Smoke gets in your eyes

Ezra Klein: "2011 is not 1995"(via BDR)

...you would’ve never known it from President Obama’s encomium to the agreement. Obama bragged about “making the largest annual spending cut in our history.” Harry Reid joined him, repeatedly calling the cuts “historic.” It fell to Boehner to give a clipped, businesslike statement on the deal. If you were just tuning in, you might’ve thought Boehner had been arguing for moderation, while both Obama and Reid sought to cut deeper. You would never have known that Democrats had spent months resisting these “historic” cuts, warning that they’d cost jobs and slow the recovery.

Boehner, of course, could afford to speak plainly. He’d not just won the negotiation but had proven himself in his first major test as speaker of the House. He managed to get more from the Democrats than anyone had expected, sell his members on voting for a deal that wasn’t what many of them wanted and avert a shutdown. There is good reason to think that Boehner will be a much more formidable opponent for Obama than Gingrich was for Clinton.

Of course I don't know Ezra Klein, but by most accounts he is a bright, highly educated overachiever, so I assume he knows better, or at least should know better. He gives Obama and Reid credit they don't deserve, suggesting they fought the good fight against those horrible Republicans, and are bravely putting on a good face in defeat. To believe this you have to believe that Obama and Reid are not in fact in on the effort to strip mine the New Deal and Great Society programs. Reid and Obama could have, for example, insisted on a vote on ending the GWB era tax cuts in the summer of 2010, when the dems still had a majority, playing election funding hardball with the so-called Blue Dogs in the House and Senate(most of whom lost re-election anyway). They didn't do this because they didn't want to.

But what about a filibuster? Bills have passed the Senate for many decades without 60 votes. They could have forced a GOP fillibuster, rather than reactively running away from even the possibility of one because they didn't have 60 votes locked up, breaking the phony-baloney gang of 14 agreement. Again, they didn't force the issue because they didn't want to.

Going back to 1990s income tax rates would have rendered the 38 or 39 or whatever billion in cuts unnecessary. (Whether they even were necessary in the short term is also debatable, but to keep the present discussion simple assume they were.)

Even if they lost a vote on the tax cuts in summer 2010, it would have given the democrats a rhetorical club against the GOP in the then-upcoming elections, refuting the Tea Partiers claim that they were serious about reducing the deficit. It may have even helped in the midterms, at least in some districts that democrats lost.

And as far as Boehner being a 'much more formidable opponent for Obama than Gingrich was for Clinton'', you have to assume that the degree of difference between BHO and Boehner today is comparable to that between Gingrich and Bill Clinton in '95, and that BHO is not a corporate stooge, etc.

(Actually, even Bill Clinton has shifted corporate right closer to the GOP than he was, at least operationally, in 1995. I note Clinton's endorsement of Joe Lieberman versus Ned Lamont in 2006 as exhibit A, and Clinton's own rejection, in December 2010, of going back to the Clinton era tax cuts as exhibit B. Of course 1995 was so many six figure speeches ago, and one imagines that Bill's Rolodex of well-connected friends is so much fatter.)

Klein continues:

So why were Reid and Obama so eager to celebrate Boehner’s compromise with his conservative members? The Democrats believe it’s good to look like a winner, even if you’ve lost. But they’re sacrificing more than they let on. By celebrating spending cuts, they’ve opened the door to further austerity measures at a moment when the recovery remains fragile. Claiming political victory now opens the door to further policy defeats later.

Or, claiming political victory now confuses stupid people and sends the proper signal of deference to the owners. I guess that's crasser, and may even use words that are frowned upon in the Washington Post style manual. But he's undoubtedly right about opening the door to further austerity measures and 'further policy defeats'. You have to give him that.


Among the best blog posts from this past week:

Two from Ian Welsh, "In Light of the Budget Deal: Obama’s Personality"
and "When Medicare is destroyed is only a matter of when"


and two from Jack Crow, "Clumsy Theater"
and "Pay no attention to the man behind the..."

STFU 2011

If you missed the eminently missable SOTU 2011, the transcript is here. Tax cuts, defunding social security,[via] but not the war in Afghanistan. Is it possible that he really believes his proposals will actually arrest the long term decline of the US, rather than accelerate it? If Barry is really as smart as his apologists say he is, then you'd think he knows better.

BHO=GWB.

For years I believed the democrats were the good guys and the republicans were the bad guys. I even voted for Mondale in '84, as well as Dukakis and Clinton later on. Now I believe the democrats are the bad guys and the republicans are the bad guys, and the so-called tea partiers are just crazy and stupid, daydreaming about their cock-eyed vision of the pre-civil rights era. Bipartisanship, at least as as most people construe it is likewise delusional, a psychological crutch for those who want to believe the system still works, and don't want to see the rot. Don't get me wrong- I understand the desire to believe, but the only choice we have left is whether or not we withhold our consent. That's all they want from us anyway, the conferral of legitimacy. Our opinions about what they do tofor us are irrelevant.

Not your friends

Clintonism is dead, killed by Bill Clinton of all people. In the world of strong and simple narratives that the popular press favors, the strongest argument against the disgusting tax deal cobbled together by Obama and the GOP was Clintonism, that under Bill Clinton and the democrats in 1993 marginal tax rates on wealthier Americans were raised from a maximum of 31% under Bush senior to as much as 39.6%, and eventually this led to the boom and balanced budgets of the late 1990s.

But as you are likely to have heard, Clinton himself decided to go to bat for this horrific tax deal, prostituting his liberal cred, such as it is, for tax cuts and a future economic bust. I imagine now that the Fed will do everything they can to float Obama to reelection, because if the economy appears to revive, the ghost of Clintonism can be killed, once and for all, gutted by supply-side Obama-ism-- at least according to the DC "villager" types and the popular news media, who will look everywhere for silver linings that demonstrate the supposed wisdom and fairness of tax cuts for everybody.

Disabusing people of the common-sense notion that you increase tax revenue by increasing taxes may be even more valuable to the oligarchy than for the GOP to retake the White House in 2012. I wonder what will actually happen, although I have to believe much of that upper-income tax cut money will go towards investment in Asian economies, and the US economy will continue its downward slide for at least another two years.

Meanwhile, will there be anybody left debating whether Obama and the democratic leadership is inept or deliberately selling out? I'm glad more people are noticing the malignant effect of the payroll tax cut, supposedly just for one year. The GWB tax cuts were supposedly just for this decade, through 12/31/2010, and if the democrats really wanted to win in the mid-terms they could have voted on the tax cuts this summer, forcing a real fillibuster just before the election-- but Harry Reid didn't want that, any more than BHO did.

Reid and Pelosi and Hoyer got re-elected, but people like Alan Grayson and Russ Feingold were not so lucky, and neither were most of the so-called Blue Dog dems. I tend to assume this was partly by design, funding-wise, that one of the unusual traits of Obama-ism is he wants to be able to run against democratic policies, and do so without any strong voices of opposition to ruffle his feathers. The presence of both the Blue Dogs, stealing his thunder and making BHO's pronouncements seem more generic and less 'bold', and potential critics within the party from the left, interfere with Obama selling himself as a leader. Why would the GOP want to get rid of him? Might as well run Sarah Palin, to help build a database of far-right supporters for 2016. And if she actually wins, all the better. The only possible value I can see in voting for Obama at this point is if it prevents a war with Iran, although I am by no means convinced that BHO wouldn't attack Iran. He may even do so to distract people from the sour jobs outlook.

The other day Digby wrote:

I am usually fairly skeptical of the idea that the Democrats are always screwing up and losing debates because they are consciously conspiring with the Republicans to reach certain goals.

After such a promising beginning she dismisses the conspiracy angle and insists, in a pained way("I'm not defending them, but...") that the democrats know what they're doing, and their motives are just. Thank goodness for that! Were you holding your breath?

As you may know, the guys at Stop Me Before I Vote Again have subtitled their blog, "If you're a Lefty like us, the Democrats are not your friends". You don't even have to be a lefty, just have some common sense, to recognize the duplicity of the GOP, who initially insisted that they were holding out on renewing unemployment benefits because of deficit worries. And the duplicity of Obama, and Bill Clinton, and the rest of the democratic leadership.


Nancy Altman, via Jonathan Schwarz, "The end of social security"
Rob Payne, "Obama destroys social security all on his own"

The increasingly rightward drifting Christian Science Monitor:

"How tax cut revolt helps Obama: It's a page from Clinton playbook,"and

"Obama tax deal could start an era like Reagan's"



Tony Wikrent(via Avedon): "Why the Obama Tax Deal is Insane"

"This 2 percent payroll tax cut is the beginning of the end of Social Security as we know it," said the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, which is led by former Rep. Barbara B. Kennelly, D-Conn.

the emperor's bloody clothes

The editors of Slate reference this TPM post discussing GOP chairman Michael Steele's acknowledgement that the Afghan war is unwinnable, reducing it to political process. Some of the Slate commenters, filled with glee at a prominent republican apparently putting his foot in his mouth, are repellent in their myopic, doltish stupidity.


from Slate:

...the impulse to assign blame to the opposing party is apparently a bipartisan one. At a Republican fundraiser in Connecticut on Thursday, RNC Michael Steele tried to pin the war in Afghanistan—which started in 2001—on the current occupant of the Oval Office.

The gaffe-tastic chairman got on the subject when a audience member asked him a question about Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation. "The McChrystal incident, to me, was very comical. And I think it's a reflection of the frustration that a lot of our military leaders have with this Administration and their prosecution of the war in Afghanistan," said Steele. "Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama's choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." Steele went on to say that the United States had started an unwinnable war in Afghanistan—and that it's Obama's fault. "It was the president who was trying to be cute by half flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan," Steele said. "Well, if he's such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that's the one thing you don't do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan."

When TPM tried to ask some questions of an RNC spokesman (chief among them: "Didn't the war begin in 2001 under George W. Bush, in response to the 9/11 attacks?"), the response was a statement that begins, "The Chairman clearly supports our troops." Steele has weathered storms of his own making before, but this may be harder to survive than a little bondage-themed party. The Atlantic is calling this "the biggest Michael Steele gaffe of all," Repblicans operatives are calling it "the height of stupidity," and William Kristol is calling for his resignation.

While I doubt that I share many of Michael Steele's views on things like business regulation or taxation, I was pleasantly surprised when I heard about his comments from Thursday declaring the Afghan war unwinnable. Although I don't care about the GOP's fortunes any more than I care about the well-being of the democratic party, it was pretty clear that he was trying to nudge the republicans towards relevancy, and maybe even sanity. I guess the bipartisan flurry of criticism he has since faced was inevitable. His subsequent backing away from his comments wasn't, although it really was too bad.

Steele had an opportunity, especially poignant on the eve of the 4th of July holiday, to make the case against empire and all the unnecessary butchery of our own and others, and to flesh out the distinction between supporting the well-being of the troops and supporting an imperial war. It seems no good deed, or hesitant attempt at such, goes unpunished.