservatard from representing us in Congress are proud of yourselves.
From Votenote:
Short-Term Suspension of Debt Limit – Final Passage - Vote Passed (285-144, 3 Not Voting)
The House temporarily defused a looming crisis over the debt limit last by passing a bill that, rather than raising the limit – that is, setting a new cap on the federal government’s borrowing authority – actually suspends it – meaning there technically is no limit – until May 19, at which point the limit would be reset at a new, higher level, to reflect government borrowing activity in the interim period. In addition, the bill would institute an enforcement mechanism for each house of Congress to pass a FY 2014 budget resolution. Beginning April 15, if a chamber has not passed a budget, that chamber’s members would not receive their paychecks. This would carry on until the earlier of passage of a budget or the last day of the 113th Congress. Though House Democrats mostly decried the bill as a gimmick, President Obama has stated he will sign the bill if it reaches him.
Rep. Thomas Massie voted NO......send
On this, the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of the most despised presidents in U.S. history, it is appropriate to remember that "Nixon going to China" may be a metaphor for defying your party's principles in the name of progress, but it didn't help him or his party in the end.
Just so, destroying Social Security and Medicare may earn Barack Obama kudos from the Beltway Villagers, but he'll be villified forever for destroying the Democratic Party. Not to mention the middle class.
Digby:
I won't reiterate my belief that the president truly and genuinely seeks a Grand Bargain. You know what I think about that (and if you don't, you can google my name and Grand Bargain and read all about it.) Making a fetish of raising taxes on the rich as part of a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction in the recent campaign baked it into everything going forward. And the president has now twice shown that he's willing to raise the Medicare age and cut Social Security benefits. So, that's where we begin round two, basically for no good reason.
Greg Sargent talks about the "balanced approach":
Presuming the Senate deal passes the House, what happened yesterday is that Democrats scored a victory on part two of that question — albeit only a partial one — while successfully deferring the epic, looming battle over the first part of it. Meanwhile, Republicans retained their leverage heading into round two, and thanks to the way things unfolded, they will likely walk into it more confident of winning major future concessions...
Obama has pledged to win more in new revenues from the rich via tax reform, has vowed not to agree to any deficit reduction that relies only on spending cuts, and continues to insist on a “balanced” approach. Only Obama, however, can ultimately define what he means by “balanced.” Liberals must continue to insist that this mean that the sacrifice necessary to reducing the deficit will not borne by the poor or seniors who can’t afford it.
All of which is to say that the major fight at the heart of this whole mess — over the proper scope and role of the safety net of the 21st century, and who will pay for it — remains unresolved. Only the outcome of that battle can settle the question of whether today’s compromise was a good one for liberals. Obama’s legacy on the future of the welfare state — which will help define his presidency and settle fundamental questions about our approach to governing that will define American life for years to come — remains yet to be determined.
That's not comforting. I suspect that were he to define his preferred legacy on the question of the welfare state it would be that he enacted Obamacare and "fixed" the alleged funding crisis with a Grand Bargain on taxes and entitlements. That's what he's been saying for four years anyway. And what that has always meant was raising some taxes and cutting programs (also known as "everyone having skin in the game.") He got the tax hikes because they were inevitable. He has yet to fulfill the second promise. But it's not for lack of trying. Ironically, it's been those all-powerful Republican lunatics refusing to take him up on the offer that saved us so far.There's an alternative.
If Miss McConnell, Boehner-- who now says he's finished negotiating with President Obama-- and even nut cases and crackpots who are given TV time like Gingrich, keep up the crazy talk, 2014 to actually turn into an electoral rout. And that, of course, is why McConnell is insisting that the GOP not just be given the cuts to popular programs they want but that Obama and the Democrats embrace those cuts as well. Obama probably will. Progressive Democrats won't, under any circumstances, countenance benefits cuts to working families and seniors. Here's a statement from the 80-member strong Congressional Progressive Caucus, issued last week:
With yesterday's vote behind us, Americans face an even bigger fight in the coming months: funding our government, avoiding devastating cuts known as sequestration, and avoiding default on our country's bills. The most recent negotiations saw a massive grassroots effort that successfully protected Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits and investments in the middle class. In the coming negotiations, we must continue the fight. Here's what we should do. First, no more hostage taking. Last August, Republicans held the full faith and credit of the United States hostage in exchange for over $1 trillion in cuts that hit middle class families hardest. Everything from student loans for college students to fixing our crumbling roads and bridges was threatened by these cuts. President Obama is right to refuse to negotiate over paying the nation's credit card bills. The debt ceiling has been raised dozens of times in the past, including 18 times by Ronald Reagan. We must join him in calling for a clean increase of the debt ceiling. Second, protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are the backbone of every family's income when they most need it. Medicare alone provides health care to 40 million American seniors and more than 8 million Americans with disabilities-- and does so at a fraction of the cost of private insurance. Inevitably, we are going to be asked about the rising cost of health care. We should welcome this conversation. Allowing Medicare Part D to negotiate lower drug prices for seniors-- just like the Veterans Administration already does-- will save more than $150 billion over 10 years. But cutting benefits has nothing to do with cutting health care costs, and actually increases costs for seniors. Raising the retirement age for Medicare would cost our own family members over $2,000 and increase health care costs by over $11 trillion. We won a significant victory in protecting benefits for our family members in these negotiations, and we must firmly oppose efforts to throw American families under the bus disguised as deficit reduction. Third, additional savings should come from new revenue and the Pentagon, and any deal must include investments in American's number one priority-- new jobs. The middle class should not continue to foot the bill for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. With over $1.7 trillion already cut from programs for American families and less than half of that amount raised in revenue, we have a long way to go before we have a balanced approach. We could save over $110 billion just by eliminating wasteful subsidies to oil and gas companies. My Inclusive Prosperity Act would raise hundreds of billions dollars just by taxing Wall Street trades by a fraction of 1 percent. Six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have already proposed principles of tax reform, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have called for Pentagon savings to be included in any negotiation. The American people have our back. By large margins, people want us reduce the deficit by asking those who have benefited most over the past few decades to pay their fair share, and they recognize that cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits will only make our problems worse. In the end, our success will depend upon a grassroots movement to protect these priorities. As Abraham Lincoln said, "With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed." Now it's up to us to make sure Congress listens.
Like the fiscal molehill, the debt ceiling debate is a fake. A pretend crisis ginned up to fool people into thinking that if we don't kill Social Security and Medicare right now this instants, the planet will flip right off its axis and into the sun.
Unlike the fiscal molehill, however, failure to deal with the actual reality of the debt ceiling - which has nothing to do with the debate - can and will cause actual severe economic harm, bordering on catastrophe.
Which suits the repugs just fine.
The jumping off point for this piece is an observation that the GOP is articulating two equally wrong, though directionally opposite arguments to advance its debt limit strategy.Keep in mind that the debt ceiling has nothing to do with increasing or decreasing government spending. Raising the debt ceiling does not add a penny to federal spending. Raising the debt ceiling just allows the government to pay the bill for the spending Congress already authorized.
The first is that raising the debt limit is some huge cession of power to President Obama, rather than a perfunctory exercise in authorizing payment on bills Congress has already racked up. The second is that not raising the debt limit might not be so bad.
These arguments interact elegantly.
Start by claiming that raising the debt limit is a big ask to create a rationale for demanding a price. Then downplay the consequences of failing to act, so that Republicans keep their nerve, and the administration looks petulant for not agreeing to horse trade.
But both arguments are so unmoored from reality, you wonder why the GOP would bother making them if they didn’t recognize that their real play here is so politically noxious. “Cut Medicare benefits or we’ll gratuitously destroy the economy” isn’t a big winner.
But as much as they’d like to pretend otherwise, even the best-case-scenario post-debt limit breach would be hugely damaging to the economy.
If February comes and goes and the debt ceiling issue isn’t resolved the government won’t necessarily default right away. It almost certainly won’t, actually. But even if Treasury makes every effort to prioritize paying bondholders over other obligations, we’ll suddenly be facing a situation in which we can’t finance a huge amount of government spending — about 40 percent of it — overnight.
Or look at it another way. If this year’s deficit is a trillion dollars, and suddenly the administration can’t finance deficit spending with borrowed money, it will have to cut expenditures in some way by $80 billion or so a month. That’s $80 billion a month out of the economy. Perhaps six percent of GDP. By comparison, the sequester’s automatic spending cuts amount to about $120 billion over the course of a year.
This is all back of the envelope math. But it illustrates the fact that the best case scenario if we breach the debt limit is still highly recessionary. The numbers are actually mind boggling. Not a few furloughs and long grass on the national mall. Republicans like Pat Toomey and John Cornyn know this. But if they explained it plainly, the public, and maybe even some rank and file members, would recognize the unsustainable nature of the threat, and the whole strategy would fall apart.
David Atkins at Hullabaloo concludes a fantastic post on the debt ceiling extortion with the following:
In this respect, the Republican position is to go on a massive spending spree, quit their jobs by decreasing revenue, and then threaten to throw the bills they racked up into fire unless their spouse stops feeding the kids.Read the whole thing.
There may be words for that sort of political philosophy, but it scarcely deserves to be called "conservatism."
There is only one response to Mitchy-poo's hysterical hissy-fit over the debt ceiling:
Yes, of course it's bullshit and of course S&P is a bunch of criminal incompetents who embody the worst of the financial industry.
But the downgrade is also evil and dangerous, as Ian Welsh explains:
Aside from hysterical laughter, here are the key points:
1. Obviously the US isn’t even close to insolvent. The gold in Fort Knox is held on the books at $37/ounce, for example. Most Federal lands are held on the books at 19th century valuations. Not to mention that the US’s debt is denominated in its own currency, which means it could simply be printed, and that the US government has a lot of unused room to tax, should it ever deign to use that on people with money, as opposed to those without.
2. As everyone is pointing out, the idea that S&P, who rated all the subprime trash as AAA, has any credibility, is a joke.
3. However, Obama and Democrats refused to destroy S&P when they had the opportunity and every reason to do so. The submprime crisis could not have been nearly as bad without S&P and the other rating’s agencies rating trash AAA so that investors who must buy AAA by law could do so. To put it simply, S&P engaged in systematic fraud. They, like everyone on Wall Street and in the major banks, have not been indicted for this. The choice to not indict is policy. Obama’s policy.
4. If Obama did not want this to happen, it would not happen. Could you imagine what LBJ, Nixon or Truman (or, hell, Bush Jr.) would have done if a rating’s agency tried this? The President has the necessary tools to utterly destroy S&P and every senior analyst working for them. You could use terrorism statutes or RICO, just as two examples. Send the FBI into their offices, seize all the assets of both the company and everyone working for it, and then got through their records. I guarantee, as absolutely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning, that there is enough evidence of fraud in those records to put them away for life. In the meantime, RICO laws are used to seize all the assets of everyone involved, meaning they will be using public defenders (don’t like a bad law? Use it against real people.) When S&P informed the White House they were going to downgrade, the White House could have quietly let them know what the consequences would be.
5. The US has effectively unlimited drawing rights from the IMF. Those drawing rights mean that if any of the core economies have an AAA rating, in effect, so does the US. (ie. if Germany is AAA, so is America.)
6. S&P knows all this. They are doing this because they know the President and Congress and the real people in the oligarchy want it done. Remember, a downgrade increases rates, and that is a direct increase to their income. And they know the US can pay, they aren’t fooled by idiotic talk about a default. The US may default at some point, but that will be a political decision.
7. This is another manufactured crisis, on top of the original manufactured debt ceiling crisis. The oligarchy wants the opportunity to buy federal assets at dimes on the dollar. They believe they don’t need the poor or middle class anymore, so they are good with getting rid of SS and Medicare. And Obama is, as he always has been, onside with this.
These people, are, however, playing with fire. Just because it’s a crisis that didn’t have to happen, a crisis, that is manufactured as another looting opportunity, doesn’t mean that it won’t have real consequences.
From David Atkins (therisnospoon) at Hullabaloo, on the economic crisis:<
If this is a all a kabuki conspiracy, it's the best acted Vaudeville farce of all time. The other alternative is to concede that we're governed by drooling idiots in Wall St. and Washington alike, largely because anybody with a clue about what's really going on is relegated to the sidelines and not allowed anywhere near real policy decisions.
Neoliberalism and free market fundamentalism are both used up, obviously failed dead ends in the world of ideas. Yet the proponents of these ideologies both cling desperately to their beliefs, fighting for control of Washington like two people fighting desperately for an inner-tube as they fall out of a doomed airplane, confident that their preferred version of the same policies will save them from certain death. Meanwhile, progressives have all the parachutes, but are strapped, helpless and curiously irrelevant, into the plane as it careens inevitably into the mountains ahead.
And all the clueless media can do is report on who's winning the seesaw battle for the useless inner-tube, while moaning about how they could both be saved if only they would learn to share it like nice little children.
But overturning its economy-killing terms is going to take hard work by all of us.
David Dayen at Firedoglake:
Nate Silver’s analysis of the debt deal is broadly similar to mine, actually. He acknowledges that fiscal policy will be anti-expansionary in the near term, but that the cuts are not that deep in fiscal year 2012, and that defense will bear at least some of the pain. It’s a backloaded deal, and future Congresses can simply obviate it.
That’s true. Future Congresses are not bound by the actions of previous Congresses. The more important question is whether you believe that THIS generation of Congressional leadership will work outside the lines of this agreement. Will these Democrats muster the gumption to break the spending caps, to allow all the Bush tax cuts to expire, etc., etc. I just don’t see it. I don’t see these Democrats, who have been parroting the language of austerity so much they have to believe at least some of it, will ever go beyond this agreement. They have made a virtue of paygo and Clinton’s balanced budgets for close to 20 years now. They are fiscal conservatives, the only ones in Washington to be precise. The Progressive Caucus budget reaches a surplus in 2021, albeit in a smarter way. They will live within the constraints of this paralyzing discretionary budget, which puts public investment at an appallingly low level.
The way out of this box is to find different people than the ones currently in office. I don’t see any other way around that. This can start at the state level, actually. One of the worst aspects of this deal is the timing – in just a week, there are elections in Wisconsin that represents a true mass popular movement aligned with the Democratic Party, that happens to be fighting for workers’ rights. But everyone is overwhelmed with anger over this debt deal.
I could say that liberals got Obama elected and if you don't dance with the one that brung ya you'll end up regretting it.
I could say that liberals will defend - and have defended - this administration when this administration accomplishes something liberal.
I could say that insulting and sneering at and mocking and ignoring liberals is not the best way to get them to support and compliment you.
But I'll just say that liberals don't work for the White House. We don't work for the Democratic Party. We work for the Liberal Prosperity that this White House and the Democratic Party have done so much to destroy.
We tell the truth. So we celebrate the end of DADT and the Lily Ledbetter Act and (albeit reluctantly) the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" act.
We tell the truth. So we condemn the Permanent War in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and elsewhere. We condemn budget deals that eliminate the ability of the government to provide public goods and services. We condemn an attitude that gives obscenely wealthy individual and corporations everything they want and gives the rest of us - 98 percent of the population - nothing but lip service.
We tell the truth. So we don't take seriously an administration that responds to accurate criticism with temper-tantrums and name-calling.
KeninNY at Down with Tyranny:
Really good, important column by our colleague John Arivosis at AmericaBlog, "White House blames lib groups for deficit deal debacle at secret meeting." John begins by quoting from a report by Politico's Ben Smith, usually to be trusted when it comes to enforcing political orthodoxy, "that at last night's "Common Purpose" meeting, a regular (supposed to be secret) get together between the White House and progressive advocacy groups (where the White House routinely yells at them, I hear), the groups got an earful about the President's new deficit deal."Progressive consultant Mike Lux, the sources said, summed up the liberal concern, producing what a participant described as an "extremely defensive" response from Sperling.
Sperling, a person involved said, pointed his finger backed at liberal groups, which he said hadn't done enough to highlight what he saw as the positive side of the debt package -- a message that didn't go over well with participants.
Which, John says, "sounds oddly familiar," since he was on the receiving end of just such an admonishment as part of a group of liberal bloggers granted an audience in February 2010 with then vice presidential economic adviser Jared Bernstein, who berated liberal media for failing to persuade the nation of the wonders of the president's stimulus program.I remember Bernstein specifically asking the Nation's Chris Hayes whether he and his paper had done enough to help promote the benefits of the stimulus over the proceeding year. Chris said that they had just done a podcast about it that day, but yes he probably could have done more. I recall jumping in and noting that Chris was the last person Berstein should criticize, as he's on Rachel Maddow every night defending the administration quite diligently.
In any case, this isn't a coincidence. They actually believe, inside the White House, that we're to blame for their problems. That they're doing a chipper job and the public would know it, but for the Netroots and the liberal advocacy groups doing such a lousy job selling the President's magnificent handiwork.
Things aren't getting better because the administration doesn't even recognize that they are -- that their boss is -- the problem.
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